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Vol. 107, No. 116, 30 pages, 5 sections
MON-SAT
Recent efforts aim to improve efficiency in the region’s canals
I
rrigation districts in the region were busy this past winter. While the water was shut off for the season, the Central Oregon Irrigation District, Three Sisters Irrigation District and North Unit Irrigation
District have replaced a little less than a dozen miles of open canals with buried pipe. Because the piping projects prevent water from seeping through the fractured rocks that line the canals, the irrigation districts were able to put more water in the rivers and creeks of Central Oregon — this summer, an additional 23 cubic feet per second, or around 15 million gallons of water a day, will be left in area waterways, said Andy Fischer with the Deschutes River Conservancy. That’s about equivalent to the average
North Unit Irrigation District
flow in Whychus Creek during the summer. More water means better habitat for fish and other aquatic life. And the winter’s piping projects were a big push toward restoring river flows in the Deschutes River Basin, said Tod Heisler, director of the river conservancy. “The volume of water in the Deschutes now that’s permanently protected is going up significantly this summer,” Heisler said. “It’s very gratifying.”
The North Unit Irrigation District replaced between 2½ and 3 miles of a side canal on the north side of the district with pipe this winter, said Mike Britton, the district manager. And this summer, it plans to complete the project with another mile or so of pipe. In all, he said, the district has decades worth of piping projects, but what happens in the future depends on funding.
Three Sisters Irrigation District
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Swalley Irrigation District recently finished constructing a small hydropower plant at the end of a new 5.1-mile pipe, and plans to generate enough power for about 375 households. More piping projects could be in store, manager Suzanne Butterfield said, but first the district wants to take a break to determine how to finance the efforts.
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DESCHUTES COUNTY
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Although the Tumalo Irrigation District replaced a section of its Tumalo Feed Canal in the winter of 2008-09, it didn’t receive funding to add to the project last winter, said Tod Heisler, director of the Deschutes River Conservancy. But the district and the conservancy are working on ways to fund another project next winter.
370
Redmond Tumalo I.D.
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The Central Oregon Irrigation District piped about 2½ ek Tumalo Cre miles of its Pilot Butte canal through Juniper Ridge this winter, said manager Steve Johnson, a project that is designed to put almost 20 cubic feet per second of water back in the Deschutes River this summer. Over the last several years, the district has replaced about 8 miles of open canals with pipe, he said. And next on the list — possibly starting in October 2011 — could be a stretch of the Pilot Butte canal through a residential area.
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Although a couple of neighbors protested, Three Sisters Irrigation District completed piping on 4 miles of its McKenzie Canyon canal this winter, as well as about 1½ miles of its main canal. Work will continue this summer, said Marc Thalacker, the district manager, with crews piecing together sections of pipe that will be buried in the fall. The goal, he said, is to eventually replace all 60 miles of canal with pipe, and so far the district is about halfway there.
Swalley Irrigation District
The challenge now, he said, is to keep up momentum and replace additional miles of canal with pipe, especially without the funding boost from the federal stimulus grants that many irrigation districts received last year. But managers of the different Central Oregon irrigation districts already have plans in mind for which projects to tackle next. — Kate Ramsayer, The Bulletin
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The Redmond School District will shift over the next three years to a proficiency-based system, which will change how students earn grades and how teachers evaluate them. Instead of letter grades based on a score average, the proficiency-based learning approach holds students to several academic standards in each class. The standards are set by the Oregon Department of Education, but the district picks which ones it uses in class. In a proficiency system, students only finish a course once all standards have been met. High school civics, for example, has about two dozen standards, including understanding how to amend the U.S. Constitution and the relationships between local, state and federal governments. District leaders argue that, under the new system, students will know exactly what they must learn to have a deeper grasp of each subject. District leaders have pushed the idea for several years, and the Redmond School Board formally adopted the proficiencybased approach last week. That doesn’t mean, though, that everything changes when students show up at school doors at the start of next year. The district will now put together groups of teachers and administrators to define what the proficiency standards are, how to teach them and how to roll the system out by 2013. “The vision is set for us with some really broad policy,” Assistant Superintendent Heather Cordie said. “Now it’s the nittygritty.” Some schools and departments in the district have already begun the work. Obsidian Middle School, for example, began defining the school’s proficiency standards at the start of this academic year. See Redmond / A4
IRRIGATION DISTRICTS
us Cre ek
Redmond schools to change how kids are graded
Alfalfa
Arnold I.D. 20 97 MILES 0
10
Note: Irrigation district boundaries and canals are approximated; not all canals may be shown. Sources: Irrigation districts, Oregon Water Resources Department, Deschutes Basin Board of Control
The Washington Post
From docks to dealerships, signs of life PORTLAND — The docks are humming again in Portland, with clouds of golden dust billowing off the piles of grain spilling into the bellies of giant tankers. “Things are looking up,” said Dan Broadie, a longshoreman. No longer killing time at the union hall while waiting for work, he is guiding a
By Cindy Powers The Bulletin
Two women have filed a $250,000 wrongful termination suit against a major Bend employer that raises questions about workplace privacy, confidentiality and how employers handle investigations into potential misconduct. Pamela Castaneda and Pamela McCauley maintain TRG Customer Solutions fired them in June 2008 for “disclosing confidential personnel information” contained in a computer file they say was accessible to employees at the company’s Bend-based call center. The file had information about a “disciplinary action” of a TRG employee whom one of the women had accused of sexual harassment, according to the suit. TRG’s Executive Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs Lise Hamilton said Friday that it is against the company’s policy to comment on pending litigation. But an October 2008 letter contained in the court file on TRG letterhead states the company is an at-will employer, meaning it can fire employees at any time and without cause under Oregon law. The women also claim they were investigated and fired by the center’s operations manager, Greg Brown, a former Deschutes County sheriff once imprisoned for embezzling more than a half million dollars from the county and a fire protection district between 1996 and 2000. Brown’s illegal activities were investigated after his successor, Les Stiles, discovered computer hard drives belonging to the Sheriff’s Office had been erased and documents had been shredded, according to a report Stiles filed at the time. “They did have a concern about that, with regard to the fact that Greg Brown already had prior issues before coming to that company, and he was the one doing the investigating,” said the women’s lawyer, Marc Andersen. See Lawsuit / A4
Andy Zeigert / The Bulletin
By Robert Barnes and Anne E. Kornblut
Leah Nash New York Times News Service
New York Times News Service
Privacy, personnel investigations among them, one lawyer says
Wanted on the court: empathy for regular folk
Wheat is loaded for export last week at the Port of Portland. With exports on the rise and shoppers returning in force, economists are increasingly confident of a recovery. But, as always, the numbers are tinged with ambiguity.
By Peter S. Goodman
Lawsuit by fired workers raises issues
mechanized spout pouring 44,000 tons of wheat into the Arion SB, bound for the Philippines. At malls from New Jersey to California, shoppers are snapping up electronics and furniture, as fears of joblessness yield to exuberance over rising stock prices. Tractor-trailers and railroad cars haul swelling quantities of goods, generating fresh paychecks for truckers and repair crews. See Economy / A5
The likelihood that health care legislation and Wall Street reform will ultimately be decided in the Supreme Court underscores the importance of a new justice, with the White House and Democrats arguing that whoever replaces Justice John Stevens will be key in moving the court to uphold laws protecting “ordinary Americans.” From the moment Stevens announced April 9 that he would retire, Democratic leaders and sometimes fractious liberal advocacy groups have united behind President Obama’s assertion that the new justice must be, like Ste-
Inside • Latest on the Wall Street reform legislation, Page A3 vens, someone who “knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.” That thinking has continued even though none of the perceived front-runners on the list to replace Stevens would seem to embody Obama’s requirement that the person have a “keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people.” See Court / A5