Still steelhead season
How to beat
back pain
Anglers are continuing to have luck on the Lower Deschutes • SPORTS, D1
HEALTH, F1
WEATHER TODAY
THURSDAY
Increasing cloud cover, mild High 73, Low 36 Page C6
• October 21, 2010 50¢
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Dam bypass is working, but what’s next for fish?
Odd odor in southeast Bend likely to remain a mystery
IN JOHN DAY, NEW BIOMASS PLANT COULD SIT IDLE
By Kate Ramsayer The Bulletin
This year, about 100,000 chinook, sockeye and steelhead swam into the large fish collection facility at Round Butte Dam on Lake Billy Chinook. Biologists sorted and measured the young fish, then trucked them around three dams and released them into the Lower Deschutes, where they’ll continue their migration down to the Columbia River and out to the Pacific Ocean. “We’re just elated with all these numbers,” said Don Ratliff, senior aquatic biologist with Portland General Electric, which co-owns the Pelton Round Butte complex with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. After more than a decade of planning, and a significant setback in 2009 when the $100 million-plus fish passage facility tower snapped during construction, those involved in the effort to bring back runs of salmon and steelhead to the Upper Deschutes and Crooked River basins said they are encouraged by the number of fish making their way to the facility. Now, however, biologists are debating what to do with the salmon and steelhead once they return to the Deschutes River. Some are worried the returning fish will bring new diseases with them that could harm existing fish populations in the upper stretches of the river. See Fish / A6
Reregulating dam Warm Springs Indian Reservation
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Lake Simtustus
Cre
ek
Madras
Round Butte Dam
Underwater tower and fish collection station Metolius
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Lake Billy Culver Chinook Deschutes River
97 To Redmond and Bend
Crooked River
Anders Ramberg / The Bulletin
TOP NEWS FORECLOSURES: Legal battles loom over documentation, Page B1
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Timber manager Mike Billman gives a tour Wednesday of the biomass plant being built by the Malheur Lumber Co. in John Day. Company officials are afraid that new EPA standards might kill the market for the pellets and bricks the plant produces.
Environmental rules may doom $6M facility New EPA standards restrict boilers that use pellets, bricks the plant produces The Bulletin
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By Erin Golden
By Ed Merriman
Pelton Dam Wi lo
Hazmat team called in from Salem unable to determine its source
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JOHN DAY — $6 million biomass processing plant built with the help of a $4.8 million federal stimulus grant may be put out of business before the switch is turned on due to a new environmental regulation. During a tour Wednesday of the biomass plant being built by Malheur Lumber Co. in John Day, company officials expressed concern that a new Environmental Protection Agency standard imposing dramatically stricter limits on emissions from solid-fuel boilers could kill the market for wood pellets and wood bricks produced by the plant. “I agree with the concept of trying to reduce air pollution, but virtually no commercial boiler currently oper-
A
ating in the country would meet the new EPA rule as currently written,” said John Shelk, managing director of Ochoco Lumber in Prineville, parent company of Malheur Lumber. “Here we are doing something that is very positive. We are taking wood biomass from forest health thinning projects and we’re using it to manufacture a renewable energy product that replaces fossil fuels, and the EPA rule could kill it before it gets off the ground,” Shelk said. As published in the Federal Register on June 4, the EPA’s new boiler emission standards appear to run counter to President Barack Obama’s stated goal to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, he said. The EPA rules are currently scheduled to take effect in January. See Biomass / A4
Wood pellets and bricks like these would be produced at the Malheur Lumber biomass plant in John Day.
“Here we are doing something that is very positive ... and the EPA rule could kill it before it gets off the ground.” — John Shelk, managing director of Ochoco Lumber, Malheur Lumber’s parent
“It has been an eye-opening experience to see not only what we throw away as a society, but how it can be used, with some imagination.” — UNC Charlotte student Kaitlyn Tokay, 20, on Dumpster diving
Finding dinner in the Dumpster By Mark Price
Kaitlyn Tokay, front, and her friends say Dumpster diving is catching on. Here, they explore a supermarket site in Charlotte, N.C.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Dumpster diving is far from a fad with UNC Charlotte students, but 20year-old Kaitlyn Tokay and her friends say it’s catching on. A self-described community activist, she began digging through grocery store trash bins in May and blogging on Facebook about the “perfectly good” food she found, cooked and ate. It was meant to be a monthlong experiment, to expose society’s continued wastefulness, even in a recession. But five months later, Tokay is still at it, only now she’s part of a team. And as for her blog, readership is at 1,600 and growing.
Gary O’Brien Charlotte Observer
“It has been an eye-opening experience to see not only what we throw away as a society, but how it can be used, with some imagination,” says Tokay, a junior majoring in communication studies.
“I decided to make it a lifestyle habit, and to perpetuate it. A lot of friends were amazingly grossed when I told them about it, but others say they admire it.” See Dumpster / A5
An unusual smell wafting through a southeast Bend neighborhood on Wednesday led police and fire officials to block off streets, ask residents to stay indoors and call for help from a Salem-based hazmat team. About 10:40 a.m., someone called from Southeast Fifth “When Street, near Southeast Wil- you’re not son Avenue able to and Southeast E d g e w a t e r identify Lane, to report the smoke in the source, area. Firefighters who came you to check it out suspect didn’t find any smoke, but they the worst. did notice an It didn’t unusual odor. With the help smell like of the Bend smoke Public Works D e p a r t me nt , or wood fire officials burning tested the air ... It was and pinpointed the smell unusual.” to a house on E d g e w a t e r — Bend Lane, which Deputy Fire was vacant at Marshal the time. Bend Larry Medina Deputy Fire Marshal Larry Medina said the tests didn’t turn up anything hazardous and there didn’t appear to be anything unusual around the home. But because it wasn’t clear what was causing the smell, firefighters stayed out of the house. Around noon, officials called in the regional hazardous materials response team. The team was unable to locate the source of the odor. Medina said in a statement released Wednesday night that the odor had dissipated and “no hazard exists at this time.” See Odor / A5
Safety concerns are having no impact on football helmets Gear remains untested against concussive forces By Alan Schwarz New York Times News Service
NORMAN, Okla. — Moments after her son finished practicing with his fifth-grade tackle football team, Beth Sparks examined his scuffed and battered helmet for what she admitted was the first time. She looked at the polycarbonate shell and felt the foam inside before noticing a small emblem on the back that read, “MEETS NOCSAE STANDARD.” “I would think that means it meets the national guidelines — you know, for head injuries,
concussions, that sort of thing,” she said. “That’s what it would mean to me.” That assumption, made by countless parents, coaches, administrators and even doctors involved with the 4.4 million children who play tackle football, is just one of many false beliefs in the largely unmonitored world of football helmets. Helmets both new and used are not — and have never been — formally tested against the forces believed to cause concussions. See Helmets / A4