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Show Page 8 news American Fork Contact information The center is located at 54 E. Main St. and offers van pickup and dropoff for $1. To arrange for a ride, call the center at 763-3090. 763-3090. Gloria Parker is the center cen-ter secretary, and the director is Ted Strong. Center hours are from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday except holidays. Lunches Lunch-es are served daily at noon. Tuacahn trips The American Ameri-can Fork Senior Center is planning plan-ning two Tuacahn trips in June with a Mesquite stopover. Both trips will take in "Les Misera-bles" Misera-bles" and "Sound of Music" at the Tuacahn Theater. Registration Registra-tion for the June 10-12 or the June 17-19 trips can be made at the center. Ladies Club The Ladies Bridge Club meet every Wednesday at 1 p.m. Eagle Mtn. For Eagle Mountain residents, resi-dents, ages 55 and over, there will be an Outdoor Planter Potting Pot-ting Party Friday at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 1650 E. Stagecoach Run. Plant your own outdoor planter and make new friends. The Eagle Mountain Senior Council hosts a monthly activity activ-ity the fourth Monday of each month. All activities are free of charge. For more information, informa-tion, contact Carroll Johnson at 318-1595. Lehi Restricted hours The Lehi Senior Center will have restricted re-stricted hours on May 2, May 5 and May 6 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Usually the center is open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Location The Lehi Senior Center is located at 123 N. Center Cen-ter St., within the Lehi Legacy Center. The center phone number num-ber is 768-77165, and the director direc-tor is Jan Jonsson. The center provides social activities, exercise exer-cise equipment and health clinics clin-ics to community seniors from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rides available Round-trip rides are offered to seniors for a minimal cost. Rides can be ar- UTAH VALLEY'S PREMIER "REAL ESTATE - MAGAZINE 833 S. 170 E. Provo 377-1011 boxmartofprovoyahoo.com 625 N. State St. Orem 224-2698 . boxmartqwestoffice.net 'SrmmvrxTr: . A of :M&&& Y ; i ranged at 427-2030. Pleasant Grove Winter hours The Pleasant ' Grove Jacob Senior Center is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Location The center is situated at 242 W. 200 South in Pleasant Grove. The contact phone number is 785-2818. Boutique Caroline's Boutique Bou-tique provides a variety of crocheted and quilted items and is open during the center's regular hours. Bingo Held every Monday morning at 10:30 a.m., Bingo is a fun activity to help work up an appetite at the Jacobs Center. Other activities There is a new quilt to finish, billiards, card games, exercise equipment equip-ment and other activities to do at the Jacobs Center. Luncheons Those who haven't been to a center lunch for a while are asked to call one day in advance so enough meals for those attending can be provided. provid-ed. The suggested donation for the meal is $2 for 60-plus seniors and $4.90 for those 59 years old and younger. The suggested donation for salads is $2.25 for seniors and $5.65 for those 59 or younger. Mountainland Association As-sociation of Governments and the state of Utah fund the senior lunch program. MENU Friday Roast pork, mashed potatoes and gravy, California vegetables, veg-etables, peaches, chocolate chip cookie, whole wheat roll. Monday Star noodle bake, broccoli, three bean salad, mint brownie, brown-ie, white roll. Tuesday Chicken-fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, Scandinavian vegetables, cottage cot-tage cheese and pears, gingerbread ginger-bread and lemon sauce, white bread. Wednesday Chili dog, peas, potato salad, orange, filled bundt cake. Thursday Baked ham, au gratin potatoes, pota-toes, mixed vegetables, tossed salad and ranch dressing, pumpkin cookie, whole wheat roll. IlimOoicej custom stairway elevator your choice, removing Stairway elevator features include: Battery backup for use during a power failure Easy fold-up leaving the stairway clear for use by others Swivel seat for ease and safety when getting in and out of the chair Call toll free 1 - 800 - PLATD LOT 56 I M AMERICAN FORK CITIZEN ehi mill Joe Pyrah DAILY HERALD It has all the makings of a classic whodunit: allegedly shady deals, high-level government govern-ment officials, private investigators, investi-gators, millions of dollars and, of course, a billion pounds of nonfat dry milk. In 2003 when a couple of ranchers told Sherman Robinson they had a way to combine soy with nonfat dry milk (NDM) which would then be used to feed cattle, the president of Lehi Roller Mills jumped on board. Robinson thought it would be a way to reinvent the century -old family fam-ily business, to maybe keep it around for another 100 years. But what came next were years of federal agency red tape, being the subject of an undisclosed investigation and allegedly being put on a blacklist black-list that later was said to never exist in the first place. Despite inquiries from the governor's office and Utah's congressional congressio-nal delegation on their behalf, the response from the U.S. Department De-partment of Agriculture about their actions toward the mill and ranchers has been nil. Now, after "four years of frustration," Robinson and two ranchers are preparing the nuclear option: In the next several days, they will file a lawsuit in federal court for $40 million alleging that their plans to convert NDM into cattle cat-tle feed was illegally thwarted at great cost to themselves. Necessity, the mother of all invention In 2003 and 2004, the federal government approved the use of its massive cache of nonfat dry milk to feed beef cattle in states hit hard by drought, including in-cluding Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Mon-tana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. The drought was having a severe impact on the beef industry, forcing ranchers ranch-ers to sell off cattle prematurely premature-ly and at lower weights. The program allowed ranchers ranch-ers to request NDM based on how many cattle they had and where they lived. Utah, for example, was allotted 16 million pounds in 2003 and 6 million more in 2004. NDM is high in protein but difficult to use as food. In fact, feeding it straight to cows or sheep can kill them. Typically a feed company wLLl mix it with alfalfa as a way to boost nutritional nutri-tional value. There's also the problem t ..min "lwwi''iiiK.it w WWWff 4tf PWWp WBBKff "tWm((B(B(BR VMMSHHHr tpBF HE. 1 Wcvoifto S NO wins thVTTA TiOHS AtxttT & Child BmmDAvx VAtimwes allows FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT in the home the physical challenges imposed by stairs. 735 - 0408 the ELEVATOR company Hi m wmmmssmmm 6-15 acre recreational estates underground utilities electric, phone state-of-the-art water system restrictive covenants architectural review committee well-maintained roads year-round access call B01 368 8272 soldIersummit.com owner sues over Hj.uinijtimn wiuim mwJtu.T r.imri n. n.i.nwjmuMi. n "'ir n -"" iiiiwiiirnuiMiJiw mmnrymy-r imummrnmMiu m iu mmrin Hwirn r.ir r irrmrn-Trr -rnTr,M"" " 'i'B''i m ' '""WW"'tmm '"tM. " A view of Lehi Roller Mills. of it being in powder form because it gets into machinery and is hard to feed to animals. But Robinson's rancher associates as-sociates who run R& J Feed claimed to have come up with a process with the help of a lab in Iowa that makes pellets out of the milk when combined with soy and wheat. It's a process other companies tried but failed to make work. The pellets reduce the mess and make it more digestible for cattle. That's where the mill came in. Millions were spent on equipment to process the pellets, pel-lets, and they even got some milk to Salt Lake City. The two companies swear they jumped through all the hoops and had the blessing of the USDA. "We never, ever sold a bag of milk that wasn't within the restrictions, the guidelines," said Jerry Goodwin, an Ogden rancher of 40 years and the "J" inR&JFeed. The lawsuit will claim that the government put them on a blacklist and refused to ship them the milk. The USDA even went so far as to threaten threat-en action if they used the milk they had in a warehouse in Salt Lake, Robinson claims. "It goes round and round and round and round and I can not penetrate it," he said. "I've got my teeth set, and we're not budging. This is not a way the government should treat its citizenry." Crying over dry milk Dry milk is expensive on the open market. After the government FREE Buy 1 Pinata, Get 1 Una nf Candy J Free! J, MOUNTAIN ESTATES Cor no Am I released the milk at $1 per truckload of 22 tons, it was soon trading among ranchers, feed lots and brokers at hundreds hun-dreds of times that amount, the Washington Post reported in 2006. The USDA's milk was slated for beef cattle only in the drought states but soon found its way to other states for pigs and dairy cows. More shockingly, it was sold to other oth-er countries in some cases and also made its way into food for human consumption, for which it was never intended. According to the Post, Robinson said at the time that the mill rebagged 5 million or 6 million pounds of the milk that eventually found its way to Mexico, though he said he didn't know the milk's final destination. The milk was allowed to be traded within certain limits. It was OK for a farmer to get the milk and trade it to feed lots in return for a break on other kinds of feed or even for cash. Third-party brokers were also allowed to sell under specific conditions, and it was from those brokers that R&J and Robinson would get the milk to convert into cattle feed. But somewhere along the line, they got swept up into investigations of misuse and the USDA told the third-party brokers they couldn't sell to R&J. Goodwin said he went so far as to hire a private investigator investi-gator to track milk they were refused. It ended up in Minnesota Min-nesota or out of the country, he claims, instead of with their legitimate business. "We tried to reason with them and show them where the milk was illegally used," he said of the USDA. But they were repeatedly ' rebuffed and even threatened by the USDA with jail time, they claim. The USDA's investigation of milk misuse in Utah has been referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Salt Lake City, said Tom Japhet of the Office of Recession Proof Your Retirement! Free Report Call 24-7 Six Things You Must Do Now to Help Protect Your Savings! 377-3296 Attorney Brenton M. Ripley Provo and Salt Lake City ' t ?r. 'to'- 'ifyll: y'' 'H l ' Thursday, April 24, 2008 dry milk CRAIQ QILGERDaily Herald General Counsel in Denver, adding that stacks of paper "feet thick" were compiled. He said he couldn't release the names of those being investigated, inves-tigated, deferring to the U.S. Attorney's Office. "They are determining how they want to proceed with the matter," he said. Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman spokes-woman at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah, said they can neither confirm nor deny an investigation until charges are filed on the premise that it protects pro-tects the reputation of anyone involved. Time for the big guns Confident they have done nothing wrong, the ranchers and Robinson have asked the Governor's Office and Utah's congressional delegation to clear the roadblocks or at least straighten out misperceptions. "Some serious concerns have been raised, and our efforts to date have been to ensure that those concerns are being heard and, as appropriate, ap-propriate, investigated," said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. "Obviously, to the extent that either the Justice Department or the Office of the Inspector General are involved, we cannot can-not nor should not interfere. However, Congress does have an oversight responsibility regarding the drought assistance assis-tance program and how it was administered." Robinson, Goodwin and Carter are tired of waiting. Last year they filed a tort claim against the federal government gov-ernment alleging they were out millions because access to NDM was illegally cut off. That claim was rejected, and so after a mandatory six month waiting period, they'll be filing a lawsuit. "I'm just a flour miller," said Robinson. "We're trying to figure out ways to reinvent ourselves and be around for another 100 years." 2C-" "l 'it . rmrkHied through: David Cunningham Bankers Realty developed by; Q II ' i iff |