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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (June 18, 2015)
Astoria’s Lund moves to coaching Scandinavian Midsummer Festival SPORTS • 4A COAST WEEKEND 142nd YEAR, No. 252 THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2015 ONE DOLLAR Port audit clean, except for dirty water By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian Courtesy of the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce Fantastical creatures, like dragon pictured here, tend to appear during Cannon Beach’s annual Sandcastle Contest. This year celebrates the city’s 52nd consecutive Sandcastle event. Take a foray into sand play CB Sandcastle Contest event founders turned tragedy into an opportunity “Bucket & Shovel” dinner with sal- ad, spaghetti and clam chowder op- tions on offer at the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce Communi- ty Hall from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The Sandcastle Contest itself begins 7:30 a.m. Saturday down on the beach. Awards will be an- nounced at 12:30 p.m. (Registra- tion closes at noon Friday.) That night, a folk music concert featuring several local musicians will be held at 7 p.m. at the Com- munity Hall. 7KHQDWSPDEHDFKERQ¿UH will be held at the Tolovana Way- side. S’mores will be served, but at- tendees must bring their own chairs. Finally, a 5K Fun Run takes off from the beach at Second Street at 9 a.m. Sunday; registration begins at 8 a.m. For more information, visit www.cannonbeach.org/businesses/ SandcastleContest. By ERICK BENGEL EO Media Group C ANNON BEACH — The Cannon Beach Sandcastle Contest, which celebrates its 51st anniversary this year, is, like all sandcastle events, an exer- cise in living with impermanence, in creating order and beauty while preparing for its destruction, in learning to let go. For several sunny, enchanted hours, thousands of visitors de- scend on Cannon Beach’s shore- line to watch dozens of sand sculptors build mighty, majestic figures: castles and dragons, sea creatures and cartoon characters — the inspiration seems inex- haustible. Just about everyone has a good time: The sculptors — amateurs and masters — revel in the team- work and craftsmanship, while the spectators stroll among the plots, awed and entertained. But the end is written into the beginning. By sunset, all physical evidence of the sculptures will be erased, taken by the tides. And the canvas of the coastline will be blank once more, ready for another troupe of imaginative beachgoers ’64 or ’65? Courtesy of the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce In honor of the first Sandcastle event, a sculpting team fashioned this car with a commemorative license plate. The Sandcastle Con- test was born in the aftermath of the March 27, 1964, Alaskan earth- quake when the subsequent tsunami flooded Cannon Beach and turned the city temporarily into a ghost town. to momentarily shape nature to their will. Schedule of events Cannon Beach’s Sandcastle Contest — the oldest in Oregon — falls on Saturday this year and is the grand centerpiece of a three- day shindig. The festivities kick off at 5:30 p.m. Friday with the Sandcastle Pa- rade; the lineup begins at 5 p.m. at Spruce and Second streets. This will be followed by a Confusion has cropped up lately among some locals regarding the origins of Cannon Beach’s Sand- castle Contest, which received the Oregon Heritage Tradition award from the Oregon Parks and Recre- ation Department last year. The 2014 Sandcastle Contest was variously billed at the “50th Sandcastle Contest,” the “50th an- nual Sandcastle Contest” and the ³WKDQQLYHUVDU\´RIWKH¿UVWFRQ- test doesn’t help matters (though, to be sure, any of those distinctions TXDOL¿HV WKH FRQWHVW IRU WKH KHUL- tage tradition award). See CONTEST, Page 10A The Port of Astoria has reduced annual operating losses over the past ¿YH \HDUV D ¿QDQFLDO SLFWXUH WKDW would have been brighter had the port accounted for potential liabilities from groundwater contamination. Jim Lanzarotta, an accountant with Moss Adams LLP, told the Port Commission during a presentation of the 2013-14 audit Tuesday night that yearly operating losses decreased IURP PLOOLRQ ¿YH \HDUV DJR WR $105,000 in 2013-14. The Port’s net position — assets minus liabilities — slipped by only $7,789 in 2013-14, bringing it to $19.5 million. That would have been a sig- QL¿FDQW LPSURYHPHQW LQ QHW SRVLWLRQ Lanzarotta said, had the Port not been required all along to report potential liabilities for the cleanup of ground- water contamination throughout the central waterfront. The audit said ac- counting for the liabilities decreased the Port’s net position by $1.8 million. The Port, which was named by the Oregon Department of Environmen- tal Quality as a potential responsible party for the pollution, had not been accounting for the potential liabilities, which stretch back to the early 2000s. The Port is negotiating through its lawyers with former oil company tenants and insurers, and expects to UHFHLYH VLJQL¿FDQW FRPSHQVDWLRQ IRU the cleanup. But Lanzarotta said the Port cannot report the potential com- pensation until it has the other parties dead to rights on paying out. The audit listed the omission of liabilities as one of two of the Port’s material weaknesses, severe enough to cause misstatements in the Port’s ¿QDQFLDOVWKDWFRXOGQRWEHSUHYHQW- ed, detected or corrected. The other material weakness was a lack of seg- UHJDWLRQ RI ¿QDQFLDO GXWLHV ZKLFK Lanzarotta said is common to gov- ernmental entities with small staffs. 7KH 3RUW¶V DXGLW DOVR OLVWHG ¿YH VLJQL¿FDQW GH¿FLHQFLHV LQ ¿QDQFLDO reporting, which were less severe than material weaknesses, and in- cluded the corrections staff have made to address the mistakes: 'H¿FLHQFLHVLQWKHUHFRUGLQJRIGH- preciable assets, resulting in a $93,087 reduction in the Port’s net position. • Improper accounting of tenant improvements to Port property and rent credits that lowered the Port’s revenue. The correction resulted in an $18,684 decrease to the Port’s net position. See AUDIT, Page 10A Ka-Boom! Fireworks create an eco-bombshell Washington’s laws allow explosives that damage beaches, sealife By NATALIE ST. JOHN EO Media Group OCEAN PARK, Wash. — Most of the people who par- ticipated in last year’s annual July 5 beach cleanup tossed their bags of soggy Inde- pendence Day litter into the dumpsters. But environmental activist Ellen Anderson took her trash home, sorted it into tubs and buckets, and ana- lyzed the contents. Anderson is concerned about an issue that has spe- cial significance on the Pen- insula, where thousands of visitors come to take part in the annual no-holds-barred Fourth of July celebration: The environmental damage caused by certain types of fireworks. She says one pop- ular type of device, Saturn Missile Batteries, creates more plastic garbage than all the others put together — garbage that can pollute wa- ter and soil and harm aquatic animals. For the last several years, she and the other members of her group, Environmental- ly Friendly Fireworks, have been trying to get policymak- ers and citizens to understand that this plastic litter can con- NATALIE ST. JOHN — EO Media Group Ellen Anderson displays some of the trash she has collect- ed after Independence Day celebrations on local beaches. tinue hurting the planet long after the party is over. Patriotic pollution On June 11, Anderson of rope. Other tubs contained bulky plastic and cardboard bases in a variety of shapes. Several others contained col- orful collections of plastic propellers, tubes, wings, spin- ners, and caps. “I’m sure I’m the only one who collects this,” Anderson laughed. There’s one collection WKDW$QGHUVRQ ¿QGV HVSHFLDO- ly troublesome: The shoe- box-sized container that holds more than 1,500 bits of plas- tic shrapnel collected from a roughly one-mile stretch of beach in a single day last year. These bits are the byprod- uct of Saturn Missile Batter- ies, a common type of aerial laid a collection of tubs and buckets out in the garage of her beach-front Ocean Park KRPH$VPDOOSDLOZDV¿OOHG ZLWKÀDVK\SDFNDJLQJDQGELWV See FIREWORKS, Page 10A