BAKER CITY — Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative’s Board of Directors has approved the return of $3 million in capital credits to its member-owners.
ENTERPRISE — Dr. Nick West, a board certified family physician, is hanging his doctor’s shingle and taking new patients at Winding Waters Medical Clinic, Enterprise.
Oregonians have historically earned less than people in other parts of the country, but over the past decade the state has narrowed the gap considerably.
LA GRANDE — La Grande Main Street Downtown held its annual Meet & Greet on Tuesday, Nov. 15, as business owners and Main Street members gathered to recognize award winners and network ahea…
SALEM — Oregon added 5,200 jobs in October, even as the state’s unemployment rate rose to 4.1% and economic forecasters warned a mild recession is likely within the next year.
LA GRANDE — Most people wouldn’t associate local business success with the COVID-19 pandemic, but that’s exactly what happened for La Grande’s Christle and Allie Aguilera.
Benefits make up more than 30% of the typical compensation package, but companies aren’t always clear about how much value they add for employees. Knowing what benefits are worth can help you …
LA GRANDE — The 2021–22 tax bills for four of Union County’s top-five taxpayers fluctuated significantly from the year before.
LA GRANDE — It is a delightful irony.
Farmers who rely on foreign guestworkers can only expect more red tape from upcoming revisions to the H-2A visa program, according to agricultural labor experts.
SALEM — Even as COVID-19 upended Oregon’s economy and uprooted thousands of lives, the poverty gap between white and nonwhite Oregonians narrowed to the lowest point on record.
By SHANNON GOLDEN • For The Observer
LA GRANDE — Union County residents who depend on natural gas to heat their homes will have to reach deeper into their pockets to pay their bills starting this week.
The governor-appointed Oregon Environmental Quality Commission voted unanimously in September to expand the Clean Fuels Program, accelerating targets meant to lower the carbon footprint of the…
Lauren Henderson has been appointed acting director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture after Alexis Taylor, the agency's former director, was nominated as USDA undersecretary for trade an…
ELGIN — Pushing open the door at Tipsy Tulip, shoppers are welcomed into a unique space.
LA GRANDE — Hoppy and earthy with tropical notes of passionfruit, citrus rind, and mixed berries — Side A Brewing’s newest creation is balanced and goes down smooth and attendees at the Seattl…
LA GRANDE — It was a moment both one and eight years in the making.
LA GRANDE — Two local businesses and a founding member of La Grande Main Street Downtown received recognition from Oregon Main Street during the annual main street conference on Wednesday, Oct…
Christmas tree prices are expected to rise this holiday season, which isn’t particularly shocking when most everything is getting more expensive.
BURNS — The use of virtual fencing to manage cattle grazing on sagebrush rangelands has the potential to create fuel breaks needed to help fight wildfires, a recent Oregon State University and…
As Oregon regulators hit the brakes on authorizing new irrigation wells, the decision is raising concerns that scant groundwater data may indefinitely hinder new drilling. The Water Resources …
LA GRANDE — Community Bank is bringing financial literacy education to more than 4,000 students and residents in Oregon counties, including Baker, Morrow, Umatilla, Union and Wallowa.
LA GRANDE — There were five jewelry stores in La Grande in September 1982 when Rick Gately and Darwin Harris first opened the doors of their business — 40 years later, La Grande Gold and Silve…
Researchers from Oregon State University and USDA have published a study showing that virtual fencing is a useful potential tool to help cattle create fuel breaks that could slow wildfires fro…
Overloading groundwater with nitrates brings to light a health issue that is neither new to agriculture nor unique to any one part of the West. Nitrogen from fertilizer, compost or manure is c…
JOHN DAY — Oregon Telephone Co. has been awarded $20.4 million in grants and loans to install fiber optic infrastructure in Grant, Malheur and Baker counties.
The Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program is looking for a new commissioner with broad expertise in natural resources management to help guide the future of farmland preservation statewide.
LA GRANDE — Winds of change are turning heads and generating excitement at B&K Auto Salvage and Recycling.
JOHN DAY — A coalition of businesses, including the Prairie Wood Products sawmill, logging contractors and ranchers, filed an antitrust lawsuit on Thursday, Sept. 15, in U.S. District Court in…
A class action lawsuit pursued by 14 Oregon counties against logging restrictions on state forestlands has reached the end of the road. The counties have failed to convince the Oregon Supreme …
UNION — Women ranchers from Baker, Union and Wallowa counties are invited to gather Oct. 5 in Union for a day of community building and hands-on learning, according to a press release.
SALEM — Oregon is seeing numerous indicators that the state has finally recovered from the economic body blows delivered by COVID-19, starting in March 2020.
LA GRANDE — Blue Summit Realty Group celebrated an anniversary Wednesday, Sept. 7 — four years of helping Union County residents sell their property and guiding buyers as they achieve their ho…
The number of water law violations in Oregon has continued climbing in 2022, building on a trend that state regulators have observed over the past five years.
SALEM — Oregonians who receive SNAP benefits will get an extra payment on top of their usual allotment this month, the state of Oregon said Friday, Sept. 2.
The Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled that animals can’t file lawsuits, a relief to farm advocates who had worried about potentially expansive new litigation over livestock production.
LA GRANDE — La Grande Main Street Downtown is seeking an executive director.
SALEM — Oregon state economists on Wednesday, Aug. 31, delivered their most serious warning in years: The state’s surging revenue growth is about to end.
SALEM — Two dozen environmental, farming and public health groups are asking the state to regulate air pollution from large dairies.
By ISABELLA CROWLEY • The Observer
IMBLER — For those driving through downtown Imbler, the last thing they might expect to see is a walrus. But one needs to look no farther than the corner of Ruckman Avenue and Main Street to s…
PORTLAND — Oregon forest products companies have endured a wild stretch over the past two years, with lumber prices quintupling during the pandemic and then fading back to something close to normal.
SALEM — Last week, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum received a text from her bank asking if she’d recently spent $750 at Walmart.
NEW YORK — Bohemian or cottagecore? Indie or industrial? Retro or preppy? And, does it match what your roommate ordered?
LA GRANDE — La Grande Main Street Downtown is relaunching its monthly networking series, Business-Resource Connection, for local business owners after a break for the summer. Attendees can lea…
We’ve all seen commencement speakers give advice to graduates as they’re about to enter the workforce. In much the same way, financial experts are in the unique position to impart money advice…
NEW YORK — Budgeting is key to managing your finances, whether you’re trying to pay off debt, start a rainy day fund or deal with the consequences of inflation.
Farm Credit West and Northwest Farm Credit Services, agricultural lending associations within the Farm Credit System, are pursuing a potential merger.
WALLOWA — The severe hailstorm that battered the Wallowa School District’s campus earlier this month will not shake the district’s financial stability.
SALEM — Two state agencies will ask the legislative emergency board for nearly $40 million to help ease what they describe as a staffing and financial catastrophe that’s left hundreds of patie…
LA GRANDE — The future appears bright for a new La Grande barber shop which celebrates the past.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House on Friday, Aug. 12, passed a sweeping bill that will raise corporate taxes and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on climate and health care programs.
VALE — The box of folders delivered to the Malheur County Court last month seemed to be just a bland set of documents transferred from the economic development department as its director, Greg…
PENDLETON — Pacific Northwest wheat farmers are beginning to cope with the fallout from a massive fire Aug. 10 that left the Grain Craft flour mill in Pendleton a “total loss.”
