NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on the 60th annual Grammy Awards being presented Sunday night in New York (all times local):

Rural landowners in Oregon have settled a lawsuit filed that accused their marijuana-growing neighbors of violating federal anti-racketeering law and reducing property values.

However, the question of whether Oregon marijuana growers can be successfully sued under the Rackeeter Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act may still be answered, as a similar lawsuit was recently filed against another cannabis operation.

Last year, Rachel and Erin McCart of Beavercreek, Ore., filed a RICO complaint against more than 40 defendants involved in medical marijuana production, including landowners, growers, retailers and a bank.

Apart from lowering the value of their 11-acre property, the McCarts claimed that two nearby marijuana operations attracted unwanted visitors, increased traffic and generated foul odors, among other problems.

While medical and recreational marijuana were legalized by Oregon voters, the plaintiffs claimed their neighbors were still subject to RICO because the substance is illegal under federal law.

“Given the strict federal prohibitions against each of those purposes, defendants knew these purposes could only be accomplished via a pattern of racketeering. In furtherance of that goal, defendants pooled their resources and achieved enterprise efficiency that no one defendant could have achieved individually,” the complaint said.

The complaint was filed on the heels of a ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that RICO claims should be allowed to proceed against a Colorado marijuana operation.

With the large number of defendants in the Oregon case, initial procedural steps took several months before the defendants filed motions to dismiss the complaint.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Acosta in Portland had planned to take those requests under advisement in early 2018, but then stayed proceedings in the case when the parties notified him of a pending settlement.

On Jan. 26, the judge dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled, at the request of the plaintiffs, “without an award of fees or costs to any party.”

Rachel McCart, who is an attorney, did not respond to requests to comment on the settlement deal.

Cliff Davidson, an attorney for a landowner defendant, said the dispute has been resolved but he cannot discuss the terms of the agreement.

In light of uncertainty about marijuana enforcement from the Trump administration, controversies over the crop are bound to continue, he said.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Justice Department issued a memorandum allowing states to regulate legalized marijuana as long as they followed certain parameters, such as keeping it out of interstate commerce.

However, the memorandum was withdrawn by current U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has instead directed federal prosecutors to use their discretion in pursuing criminal cases against marijuana producers in states where it’s legal.

Alleging violations of the federal RICO statute is an attractive strategy for plaintiffs, since it allows them to recover triple the amount of damages as well as attorney fees, said Davidson.

“If you’re a plaintiff, it’s a good way to maximize the damages you can recover,” he said. “It’s troubling. It’s just another form of shakedown.”

Ten rural landowners near Lebanon, Ore., filed a lawsuit last month alleging RICO violations against seven neighboring marijuana growers and a mortgage company that had loaned them money to buy property.

The complaint claims the defendants built a greenhouse on the property and converted other buildings to grow and process the psychoactive crop, in addition to cultivating it outdoors in 2017.

Aside from odors, traffic and noise, the marijuana operation has reduced property values due to concerns about the potential for armed robberies and other crime, the complaint said.

Neighbors also fear for their safety due to pit bull guard dogs roaming loose and an uncontrolled fire that resulted from the burning of marijuana debris, the plaintiffs claim.

Rachel McCart is representing the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, which has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Michael McShane in Eugene, Ore.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge Wednesday sentenced a man to a year and a day in federal prison for digging a trench during the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge in southeastern Oregon.

Jake Ryan of Plains, Montana, was found guilty in March 2017 of depredation of government property.

A sentence of probation and home detention seemed likely heading into Wednesday, but Ryan tried to fire his public defender, disregarded the authority of court and asserted that U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy Williams brought false charges on behalf of an imaginary friend, the United States of America.

U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown described Ryan’s statements as “gibberish” and agreed with prosecutor Ethan Knight to impose a prison term. Moreover, she ordered Ryan to start serving the sentence immediately.

Dozens of people occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge from Jan. 2 to Feb. 11, 2016, in a protest against federal control of Western lands and the imprisonment of two ranchers.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy and other key figures were arrested in a Jan. 26, 2016, traffic stop away from the refuge that ended with police fatally shooting occupation spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum.

The trench dug the following day by Ryan and another man contained artifacts important to the Burns Paiute Tribe.

Ryan addressed a tribal representative Wednesday, saying he loves the rich history of Native Americans and wouldn’t have dug a trench in that spot if he had known it was a burial site. Ryan said the trench was only dug in self-defense, because the occupiers were surrounded by a government authorities “armed to the teeth.”

The trial in which Ryan was convicted came months after Ammon and Ryan Bundy were found not guilty in a separate trial. In another case, a federal judge recently dismissed charges against the Bundys and their father, Cliven, in relation to a 2014 standoff with federal agents in Nevada.

Fresh off their Nevada victory, Cliven and Ryan Bundy appeared last weekend at a “Freedom and Property” rally in Montana. The emcee of the event was Jake Ryan’s mother, Roxsanna.

Jake Ryan’s father, Daniel Ryan, told reporters before Wednesday’s sentencing that seeing Ryan Bundy act as his own attorney in two victories against government attorneys influenced his son’s decision to represent himself.

But Judge Brown wouldn’t go along with it. When she questioned Ryan if he was capable of making legal arguments, he repeatedly replied that he was a living soul — a man capable of handling his own affairs — and that Jake Ryan was a fictitious identity created by the government.

“You are removing me from standing on my own two feet,” Ryan said after the judge kept public defender Jesse Merrithew on the case.

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Colorado Rep. Jared Polis are leading a bipartisan push urging President Donald Trump to reinstate an Obama-era policy discouraging federal prosecutors from targeting individuals involved in the marijuana trade in states that have legalized the drug.

The Democrats and 52 other members of Congress have written a letter dated Thursday to Trump, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions lifted the policy earlier this month. Sessions said he would leave it up to prosecutors whether to crack down.

In the letter, the members say lifting the policy puts businesses, consumers and patients at risk.

Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington and the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana by adults.

Others have decriminalized marijuana or legalized its medicinal use.

A judge has refused to dismiss a class action lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion from Oregon’s government for insufficient logging of state forestlands.

Linn County filed a complaint in 2016 accusing Oregon’s forest managers of breaching a contract to maximize timber harvests from forests donated to the state by county governments.

According to the lawsuit, Oregon began prioritizing environmental protection and recreational values over logging due to a policy change in 1998.

The lawsuit was certified as a class action by Linn County Circuit Judge Daniel Murphy, which effectively included 14 counties and more than 100 taxing districts as plaintiffs in the case.

Attorneys for Oregon raised several grounds for dismissing the lawsuit that have now been rejected by Murphy.

The judge has ruled against the state on a particularly controversial point that’s resurfaced several times during the litigation: Whether the doctrine of “sovereign immunity” prohibits county governments from suing the State of Oregon.

Initially, Murphy allowed the case to proceed despite the state’s sovereign immunity claim, but later issued a ruling that it’s a valid defense.

The judge withdrew that opinion and has now again rejected Oregon’s motion to dismiss, referencing his original ruling that counties can enforce their contract rights against the state government in court under these circumstances.

“He’s back to where he’s historically been in the case,” said John DiLorenzo, attorney for the county plaintiffs.

As part of the ruling, the judge also threw out Oregon’s argument that counties can’t seek to “maximize timber revenues” because that term wasn’t included in their contracts.

Oregon’s government is required to manage the forestland for the “greatest permanent value,” but this term is ambiguous and may be interpreted based on the circumstances under which the contract was made, Murphy said.

The judge also disagreed with Oregon’s attorneys that future damages in this case were “too speculative” to be decided, since “forestry experts make these estimates all the time,” and dismissed other motions filed by the state.

Frank Hammond, an attorney representing Oregon, said he cannot comment on pending litigation.

DiLorenzo, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said he’s pleased with the ruling, which removed the remaining obstacles standing in the way of a trial.

For much of the litigation, Oregon’s Board of Forestry — which oversees the defendant Oregon Department of Forestry — has treated the case with derision, DiLorenzo said.

“This should be a signal to state policymakers the court is taking this case quite seriously,” he said. “I hope this is a wakeup call the Board of Forestry might very well lose this case.”

The plaintiffs are amenable to Oregon filing an “interlocutory appeal” to challenge Murphy’s most recent ruling before the Oregon Court of Appeals, DiLorenzo said.

That way, the Court of Appeals can ensure that assumptions about sovereign immunity and other legal issues are correct before the beginning of trial, which may last a month, he said.

“From an efficiency perspective, it makes sense to get direction from the Court of Appeals first,” he said. “Everybody is going to invest a lot of time and effort in this case.”

Oregon lawmakers will consider a bill when the Legislature convenes Feb. 5 that, in concept, would provide additional wolf-livestock compensation for ranchers as the wolf population increases statewide.

House Bill 4106 requires the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife to prepare a report each biennium on the change in wolf population. Legislators would then allocate money from the general fund to the Department of Agriculture’s Wolf Depredation Compensation and Financial Assistance Grant Program that “fully reflects the estimated change.”

The bill is spearheaded by Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove, who represents northeast Oregon where the majority of wolves are located. Co-sponsors include Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, Rep. Brad Witt, D-Clatskanie, and Sen. Herman Baertschiger Jr., R-Grants Pass.

The idea, Barreto said, is simple — compensation for ranchers would correlate directly with the number of wolves living in the state.

“It’s one of those bills that shouldn’t be controversial,” Barreto said. “In fact, it should be a positive on both sides.”

ODFW already does annual year-end reports on wolf management and population. Between 2014 and 2015, the population rose 36 percent from 77 to 110 total wolves. The most recent population stayed mostly flat with 112 wolves at the end of 2016.

The Legislature also created the compensation fund for ranchers in 2011, which pays for livestock losses as well as implementing non-lethal wolf deterrents such as range riders and fladry fencing.

Funding is administered by Department of Agriculture, which awards grants to individual counties. Barreto said the program issued $395,000 last year for 112 wolves — those numbers would serve as the base line for future compensation under his proposal.

The bill has already garnered support from the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, and skepticism from wolf advocates who worry the program is not being used responsibly.

Todd Nash, a Wallowa County commissioner and rancher who also serves as chairman for the OCA wolf committee, said that as the wolf population has increased, producers are now paying an average of $10,000 per wolf on tools to protect their livestock.

The bill is not a fix-all, Nash said, but it will help cover some of the added costs for producers.

“It doesn’t cover all losses,” he said. “There’s losses we don’t find that never get reported. There’s weight loss and handling differences, the loss of forages where cattle refuse to go ... This is going to be a tough issue for a long time.”

Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild, said the compensation program was established to minimize wolf-livestock conflicts while also increasing social tolerance for the animals.

However, Pedery said the fund is lacking in accountability and oversight, which has led to questionable payments over the years. He suggested the program ought to be audited by the Secretary of State before investing any more money.

“We certainly still like the idea. It’s just kind of gone off the rails here in Oregon,” Pedery said. “I don’t think anybody wants this just to be a new entitlement program here in Oregon.”

According to ODFW reports, the agency confirmed 16 wolf attacks on livestock in 2017. That is fewer than the 24 confirmed incidents in 2016, but more than the nine confirmed incidents in 2015.

ODFW did authorize killing four wolves from the Harl Butte pack in Wallowa County, and another two wolves from the Meacham pack (though only one was killed) in Umatilla County, for repeatedly preying on livestock. Another four wolves were illegally poached, including three in southwest Oregon where they remain on the federal Endangered Species List.

Still, Nash said some ranchers have become so fed up with how wolves are managed they are not bothering to report livestock losses anymore.

“This was a tough year,” he said.

ODFW has also once again pushed back the date for adopting an overdue revision of the Wolf Management and Conservation Plan. The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission was scheduled to vote on the plan Jan. 19 before it was rescheduled for April 19-20 in Astoria.

The vote is now postponed indefinitely while the commission conducts additional outreach “in hopes of getting more consensus from stakeholders,” ODFW announced. The Oregon wolf plan was last updated in 2010. Revisions are due every five years.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture is seeking proposals for innovative projects as part of the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program for 2018.

Applications are due by noon on Thursday, Feb. 27. Approximately $1.5 million is expected to be available for groups statewide including processors, commodity commissions, industry associations, nonprofits and local governments.

Oregon ranks among the top 10 states in production of specialty crops, which are defined as commonly recognized fruits, vegetables, tree nuts and nursery plants.

Last year, 45 applications were submitted to the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program totaling $4.4 million. Out of those, $1.7 million was awarded to 15 groups.

Funding priorities for the program include food safety compliance and traceability, certification programs, on-farm labor needs, training the next generation of farmers and marketing exports.

A 14-member industry advisory committee will evaluate each proposal in June and make recommendations to ODA Director Alexis Taylor on top-ranked projects. Selected applicants will be submitted to the USDA, and projects chosen to receive funding will be announced by November.

There is a selected funding range of $25,000 to $175,000, and a project timeline of up to 2 1/2 years. Match funding is not required, but highly encouraged.

More information and directions on submitting proposals is available by calling the ODA Agriculture Development and Marketing Program at 503-986-4620, or visiting www.oregon.gov/oda.

The North Santiam River flows past fields of green grass at Butler Farms west of Stayton, Ore., where Gary Butler and his two brothers grow more than 2,000 acres of irrigated crops.

In addition to grass seed, the family farm raises green beans and sweet corn for NORPAC Foods, along with hazelnuts and peppermint. Irrigation is essential to the operation, Butler said. That is why a major proposal 30 miles upstream at Detroit Dam has him so concerned.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains 13 multipurpose dams in the Willamette River Basin, wants to build a 300-foot-tall water temperature control tower and floating screen at Detroit Dam to benefit native fish, including endangered chinook salmon and steelhead.

However, construction of the project may require draining Detroit Lake — the reservoir that feeds into the North Santiam — for up to two full years, leaving farms parched during the dry summer months and vulnerable to flooding during high river flows.

Butler, who serves on the board of directors for the Santiam Water Control District, said the impacts could be devastating for agriculture in the Mid-Willamette Valley.

“If we can’t irrigate, we can’t plant vegetable crops. If we can’t plant them, then NORPAC is looking for vegetable crops elsewhere,” Butler said. “It’s going to be an issue.”

Farmers are not the only ones who would be impacted. The cities of Salem and Stayton both get their drinking water from the North Santiam, and Detroit Lake is a popular destination for fishing, boating and outdoor recreation that drives tourism in the area.

The Army Corps is currently considering five construction alternatives with varying levels of drawdown at Detroit Lake. Tom Conning, spokesman for the agency’s Portland District, said it is still early in the process and will take years to complete an environmental impact study before work can begin in 2021, at the earliest.

Butler said local farmers are not pushing the panic button yet, but they realize how much is at stake.

“The jury’s still out,” he said. “We have to take a wait-and-see attitude on how they’re going to make it happen.”

Completed in 1953, Detroit Dam is a 450-foot-tall concrete structure on the North Santiam. It provides 321,000 acre-feet of water storage and has a peak electricity generation capacity of 100 megawatts.

It is also a barrier for salmon and steelhead that migrate to the Pacific Ocean before returning up the river as adults to spawn. Over the last 10 years, fewer fish have returned on average into the Upper Willamette Basin compared to the previous 50-year average, according to the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife which tracks passage at Willamette Falls Dam.

Combined spring and fall chinook returns averaged 11,757 fewer fish per year, or roughly a 24 percent reduction, while winter steelhead returns averaged 3,852 fewer fish, a 41 percent reduction. To protect the species, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion — called a BiOp — in 2008 outlining what the Army Corps needs to do to improve fish survival.

Part of the BiOp includes the project proposed at Detroit Dam, said Conning, the Corps spokesman.

“Basically, (the BiOp) gave us some recommendations for reasonable, prudent actions to take so we did not violate the Endangered Species Act,” Conning said.

The plan has two components.

First, the Corps would build a temperature control tower — called a selective withdrawal structure — roughly the height of a downtown Portland building next to Detroit Dam. It would mix water from different levels of the reservoir to ensure the water released downstream is neither too warm nor too cold for the fish.

“Salmon need a specific temperature to navigate all the way back to where they originally spawn from,” Conning said.

The second component would be a floating screen structure about the size of a football field to capture juvenile fish swimming downstream in the reservoir so they can be moved past the dam either by truck or bypass pipe.

Together, Conning estimated the work will cost between $100 million and $250 million. But first, the Corps must complete its environmental impact study evaluating the impacts on everything from aesthetics to the water supply.

“We’re getting feedback from the public about their concerns,” Conning said.

For farmers, the chief concern remains how the Corps plans to build the project, and how that will affect the irrigation supplies.

The alternatives for building the tower at Detroit Dam range from draining the reservoir for two full years — what the agency calls “building in the dry” — to no drawdown whatsoever, or what it calls “building in the wet.”

Building in the dry poses the lowest safety risk of the alternatives, but potentially has the greatest impact on water users.

Building in the wet, on the other hand, has the lowest impact on water users, but is the most expensive and dangerous of the five options. Another option involves building a temporary coffer dam around the construction site, allowing the reservoir level to remain higher.

The Santiam Water Control District was formed in 1954 and is responsible for delivering irrigation water to more than 17,000 acres of farmland, along with water to three hydroelectric plants and other uses.

The district also provides the majority of municipal water to the city of Stayton, population 8,080.

District Manager Brent Stevenson said the project details are still fuzzy, but each of the Corps’ five alternatives describes at least one season with reduced or no stored water.

“Early on, it’s just really hard to clearly identify what the range of impacts could be,” Stevenson said. “The worst case is we don’t have water available for the drawdown years.”

The value of the crops grown in the area adds up quickly. Marion County is the top agricultural producer in Oregon, according to the 2012 USDA Census of Agriculture, with 286,194 acres of farms generating $592.8 million in farm gate value. The district provides water to about 6 percent of the county’s farms.

Mary Anne Cooper, public policy counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau, said the organization will submit comments to the Corps, and has big concerns from both an irrigation and flood control perspective.

“There’s not a ton of information out there, but one of the plans does look at dewatering the reservoir,” Cooper said. “It seems like there’s got to be another way to achieve any fisheries objectives that need to be achieved.”

The Corps won’t release its draft impact study until next year. Until then, Conning said the agency is urging stakeholders to provide feedback that will help it analyze each alternative.

“We need input from the public,” he said. “They might know something we don’t about how much water they need, or those types of issues.”

Steve Keudell, a board member of the Santiam Water Control District and co-owner of Keudell Farms in Aumsville, Ore., said draining Detroit Lake for any period of time could potentially alter the face of farming in this part of the Willamette Valley.

“You’d have to try to raise crops that aren’t so dependent on irrigation,” Keudell said. “You basically either turn into a dryland farmer, or maybe you’d have to look at drilling irrigation wells. ... There’s obviously going to be an expense.”

In 39 years of farming, Keudell said he has never gone without irrigation water for his fields.

“In our case, all lower ground has water rights on it,” he said. “The peppermint and the vegetables get watered every year. There’s never been a year, and there won’t be a year that I foresee, when you wouldn’t need irrigation for that.”

On Tuesday, Stevenson submitted four pages of written comments to the Corps on behalf of the district. He asked the Army Corps to complete a detailed “water budget” identifying all legal water rights, which would then be reviewed by the Oregon Water Resources Department to determine exactly which rights would be vulnerable during the project construction.

The district also wants to the Corps to analyze which flows may released from the nearby Big Cliff Dam during construction.

Big Cliff Dam is 2.7 river miles below Detroit Dam, though it does not store nearly as much water and is instead relied upon as a “re-regulation” dam, smoothing out flows from power generation at Detroit Dam.

“It is critical to understand if Bureau of Reclamation stored irrigation water will be available during the construction period,” Stevenson wrote in his comments. He added the federal Bureau of Reclamation should be included as a cooperating agency on the project.

For now, Keudell said he is trying not to get too alarmed and carry on business as usual.

“I just don’t know how it’s going to work,” he said.

Online

More information about the project and a timeline of activities is available on the Army Corps website at http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil.

In looking back at my post about the Boston CMC meeting, I had (at least) one thing wrong…I said that the worldwide crop was down 1,500,000 bbls. Nope, wrong. The projected crop was down that amount off the August 2017 estimate. The projected crop as compared to the actual 2016 crop is down 2,100,000 bbls or almost 16%. This includes all of Canada and Chile. Sorry for any confusion.

MAPLETON, Ore. (AP) — Authorities say a Springfield man died after a logging accident in western Oregon.

The Register-Guard reports 35-year-old Arturo Toral-Pacheco died Tuesday near Mapleton after the Lane County Sheriff’s Office says he likely fell from a height.

Search and rescue crews recovered his body about 200 yards down a steep embankment about 20 miles east of the state Highway 126 and Highway 36 junction.

The sheriff’s office says the death is under investigation.

HERMISTON, Ore. — A water reuse project by the city of Hermiston has inspired Umatilla to imagine new ways to use water coming out of the region’s data centers.

Umatilla city manager Russ Pelleberg shared details of the project, which the city hopes to begin construction on later this year, at the Oregon Water Coalition’s annual membership meeting in Hermiston on Tuesday morning.

The $3 million project would separate Umatilla’s commercial wastewater from its domestic flows, allowing the city to send water from current Amazon data centers at the Port of Umatilla, a planned data center off Lind Road and any future data centers to irrigation canals for agricultural use. Future phases would include an industrial wastewater treatment plant at the port and storage ponds for keeping reuse water during the winter when it is not needed for irrigation.

Pelleberg said data centers use “a ton of hydraulic capacity” for cooling purposes, but the water coming out the other end and into the city’s sewer system is still “very, very clean.”

“It didn’t make sense to treat clean water,” he said.

As the city looked for better solutions, Hermiston was pioneering a reuse program with West Irrigation District. Water coming from Hermiston’s recycled water treatment plant built in 2014 was well within the state’s standards for cleanliness, but was too warm to put in the Umatilla River in the summer. So the city worked out a deal with West Irrigation District to pipe the water into their canal during the growing season instead, allowing the district to save money by pumping less water from the Columbia River.

“We’re really excited about the project because it was the first time it was done in the state,” Hermiston city manager Byron Smith said.

After getting approval for the project from a laundry list of state agencies, Smith said he and West Irrigation District manager Bev Bridgewater are now sitting on a state committee working to write a set of regulations for other communities that want to follow suit.

Pelleberg said Umatilla wants to do something similar by diverting water coming out of data centers to West Irrigation District.

“We really like what Hermiston is doing with reuse,” he said.

Bridgewater said like the Hermiston water, the Umatilla water would likely be used to replace Columbia River water instead of expanding the district’s acreage. But Pelleberg said he is looking with city engineers at property that could hold massive open-air ponds to hold recycled Class A water created during the winter for use during the summer, and Bridgewater said that project could possibly lead to expanding the district’s acreage. The city needs to secure funding first, however.

The discussion was one of several presentations at the Oregon Water Coalition meeting, which was combined with the Greater Hermiston Area Chamber of Commerce’s Business to Business breakfast at Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

Miff Devlin, water quality supervisor at the Port of Morrow, also spoke about a three-phase recharge project to dilute nitrogen from the groundwater around the port. JR Cook of Northeast Oregon Water Association spoke about an economic impact study being developed for the Mid-Columbia Basin and goals for future water projects in the area. The meeting was wrapped up by a “water rights bootcamp” by attorney Laura Schroeder of Schroeder Law Offices.

An article in the Packer…..

https://www.thepacker.com/article/comments-due-volume-control-cranberries

Convincing the federal government to officially recognize a wine region’s unique “terroir” can substantially boost the price per bottle, according to a recent study.

The study found that certain geographic regions within Oregon’s Willamette Valley saw statistically significant wine price premiums due to their federal designation as “American Viticultural Area” appellations.

Average prices and wine rankings were compared across six sub-appellations within the overall Willamette Valley AVA as part of the research, which was headed by economics professor Omer Gokcekus of Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

After obtaining their sub-appellation designations, wines from four of those areas — Chehalem Mountains, Dundee Hills, Ribbon Ridge and Yamhill Carlton — saw their price-to-quality ratio outpace the rest of the Willamette Valley.

All other things being equal, the sub-AVA designations contributed to higher prices ranging from $1.43 to $14.13 for a bottle with a 90-point score from Wine Spectator, an industry publication that rates wines.

Price premiums for wines produced in the Dundee Hills AVA were the highest found in the study.

Russell Gladhart, whose family owns Winter’s Hill Estate, said the Dundee Hills AVA benefits from being densely planted with vineyards within a relatively compact area.

The resulting lack of variation makes wines from the region more distinct, he said. “The customer knows more precisely where the wine came from.”

Gokcekus, the study’s author, said he became intrigued by the phenomenon while attending an academic conference in Oregon.

“There should be a reason for this,” he said.

For wineries to petition the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau for a sub-AVA, there must be an economic motivation, Gokcekus said.

“I was expecting to see an increase, otherwise, why should you bother?” he said.

Even so, Gokcekus said he was surprised by the size of price premiums some wines commanded solely due to their appellation.

The range of grape-growing conditions is narrower within a smaller appellation, leading consumers to believe they’re at less risk of buying a lower-quality wine from that region, he said.

There’s also a sense of exclusivity that comes from purchasing wine from an area that only has a limited number of bottles available, Gokcekus said.

“We are talking about wine. In my mind, we are talking about perceptions,” he said.

Creating ever-smaller appellations probably stops making economic sense at some point, though.

As the number of wineries within each area shrinks, they must each spend more money to promote the region and can’t pool their resources as effectively, Gokcekus said.

“On the one hand, there is exclusivity. On the other hand, there is cost,” he said. “It’s a kind of balancing act.”

Wineries won’t gain much from a sub-AVA designation if they’re located within a larger appellation that hasn’t won many accolades, he said. In this case, the Willamette Valley had already established a solid footing in the wine industry.

“It’s a prerequisite,” Gokcekus said. “The AVA you are in should already have a certain reputation.”

Although a sub-AVA designation may boost prices higher than they’d rise based on quality alone, it’s also necessary for wines from the region to stand out, he said.

For example, the price-to-quality ratio for two sub-AVAs, Eola-Amity Hills and McMinnville, did not meaningfully surpass the rest of the Willamette Valley despite the designations, he found.

While the price-to-quality ratios increased in both regions, they largely kept pace with the larger appellation — probably because their average wine ratings didn’t exceed the Willamette Valley’s average, Gokcekus said.

Being located within a well-known sub-AVA, such as Dundee Hills, is associated with a premium but winemakers must source 95 percent of their grapes from that appellation to promote it on their label, said Denise Flora, co-owner of the Native Flora winery.

That requirement isn’t a problem for Native Flora, which is a boutique winery that relies entirely on the 16 acres of vineyards growing on its estate, she said. “It fits our business model.”

Have you seen that viral video that’s been going around social media, purporting to be a trailer for a “Friends” movie? According to the movie trailer, we will be blessed with a “Friends” movie as early as spring 2018. The…

Legendary musician Neil Diamond says he’s retiring from touring and that he’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The artist, who has been a mainstay in the music world for 50 years, revealed on his official website that doctors recently told…

I love this first picture I am sharing. It was taken in 1956 of Mrs. Nellie Biggar's first grade class (which meant they graduated from BHS in 1968) on a float during the Cranberry Festival.

Farmers, cities, and conservationists rely on melting snow to water their crops, feed their aquifers, and fill streams and rivers for fish. But, usually, no one has any idea how much snowpack — and, thus, snowmelt — to expect until it’s too late.

“It’s important for farmers to understand what can they plant, and when should they plant?” NOAA scientist Sarah Kapnick explained when I caught her on the phone just before the government shutdown went into effect for her agency. “It also matters for people that are really interested in fisheries.”

That’s why Kapnick led a team of researchers to build a tool that can predict the snowpack eight months ahead of time, before the snow even falls. The researchers use conditions in July to predict how much snow will have accumulated in the mountains by the following March. They use observations of ocean temperatures and weather patterns — for example, whether or not it’s an El Niño year — and plug those initial conditions into three global climate models to generate a prediction for what the snowpack will look like eight months out.

Kapnick says the tool can make predictions for individual mountain ranges so each region knows what to expect.

The research was published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but Kapnick and her team want to further refine their tool before making it available to the public.

At the moment, Washington’s snowpack is pretty close to normal, but Oregon’s snowpack is very low.

Dolores O'Riordan's family and friends mourned the star at a mass held at St Ailbe's Church in Ballybricken, County Limerick on Tuesday (01.23.18).

LONDON (AP) — Hundreds of mourners gathered in Dolores O'Riordan's Irish hometown Tuesday for the funeral of the Cranberries singer, who died last week at the age of 46.

CORVALLIS, Ore. — A new hazelnut cultivar geared toward the kernel market will soon be released by Oregon State University and named in honor of longtime industry official Polly Owen.

The variety, to be dubbed PollyO, is the latest hazelnut tree developed by OSU breeder Shawn Mehlenbacher that is resistant to Eastern Filbert Blight, a fungal pathogen.

“We’ve had a lot of disease pressure in our field with no cankers on these trees,” Mehlenbacher said during the Nut Growers Society’s annual meeting.

Polly Owen became the director of the Hazelnut Industry Office in 1995 after previously working for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association and the National Livestock and Meat Board.

She also raised sheep and cattle after graduating from OSU with a bachelor’s degree in food science and technology in 1970.

Geoff Horning, formerly the head of Oregon Aglink, replaced Owen as the hazelnut organization’s chief last year, but she remains involved in the group.

PollyO hazelnuts mature up to two weeks earlier than Barcelona, the popular variety grown in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The nuts blanch well, meaning they easily shed the skin or pellicle around the kernel that’s undesirable due to bitter compounds.

With an average of about 64.8 pounds of nuts per tree, the PollyO variety is higher yielding than the popular cultivar Jefferson, which produces 54.7 pounds per tree, and Yamhill, which produces 58.4 pounds per tree.

However, PollyO trees are larger than those other varieties, which means the variety produces fewer tons per acre.

The new cultivar is compatible with the McDonald, Wepster and York varieties for pollinization.

Typically, farmers tried to minimize the number of “pollinizer” varieties in an orchard because they weren’t as high yielding, Mehlenbacher said.

Now, many new varieties are sexually compatible and generate decent yields and high-quality nuts, allowing growers to plant multiple cultivars in an orchard, he said.

Farmers who don’t like the small, spreading trees of the Yamhill variety can choose PollyO as an alternative, as both varieties are suited to the kernel market, Mehlenbacher said. Varieties such as Barcelona and Jefferson are typically sold in the in-shell market.