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PAGE 2A
143rd YEAR, No. 110
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2015
ONE DOLLAR
Death
penalty
case has
local ties
Bring back the
butterfl y
Violets return to Clatsop
Plains to lure threatened
Oregon silverspot back
Marquis, Brown had
hand in prosecution
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
By KATHERINE LACAZE
EO Media Group
C
LATSOP PLAINS — About 9,000 early
blue violets seedlings, native to the region,
found a new home — or rather, returned to
home — at sites across Clatsop Plains, assisted by
volunteers from local communities who helped the
North Coast Land Conservancy during the organi-
zation’s two-day violet planting event recently.
Planting the À ower seed-
lings was the latest chapter
in the conservancy’s decade-
long quest to restore a prairie
habitat on the Clatsop Plains
and Long Beach (Wash.)
Peninsula that will bring back
a robust Oregon silverspot
butterÀ y population, which
is listed as threatened under
the Endangered Species Act.
The diet of the butterÀ y lar-
vae consists entirely of dried
violet stems and leaves.
There to get the violets
into the ground were near-
ly 90 volunteers, including
about 20 students from Sea-
side High School’s National
Honor Society and art of eth-
nobotany classes. Communi-
ty members joined in from
as far away as Newport and
Lincoln City, with only a few
repeat volunteers between
the two days.
“The fortunate weather
certainly favored our high
turnout,” Stewardship Direc-
tor Melissa Reich said.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Photo
The Oregon silverspot butterfly.
Using native plants
The early blue violet
shoots were developed from
seeds collected since 2006 at
Camp Rilea and elsewhere
on Clatsop Plains. From
there, seeds were taken to the
Natural Resources Conserva-
tion Service’s Plant Materi-
als Center in Corvallis to be
planted. When the seed pods
reached maturity, the center
gathered the À owers’ scat-
tered seed to make a stock of
more than 16,000 seeds.
“We keep the seed from
the different regions separate
because the habitat and con-
ditions are different,” Reich
said. “Our violets need to
thrive in very sandy soils and
See PLANTING, Page 12A
The Oregon Supreme Court’s de-
cision to uphold Randy Lee Guzek’s
fourth death sentence for killing a
Deschutes County couple in 1987
has local ties to the Clatsop County
District Attorney’s Of¿ ce.
District Attorney Josh Marquis
started prosecuting the Guzek case
in 1991 as the c hief d eputy in De-
schutes County and again in 1997
and 2010 as a special prosecutor.
Marquis’ chief deputy Ron Brown
was the Deschutes County c hief d ep-
uty who tried and won the original
guilty verdicts and death penalty
against Guzek in the late 1980s.
Guzek is one of 34 people on
death row in Oregon.
See DEATH PENALTY, Page 12A
Seaside
tackles
dunes
Katherine Lacaze/EO Media Group
Seaside High School students Paola Campuzano and Alie Zagata help
the North Coast Land Conservancy and other volunteers plant thou-
sands of early blue violets on Clatsop Plains between Gearhart and War-
renton, as part of a silver spot butterfly habitat restoration project .
City partners with
CREST to create
new grading rules
By KATHERINE LACAZE
EO Media Group
Seaside is receiving some help
from a local task force to keep its
dunes healthy and safe.
The City Council approved an
agreement with the Columbia River
Estuary Study Task force to update
the city’s foredune management plan
last month. The Astoria-based task
force is a community organization
that specializes in environmental and
coastal planning.
The update could lead to more
trees, plantings and dune-grading ac-
tivities. Many of these are prohibited
on Seaside beaches because of state
guidelines .
To conform with state rules, the
city needs to update its plan and
seek an exception to the statewide
Katherine Lacaze/EO Media Group
Seaside High School students help the North Coast Land Conservancy and other community volunteers plant early blue violets on Clatsop Plains.
See DUNES, Page 12A
Central School neighbors present uni¿ ed front
Group opposes
high-density
housing options
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
More than 30 people who
live near the former Cen-
tral School packed the Blue
Scorcher Bakery and Cafe
Monday to talk about future
of one of the largest vacant
lots left in Astoria .
The group came away
with two clear points of
consensus: no rezoning the
properties to high-density
residential , and no construc-
tion without making sure
surrounding properties won’t
be damaged by geologic in-
stability.
New Riverview Partners
LLC, headed by the late
Mitch Mitchum, owns 14 of
the 16 lots bounded by Je-
rome and Irving avenues and
Eighth and 10th streets. The
site has been under evalua-
tion by Richard Krueger, the
developer behind Edgewater
at Mill Pond and the Yacht
Club Apartments.
Krueger has been repre-
sented in the project by Don
Hanson, who has met with
neighbors around the site and
was organizing a meeting
for Wednesday to gauge the
neighborhood’s opinion. But
as neighbors spread the word
and organized their own
meeting, Hanson announced
Friday the project would be
put on hold.
People worried about the
effect high-density housing
might have on the neighbor-
hood, from trash and traf¿ c
to construction noise and
emergency vehicle access.
They also wondered whether
the geology of the land, in a
historic landslide zone like
most of Astoria, could han-
dle the construction of a large
apartment building. Propos-
als for development ranged
from green space up to sin-
gle-family homes.
Déjà v u
For Beth LaFleur, who
owns property just uphill from
the former Central School,
the issue felt like déjà vu . In
1991, she said, the Central
Neighborhood Association
convened because the Cen-
tral School had recently been
torn down, and there was an
effort to rezone the property
to high-density residential, or
R-3 under the city’s develop-
ment code.
LaFleur said neighbors
then declared their opposi-
tion to high-density housing,
and successfully petitioned
the property to be rezoned
from R-3 to R-2, or medium
density. “This is 25 years ago.
We’re saying the same things
tonight, ” she said.
About 10 years ago,
Mitchum was trying to start
an upscale neighborhood at
the site, including histor-
ic-looking homes and others
designed for older residents
aging in place. The project
ultimately went down amid
opposition by neighbors and a
slumping housing market.
Neighbors
complained
Monday that the city’s His-
toric Landmarks Commis-
sion, Planning Commission
and City Hall were largely
rubber-stamping Mitchum’s
project.
See SCHOOL, Page 8A