Bulletin Daily Paper 06/01/11

Page 1

The cloud and you

Central Oregon golf tour:

Crooked River Ranch

Clear facts about storing data on the Net • SHOPPING, E1

SPORTS, D1

WEATHER TODAY

WEDNESDAY

Mostly cloudy, scattered showers High 57, Low 36 Page C6

• June 1, 2011 50¢

Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com

’Twas a cold May, and the chill’s likely to stay By Patrick Cliff The Bulletin

Well, that was a cold month. According to National Weather Service data, May was 4.6 degrees colder than normal in Bend. The average daily temperature this may was a chilly 45.6 degrees. The rest of Central Oregon fared little better. Temperatures were lower than usual in both Madras and Prineville. And in Redmond, the month got off to a cold start with a low of 17 degrees. On only seven days did the city reach or exceed the average daily temperature. Averages are based on data collected from 1971 to 2000. Average daily highs were also well below normal, according to the weather service data. During a normal May, Bend has an average high temperature

Walden bill aims to aid Prineville

ALL

Average May temperatures

By Erik Hidle The Bulletin

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, introduced a bill Tuesday night to move a “wild and scenic” boundary line away from the Bowman Dam, allowing for the construction of a hydroelectric power station. The bill, HR 2060, titled “Central Oregon Jobs and Water Security Act,” also would provide a large water credit for the nearby city of Prineville, which Walden hopes will spur job growth. “This small act could be huge for Central Oregon,” Walden said. “The commonsense solutions in this plan have the potential to support hundreds of new jobs in a part of the state that needs jobs as badly as anywhere in the entire country.”

for Central Oregon cities Historical 1971-2000

2010

IN CONGRESS

2011

Bend 50.2° 46.9° Redmond 51.5° 48.1° Madras 53.4° 49.2° Prineville 52.3° 50°

IN

45.6° 46.9° 48.4° 48.5°

Meet Bend’s Gary DeBernardi, a carpenter turned poker pro • PAGE C1

Source: National Weather Service

Greg Cross / The Bulletin

of 64.9 degrees. This year, that number was 59.2. See Chill / A4

Moving the “wild and scenic” boundary a quarter of a mile downstream creates two opportunities for economic development. First, a hydroelectric power station could be built in the area. A spokeswoman for Portland General Electric said earlier this year that the company would like to build a six-megawatt unit below the dam, which would cost roughly $13 million. Walden’s office said such a project would bring in approximately 50 construction jobs over two years. Meanwhile, language in the bill would allow the release of an additional seven cubic feet per second into the Crooked River. See Bill / A4

Photo illustration; photo by Ryan Brennecke / The Bulletin

With much at stake, bureaucracy migrates to cutting edge

INFRASTRUCTURE Compressor stations Located just south of Bend, Station 12 is one of six such facilities situated in Oregon along the pipeline operated by Gas Transmission Northwest. The station’s job is to regulate pressure on billions of cubic feet of natural gas flowing from British Columbia to Control California. building

Pushing gas 0

FE ET

Fence

50

2

HOW THE STATION WORKS

2

By Michael S. Rosenwald The Washington Post

Somewhere in America, perhaps at this very moment, a bad guy is under video surveillance. He is being watched, every movement, every step — but not on a little TV. That’s so 2009. Instead, a special agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is keeping tabs on an iPad. This is not a movie. This is not a Steve Jobs dream. This is the federal government 2.0, where technology upgrades no longer come at a “Little House on the Prairie” pace. Even President Obama, a BlackBerry devotee, has upgraded. He now owns an iPad, and it has been seen on his desk and under his arm. The flashy consumer products that have been adopted in the corporate workforce — upending BlackBerrys for iPhones, Microsoft Outlook for Gmail and, lately, laptops for iPads — are now invading the federal government. The State Department. The Army. The Department of Veterans Affairs. NASA. The General Services Administration is in the process of moving 17,000 employees onto Gmail. The stakes are huge. See Tech / A4

Correction A story headlined “Wetter and warmer: Just how mosquitoes like it,” which appeared Friday, May 27, on Page A1, incorrectly reported the biological pesticide used by the Four River Vector Control District. The pesticide the district uses is BTI. The Bulletin regrets the error.

MON-SAT

We use recycled newsprint

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1 2

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Note: Pipeline and facility locations approximated

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1 Scrubbers/filters: Natural gas enters the station and flows through scrubbers and filters, which remove any liquids that condensed or any particles that came off of the pipeline’s inner coating.

2 Compressors: Cleaned gas is then diverted to the different compressors, where jet engines like the one shown below turn fans that push against the natural gas, increasing its pressure. Computers control the different compressors to get the pressure and flow right.

3 Coolers: When natural gas is compressed, it gets hotter. The heat is vented, and the natural gas cooled, using a coolant system. 4 After cooling, the natural gas returns to the main pipelines.

m

. B.C

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With permit up for renewal, emission limits would change By Kate Ramsayer The Bulletin

At a complex of buildings surrounded by trees, just off Highway 97 south of Sunriver, huge engines are hard at work, pushing billions of cubic feet of natural gas toward California. The compressor station is one of many along Gas Transmission Northwest’s pipeline from British Columbia to California. They are spaced about every 60 miles, said company spokesman David Dodson. The compressor station to the north is in Madras, and the next to the south is in Chemult. The Bend station’s Title V air quality permit is up for renewal by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The new permit would increase the amount of carbon monoxide the facility is allowed to release, while decreasing the amount of nitrogen oxides. The changes in the permit are due to

more refined measuring information for the turbines, said Walt West, environmental engineer with DEQ. The new emission limits are still lower than federal standards. “Even with these new emission factors, they have not exceeded those thresholds,” he said, noting that if the thresholds were reached, it would trigger an evaluation of the facility and possibly new control measures. The emissions come from the station’s compressor turbines, which burn some of the natural gas that runs along the pipelines. If the three turbines at the Sunriver compressor station ran all day, every day for a year, they would burn through more than a million cubic feet of natural gas, West said, enough to supply 5,000 average-sized homes for a day. But the turbines don’t typically operate that much. See Gas / A4

The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper

Vol. 108, No. 152, 38 pages, 6 sections

Submitted photo

BRITISH COLUMBIA WASHINGTON

Gas Transmission Northwest pipeline Pipeline

Compressor station

Madras Bend

IDAHO

OREGON

CALIFORNIA

NE VADA Graphics by Andy Zeigert / The Bulletin

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Business

B1-6

Calendar

E3

Classified

F1-8

Editorial

Comics

E4-5

Local

Crosswords

E5, F2

Movies

By Michael Cooper New York Times News Service

The deadly tornadoes and widespread flooding that have left a trail of death and destruction throughout the South and the Midwest have also disrupted dozens of local economies just as the unsteady recovery seemed to be finding a foothold. But a new phase is slowly beginning in some hard-hit areas: reconstruction, which past disasters show is typically accompanied by a burst of new, and different, Inside economic ac• Difficult, tivity. There is delicate no silver linrebuilding ing to a funnel in Joplin, cloud, as anyPage A5 one who survived the tornadoes can attest, but reconstruction can help rebuild local economies as well as neighborhoods. More than 10 percent of the businesses in Tuscaloosa, Ala., were badly damaged or destroyed in April when a tornado swept across a 5.9-mile stretch of the city, and nearly 6,000 Alabamians have filed storm-related claims for unemployment benefits. An even deadlier tornado laid waste to roughly a quarter of the businesses in Joplin, Mo., on May 22, wiping out some of the big-box stores the city relies on heavily for sales tax receipts. The flooding Mississippi River closed all nine riverboat casinos in Tunica, Miss., this spring, leaving 4,600 hotel rooms empty for weeks and depriving the county of so much tax revenue that it had to reduce its workers’ hours. See Disaster / A5

TOP NEWS INSIDE

INDEX Abby

In wake of disasters, economies stir with rebuilding

C4 C1-6 E3

Obituaries

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Stocks

B4-5

Shopping

E1-6

TV listings

E2

Sports

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Weather

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CONGRESS: Debt limit increase with no spending cuts defeated, Page A3


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