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WEDNESDAY 75¢
Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com
Spike in gas prices won’t deter travel
Gas prices take sharp turn upward Gas prices in Bend reached $4 this week and average prices in Oregon are approaching the $4 mark. The national average pump price is about 25 cents less, according to AAA.
AVERAGE WEEKLY PRICE Since Jan. 3
$4.5
Oregon $3.98 $4
By Joel Aschbrenner The Bulletin
U.S.
$3.5
$3.72 $3 1/3
8/7
Source: AAA Andy Zeigert / The Bulletin
Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Gas attendant Tomas Johnson pumps gasoline Tuesday at Joe’s Westside Shell on Northwest Galveston Street in Bend.
Average gas prices Tuesday BEND: $4.02
LA PINE: $4.01
PRINEVILLE: $4.00
State begins developing strategy for future water supplies
MADRAS: $3.97 REDMOND: $3.94
Gas prices in Central Oregon are surging past $4 a gallon, leading up to the Labor Day weekend that the AAA projects will see more travelers than any year since 2007. The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded Tuesday in Bend was $4.02, up from $3.93 last week and $3.62 last month, according to AAA data.
Rising crude oil prices and the shutdown of a Bay Area refinery earlier this month are driving up gas prices throughout the West Coast, said Marie Dodds, spokeswoman for AAA Oregon/Idaho. Gas prices in Oregon have been on the rise since a Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif., caught fire Aug. 6. There is still no timetable for gas production there to resume, Dodds said. It’s the second time this
year a West Coast refinery shutdown has helped drive up gas prices. BP’s Cherry Point refinery near Ferndale, Wash., the largest refinery in the state, caught fire in February and didn’t resume production until May. “On the West Coast our supplies are always tight, so when we see a refinery go down we don’t have a lot of options for where that gas can be replaced,” Dodds said. See Gas / A5
Experts say Oregon faces serious threat from wildfires
LANDMARK WILLOW TOPPLES
By Lauren Dake
By Andrew Clevenger
The Bulletin
The Bulletin
SALEM — There were nights when Prineville City Engineer Eric Klann fell asleep worrying about water. The city was growing quickly and officials were uncertain how they could provide enough water for its long-term needs. Wells were dug but came up dry. Finally, earlier this year, the city IN hit the bull’s eye. SALEM “We found water and we have a better understanding of its capacity,” Klann said. “We know where the next big production well is going to go.” What the city of Prineville went through on a small scale — evaluating its next water source — is similar to the project the state is undertaking on the macro-scale. Earlier this month, the Oregon Water Resources Department released its first statewide strategy on how the state will meet future water demands. See Water / A5
WASHINGTON — Last week, members of the Senate Natural Resources Committee took advantage of the August recess to hold a field hearing on the relationship between climate change and catastrophic wildfires in New Mexico, and experts say that Oregon is facing many of the same issues. IN D.C. The hearing, convened by outgoing committee chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., focused on the connection between climate change and drought, wildfire frequency and severity, and ecosystems in the Intermountain West. Witness testimony focused on New Mexico, but experts say that climate change poses many of the same challenges in the Pacific Northwest. Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told the committee members there is a high level of scientific confidence that as a result of drier conditions and warmer temperatures caused by climate change, forests in the Southwest face increasing risk of severe wildfire and tree mortality. “Similar patterns of recent climate-amplified tree mortality and fire activity also are occurring more broadly in western North America,” he said. “As climate continues to warm we can expect more tree die-off events like those we have recently observed. Changes in climate and human land uses also are driving increasingly severe fire activity in many regions around the world.” See Wildfire / A5
TOP NEWS FIRES: Blaze torches buildings in California, A3 WAR: Afghanistan takes on new dimension, A3 TODAY’S WEATHER Mostly sunny High 82, Low 42 Page C6
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Photos by Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Neighborhood residents and a Bend police officer look over damage that occurred Tuesday afternoon when a large willow tree tumbled into the Deschutes River off Northwest Riverfront Street upriver from the Galveston Street bridge.
Downed tree was Bend icon By Dylan J. Darling The Bulletin
A prominent willow tree along the Deschutes River in Bend tumbled into the water Tuesday. “It’s a terrible, sad thing,” said Ellen Waterston, who lives across the river from where the tree fell. “She was just the mother of this river.” The willow stood on the east bank of the Deschutes, behind homes on Northwest Riverfront Street. People floating the river regularly would grab onto its branches and roots as they drifted past, said Waterston, a poet and author. “It was just an absolutely beautiful, enormous willow,” she said. The downed tree blocked nearly half of the river just upstream of the Galveston Avenue bridge. The willow was a Bend icon of sorts, said Pam Stevenson, 50, who owns part of the land where the tree once stood. “I can’t tell you how many thousands of people enjoyed floating under it and enjoyed relaxing in the shade of the tree,” she said. Over the last two summers, the willow was also the sight for small con-
The fallen tree posed an unexpected hazard to people floating the Deschutes.
certs Stevenson said she hosted in her backyard, often as fundraisers. Stevenson said she wasn’t sure what caused the tree to fall around 3:30 p.m. “It ripped out at the roots and fell into the river.” Waterson and Stevenson both said they didn’t see the tree fall, but did hear the crash and splash. “(I) came out and there it was, in the river,” said Stevenson, who has lived
along the river for 12 years. She had named the tree after her dog Popcorn, a corgi and and Jack Russell mix that died at age 15 in 2000 and was buried under the tree. A wooden sign on the tree marked it as “Popcorn’s Willow” and gave warning earlier this summer that the tree was starting to swoon. Stevenson said the once-level sign showed a definite slant. See Willow / A5
Facebook stock dive revives business-model debate By Craig Timberg The Washington Post
The dizzying stock decline of Facebook, a wealthy company with nearly a seventh of the world’s population as users, has revived a key debate of the Internet age: Can anyone get rich while giving their product away for free? Investors have cut Facebook’s
value nearly in half since the May public offering. One of its first outside investors, Peter Thiel, sold 20 million shares last week, deepening questions about how such a high-flying technology icon could falter so quickly. Part of the answer, say analysts and academics, lies in Wall Street’s skepticism of a founding principle of Silicon
Valley’s business culture — that the best way to build a company is to ignore profits in favor of growing a huge audience. Few companies have a larger or more loyal audience than Facebook, with more than 900 million users and reams of the personal information that marketers covet. Many analysts expect that Facebook will continue to
find ways to make money from that vast global reach; it already brings in $3.7 billion a year. Yet Wall Street’s evident frustration with the stock price reflects growing concerns about the longterm prospects for companies that are popular but do not charge users for services. See Facebook / A5