In brief: Protesters break into building
SEATTLE – Seattle police arrested 16 Occupy Seattle protesters early Saturday after they broke into a locked Capitol Hill building and refused to leave.
The incident began about 5:30 p.m. Friday, when a number of Occupy Seattle protesters broke into an empty, privately owned building, KOMO-TV reported.
Seattle police officers tried to contact the protesters, who closed and locked the door, then barricaded themselves inside. Police contacted the owner of the building, who said the protesters did not have permission to be in the building. Starting about 3:25 a.m., police ordered the protesters to leave, but several refused to go.
Beef production down sharply
BOISE – The amount of red meat produced in Idaho has declined during the last decade, the Idaho Cattle Association says.
And the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service said red meat production at Idaho packing plants in October was down 80 percent from the same time last year, at 3.5 million pounds.
“There have been a lot of factors leading to the loss of production in Idaho,” Bill Brockman, former president of Magic Valley Cattlemen’s Association, told the Idaho Business Review. “For one, we’re losing our grazing lands, our irrigated land is being used to raise more profitable crops instead of cattle feed and that has led to substantially higher feed costs.”
He also said the closure of meat-packing plants has been a problem for Idaho producers. A plant in Boise closed in 2006, and then XL Four Star Beef in Nampa closed in June.
“Now, instead of going to Boise, producers have to drive out of state,” he said. “It makes it difficult to stay in business.”
UO senate backs interim president
EUGENE – Leaders of the University of Oregon senate have recommended that an aide to the school’s recently fired president be chosen as its interim chief.
The senate’s executive committee endorsed Robert Berdahl, the former dean of the UO’s College of Arts and Sciences, in a letter to state officials dated Friday, the Eugene Register-Guard reported.
Berdahl was a UO history professor for nearly two decades. He was also a senior administrator at several universities and was hired this fall as a part-time special assistant to UO President Richard Lariviere at a salary of $96,000.
Lariviere was fired Monday when members of the State Board of Higher Education said Lariviere didn’t try hard enough to be a team player and that they had lost trust and confidence in him.
MOSCOW, Idaho – Faced with a long-term decline in the city’s drinking water supply, Moscow officials plan to spend $75,000 investigating several possible solutions.
The options include building a regional water supply reservoir near Moscow Mountain, drawing additional water out of the South Fork of the Palouse River during spring runoff and storing it for summer use, or securing a municipal water right on the North Fork of the Palouse River.
The City Council discussed the issue during a workshop Friday.
Moscow uses about 2,500 acre-feet of water per year, or 815 million gallons, including 700 acre-feet for summer irrigation needs. The shallow Wanapum aquifer supplies about a third of the water; the rest comes from the deep Grand Ronde aquifer.
Water levels in the Grand Ronde have been dropping by about a foot per year for several decades. Recent evidence suggests the Wanapum may also be in decline.