WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2018 ܂ SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM
PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK
Bathrooms in Mt. Angel lead to a stink
City council replaces abused
facilities with portable toilets
It’s not popular with all of the town’s citizens.
“They’re disgusting and they’re disgusting. They’re
totally disgusting,” Mt. Angel resident Mary Franklin
said of the portable toilets. “People don’t want to use
them, so what do they do? They go to the Glockenspiel
(Restaurant) and use the bathrooms and they go to the
sausage company and they use them. They try to be
hospitable.
“They like to portray themselves as a welcoming
community. Going to one of those port-a-potties is not
welcoming.”
The bathrooms are in the small city park in the
same block as Mt. Angel City Hall at the corner of
Bill Poehler Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
MT. ANGEL – For years, the public bathrooms in Mt.
Angel were repeatedly abused.
People would sit in the bathrooms and charge their
phone, leave behind used condoms and needles, even
smear feces on the walls.
The city council decided to address the problem by
tearing out the bathrooms and installing portable toi-
lets.
See BATHROOMS, Page 2A
Mt. Angel citizen Mary Franklin stands in front of the
public bathrooms in Mt. Angel that were gutted and
replaced with two port-a-potties in the building.
BILL POEHLER/STATESMAN JOURNAL
Shipping project
carries potential
Firefighters
advance
against
Detroit blaze
Whitney Woodworth Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Thanks to several helicopters, retardant drops and
firefighters working on the ground, crews have made
"considerable progress" on the 6-acre Byars Peak Fire
Aug. 14, fire officials said.
The wildfire is burning about five miles north of
Detroit Lake between Deadhorse Mountain and
Byars Peak in the Willamette National Forest.
The fire was called in from Coffin Mountain Look-
See BLAZE, Page 3A
An area west of the Powerland Heritage Park in Brooks is being considered by group including former state
representative Kevin Mannix to create Oregon Port of Willamette, an intermodal rail and freight site in
Brooks. KELLY JORDAN/STATESMAN JOURNAL
Intermodal facility in Brooks would have impact
The Byars Fire burns in the Willamette National
Forest four miles north of Detroit.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WILLAMETTE NATIONAL FOREST
$25 million grant to build an intermodal freight trans-
port facility in Brooks.
Intermodal freight transport operations are areas
where containers are taken from trucks and craned on
to rail cars or from rail cars to trucks.
"It’s not only a cheaper way to get our containers …
to a port, steamship port, but also, if you could just get
some of the traffic off the road it would help every-
one,” said Smith, a long-time director at the St. Paul
Rodeo.
A farm like Smith’s 900-acre operation in St. Paul
will ship 60 containers a month of goods and make
twice as many trips for trucks through Portland to get
them on ships.
The option of hauling the containers to Brooks – or
Millersburg – would directly impact Smith in terms of
man-hours and in profit.
But they’re not the only ones who could profit from
such an operation.
“In terms of the typical farmer in the Willamette
Valley, they would benefit from having a place that
they can truck their containers to, put them on rail to
their ultimate destinations,” said Mannix, a lawyer
and former state lawmaker.
Bill Poehler Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Over the past 100 years, Bill Smith’s family has
been farming the land near St. Paul in the North Wil-
lamette Valley.
Dozens of factors can impact his farm’s profitabil-
ity.
When Portland’s Terminal 6 shut down in 2016,
Smith and his family felt the impact directly as it cost
more money to ship the crops they produce including
straw, hay, grass seed, peppermint and hazelnuts.
Oregon’s agricultural industry, which generates
$5.7 billion each year and is tied to over 200,000 jobs,
relies heavily on the ability to ship goods out of the
state.
In the Willamette Valley, 38,000 containers of
commodities were shipped out of Oregon in 2016 in-
cluding straw, hay, pulp, lumber, potatoes, seeds,
grains, Christmas Trees and nursery stock.
To get most of those goods to shipping ports, the
crops are loaded into containers and those containers
are trucked to a port in Seattle or Tacoma.
A group of businessmen led by Kevin Mannix have
formed Oregon Port of Willamette and is in a compet-
itive bid process against a group in Millersburg for a
See IMPACT, Page 3A
Online at SilvertonAppeal.com
Vol. 137, No. 35
News updates: ܂ Breaking news ܂ Get updates from
the Silverton area
Photos: ܂ Photo galleries
Serving the Silverton
Area Since 1880
A Unique Edition of
the Statesman Journal
Miles Fresher!
50 cents
©2018
Printed on recycled paper
Fix for Mt.
Angel’s water
system could
cost $100K
Christena Brooks Special to Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
This spring, Mt. Angel was one of the lucky Mid-
Valley towns unaffected by the toxic algae bloom that
fouled municipal drinking water in Salem.
City staff and contractors have been busy here too,
though, working to solve a problem with the water
system’s aging computerized controls and increasing
the size of mainline pipes downtown.
On July 14, the wireless connection between Mt.
Angel’s two wells and its pair of water storage reser-
voirs atop the hill next to Mt. Angel Abbey and Semi-
nary failed, causing one of the tanks to overflow.
Downhill, residents at the Carmelite House of Stud-
ies worried because this had happened before.
A similar water reservoir overflow in 2016 resulted
in water damage to the 19,000-square-foot house of
See FIX, Page 3A
FREE!
EASY!
HERMISTON, OR
SWEET TASTE OF
SUMMERTIME!
SEEDED OR SEEDLESS
HERMISTON
WATERMELON
W
LOCAL ROUTE
0
23
MILES
ALWAYS FRESH,
49¢ FAST AND FRIENDLY
/LB.
USDA CERTIFIED ORGANIC
ORGANIC
seedless
WATERMELON
/LB.
69¢
Your Family Deserves the Best!
• Receive Fresh Friday
& First Friday specials
every week!
• Too many emails?
• Be the first to get
Roth’s deals
• Sign up today to get
Roth’s deals Via text
TEXT “ROTHS” TO 78619
& BEGIN RECEIVING OUR
FRESH VALUES DIRECTLY
TO YOUR MOBILE PHONE.