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FRIDAY EXTRA • 1C
IN ONE EAR • 1B
FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2015
143rd YEAR, No. 13
ONE DOLLAR
INDEPENDENT REVIEW
County manager effective, but change lacked explanation
Tension among
county workers could
have been avoided
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
An independent review of Clatsop
County management shows the county
operating effectively under Scott Somers,
the county manager, but found that ten-
sion and confusion among county work-
ers could have been avoided had changes
been better explained.
The review — completed by Port-
land-based consultant Michelle Kennedy,
of Kennedy Consulting LLC — took a
comprehensive look at the county’s goals
and how management and the Board of
Commissioners are pursuing those goals.
Results are broken down into recommen-
dations the board plans to examine and
possibly put into action.
³+onestly, , thought the ¿ndings and
recommendations within the report gave
some positive and great constructive
feedback that the county can continue to
improve upon,” Somers said.
The estimated $12,000 review, re-
leased Thursday, grew out of a request
Somers made in January for a third-party
assessment of his performance.
See MANAGEMENT, Page 7A
Scott
Somers
Trolley crew honors
volunteers old and new
Dirk
Rohne
Scott
Lee
Oregon LNG,
Army Corps
clash over
easement
Legal ¿ght could
derail terminal
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
The Astoria Riverfront Trolley makes its way west along the waterfront. For more photos, go to dailyastorian.com.
Four retirees celebrated for their service
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
Carl Abraham, a former volun-
teer of the Astoria Riverfront Trol-
ley, remembers when he was about
7 years old during World War II and
witnessed his friend and next-door
neighbor, Leroy, get struck and
killed by a train in Washington state
while the boys were collecting iron
for the war effort.
“From that time on, I was scared
to death of railroad tracks,” Abra-
ham said.
Until 1999, that is, when Astoria
procured the antique trolley named
“Old 300,” which was built by the
American Car Co. of St. Louis,
Mo., for the San Antonio Traction
Co. in Texas in 1913.
A city resident since 1975, Abra-
ham became part of the all-volun-
teer restoration crew that worked
¿ve months and donated 3,000
man-hours to making Old 300 rail-
ready. The trolley, he said, rekindled
his love of railroad tracks.
“This trolley kind of brought that
back, and I just love trains now,” he
said.
During a casual pi]]a-and-cake,
beer-and-wine dinner held Thursday
in the trolley barn on Industry Street,
the nonpro¿t Astoria Riverfront
Trolley Association honored trolley
volunteers past and present — and,
especially, the service of retired vol-
unteers Abraham, Kenny Lockett,
Don Morden and Nick =a¿ratos.
(Morden was unable to attend.)
“I can’t say enough about these
four guys,” Skip Hauke, a trol-
ley association board member and
the executive director of the As-
toria-Warrenton Area Chamber of
Commerce, said. “I know them all
very, very well, and what they have
given in time and effort and spirit
just can’t be repaid.”
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
From left: Gene Itzen, Nick Zaf-
iratos, and Ken Lockett, cut the
cake during a retirement and
reunion party for the trolley
volunteers at the Trolley Barn
Thursday.
‘Huge toy’
The trolley may run on diesel,
but it is powered by volunteerism
— by the motormen and motor-
women who drive Old 300 along
the riverfront from 39th Street to the
Astoria Riverwalk Inn. By the con-
ductors who usher riders on and off
the trolley while regaling them with
Astoria’s epic saga. By the mechan-
ics who keep its bell clanging and
its wheels rolling along the tracks
and timber trestles.
And by the paid part-time em-
ployees who train the operators,
schedule the shifts and count the
dollars that locals and tourists spend
on the trolley’s sit-down-and-sight-
see experience.
“You got a huge toy to play with,
and you got a lot of people to show
it off to,” Lockett said. “What else
can you ask for?”
In 2013, the trolley’s 100th year,
Lockett — who has served on the
trolley since its earliest days in As-
toria — posed for the label art on
Rogue Ales’ Trolley Guy Ale —
one of his proudest moments on the
job.
The midsummer thank-you
meal Thursday — a version of the
banquet the trolley crew rolls out
every November — helped to ce-
See TROLLEY, Page 7A
PORTLAND — Lawyers for Or-
egon LNG and the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers presented arguments
Wednesday in a lawsuit over wheth-
er the lique¿ed natural gas company
can force the federal government off
an easement on the Skipanon Penin-
sula in Warrenton.
The outcome of the lawsuit
could determine whether Oregon
LNG can build a lique¿ed natural
gas export terminal on its proposed
site at the mouth of the Columbia
River. Local, state and federal of-
¿cials are reviewing the $ billion
project, which also includes a pipe-
line from Washington state through
Columbia, Tillamook and Clatsop
counties.
Oregon LNG wants to build a
lique¿ed natural gas export terminal
on land sub-leased from the state
and Port of Astoria, but the project
site overlaps with an area where the
Army Corps has deposited dredg-
ing spoils for decades. The federal
agency obtained an easement from
Clatsop County in 1957, according
to court documents.
Dredging spoils
In a federal lawsuit filed in
August, Oregon LNG claimed
the Army Corps never had a
right to submerged land with-
in the dredging spoils easement.
Clatsop County did not own the
submerged land and the easement
granted to the federal government
“only purported to convey tide-
lands,” lawyers for the energy
company wrote in a filing.
The company asked the federal
court to find that the Corps has no
right or interest to the submerged
lands where Oregon LNG plans to
build the export terminal.
In its response, the Army
Corps cited sovereign immuni-
ty and said Oregon LNG did not
have a right to sue the federal
government under statutes the
company referred to in its initial
complaint.
See EASEMENT, Page 7A
Resort developer could run out of time
Johnson says tough to fit
project in three-year window
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
SALEM — State Sen. Betsy Johnson said
a developer who is interested in building an
eco-resort in Clatsop County could easily run
out of time to do so, even with the three-year
extension included in a bill Johnson recently
helped to pass.
“I do see it as tough to ¿t that window,”
Johnson, D-Scappoose, said of the extension
lawmakers approved in the waning days of the
legislative session.
Johnson supported House Bill 3431 to give
property owners who had planned to build des-
tination resorts in the Metolius River Basin more
time to apply to build smaller resorts elsewhere
in the state. State lawmakers created a special
exemption to Oregon land use laws in 2009,
speci¿cally for property owners with land ]oned
State Sen.
Betsy Johnson
for destination resorts in
the Metolius River Basin.
The legislation allowed
those landowners to apply
to build small resorts else-
where in the state, because
lawmakers had taken away
their rights to apply to build
in the Metolius River Basin
with a 2009 ban on desti-
nation resorts in the area.
‘Special carve-out’
“That was really a
special carve-out for them to have the ability
to go and execute some sort of development, a
smaller type of development, but nonetheless
a resort type development somewhere in the
state that could use the economic boost,” said
Jon Jinings, a community services specialist
for the Oregon Department of Land Conserva-
tion and Development in Bend.
See RESORT, Page 7A
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