BLM Prineville District To Get $808,000 In Federal Stimulus Money

By Pete Springer | May 7, 2009 2:27 p.m. | Updated: June 16, 2010 11:59 p.m. | Portland, OR

The Bureau of Land Management Prineville District in central Oregon will be getting $808,000 in federal stimulus funds.  “We’re going to try and get something done this summer,” says acting Prineville District Manager Patricia Wilson.  “We just noticed that we have the money for the projects this week, so then we just have to go through out internal process of getting this stuff done on the ground.”The money is part of more than $32 million to fund 60 BLM projects in Oregon and Washington.  Wilson says some of the money will be used for trail construction in Jefferson, Crook, and Deschutes Counties.  Projects include work on Cline Buttes Recreation Area, Horse Ridge Trailheads, Little Deschutes River Access, and Millican Valley OHV Trailheads.“Some of them will be new opportunities creating new trails, and some of them are looking at trailheads where the parking needs to be improved and so forth or creating a trailhead,” says Wilson.Wilson says the BLM will narrow down their project priorities and prepare contract paperwork for bids.  Most of the work will be done by contractors but Wilson won’t know how many jobs will be created until the contract bids are drafted.The Prineville District also plans to use the stimulus money to design a new fire cache to replace two aging warehouses that have structural problems.The money will also be used to inventory and treat noxious weed sites along the John Day, Deschutes, and Crooked Rivers.  That project is expected to take between two and four years to complete.And the rest of the stimulus money will be used for tree thinning and fuels reduction on 2400 acres near La Pine.  The woody debris will be ground up on location and hauled to a power plant 90 miles away to be burned to produce electricity.The BLM expects this to project to help restore ponderosa pine, aspen, and meadow habitats.

© 2009 OPB

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