Local News

You don't have to be an engineer to see that many of Central Oregon's highways are falling apart. The roads are scarred with wheel ruts and littered with potholes and haphazard patch jobs. Exhibit number one being the Bend Parkway.
Conventional wisdom tells us that Oregon's practice of allowing studded tires on its roadways is the reason that our streets are in such sorry shape. And there's a good amount of scientific evidence that says that particular piece of conventional wisdom is right on. One estimate put the annual bill for studded tire damage on Oregon roads at $11 million.
There is another theory that has circulated among certain circles, one that I came across early on in my reporting career here in Central Oregon that has never been substantiated - at least to my knowledge. This theory, really more a rumor, held that some of the damage to our roads could be chalked up to lousy materials.
But even those who never heard whisper of an "asphalt conspiracy" would have been interested to hear what a former Oregon Department of Transportation employee had to say during a sparsely attended hearing in Bend last week. Michael Ray Perry told an administrative law judge that he personally tested hundreds of road projects that failed to meet state standards, some of which have already started to fall apart. Moreover, Perry said supervisors routinely dismissed his findings in an effort to keep projects steaming along.

health of Migratory birds are just one of the concerns raised by opponents of the project. SUMMER LAKE - This is a place the phrase "austere beauty" might have been invented to describe. High, rocky ridges dusted with early-spring snow ring a desert plateau sweeping down to a broad expanse of water. The only sounds are the wind, the song of birds and the infrequent whine of tires as a car or truck passes on Highway 31.The handful of people who live in and around the tiny town of Summer Lake about 100 miles southeast of Bend worry that things will change if NT Hydro goes through with its plans. The Idaho company wants to build a pumped storage hydroelectric plant by the lake, involving turbines, two eight-foot-diameter pipes running uphill from the lake and 12 miles of new power lines.
 Julie Bryant and her husband own the Summer Lake Inn, a small resort with a few cabins near the shore of the lake. Bryant fears the hydro project will ruin the environment that brings tens of thousands of migratory birds - and hundreds of birdwatchers and waterfowl hunters - to this remote spot every year, as well as the special ambiance that draws permanent and temporary urban refugees in search of peace.
"It's the quiet, the light," she says. "People come here because you can see the stars at night and you can't hear anything but the birds."

Notes? He don't need no stikin' notes. Hillary's husband looks quite a lot older than when he left the White House nearly eight long, long, long years ago. The hair is snow-white now and the gray suit fits a little snugly around the waistline.
 
But, damn, Slick Willy has still got it.
Bill Clinton showed up to Bend High an hour late, predictably, and spoke for 15 minutes longer than he was supposed to - also predictably. No matter. The crowd, which filled the upper bleachers and packed the gym floor, ate it all up.