Astoria takes
Molalla to task
Ecola, after
the storms
SPORTS • 4A
PAGE 3A
143rd YEAR, No. 135
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2016
ONE DOLLAR
Library
redo’s
scope
may
shrink
Cost estimates
too high, Astoria
councilors say
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Pedestrians walk by downed trees and sunken earth along the Astoria Riverwalk near the Columbia River Maritime Museum on Tuesday.
Winter storms leave costly mark
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hope for state and
federal help
See LIBRARY, Page 10A
Union fees
vs. free
speech
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
T
he Port of Astoria’s West
End Mooring Basin, usually
calm behind the breakwater,
turned into a wave pool in Decem-
ber during heavy rains and storm
surges.
“These docks here were real-
ly moving,” said Robert Evert, the
Port’s permit and project manager,
who estimated more than $250,000
in damage. “In some of the areas of
the marina, we had 3 feet of dock
movement.”
Since the winter storms and Gov.
Kate Brown’s emergency declara-
tion in Clatsop and 12 other coun-
ties, Evert and others have been
busy tallying the wreckage in the
hopes of compensation by the state
and federal governments.
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gency Management and Federal
Emergency Management Agency
visit to conduct preliminary damage
assessments, checking the damages
claimed by local agencies.
“Every county has a monetary
threshold which, once reached, en-
ables the county to request assis-
tance from the state,” said Tiffany
Brown, the Clatsop County emer-
gency manager. “In Clatsop County
that threshold amount is $3.56 per
capita or about $132,000.”
Even with just the damage at the
Port, she said, the county seems to
have passed the threshold.
The Astoria City Council will
review cost estimates for a new li-
brary and housing project at Heri-
tage Square and could discard design
components that some councilors
feel are unnecessary or expensive.
City planning staff and a consul-
tant have put the cost of the mixed-
use project at between $29.7 million
DQGPLOOLRQEXWWKRVH¿JXUHV
FRXOGIDOOVLJQL¿FDQWO\LIIRUH[DP-
ple, councilors choose not to support
underground parking or streetscape
elements.
The City Council agreed to dis-
cuss cost estimates next week after
a work session Tuesday at the Asto-
ria Public Library where councilors
Oregon labor unions
fear setback in
Supreme Court case
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
pushing and pulling vessels from
their moorings.
“It was blowing so hard that it
literally broke the cleat off the face
of the pier,” Evert said of a broken
tie-up next to the Marine Spill Re-
sponse Corp. barge, the Oregon
Responder. “Those are the cleats
we use to tie up cruise ships.”
On Dec. 11, Evert said he was
called to the Port to deal with a
tug being pushed away from the
pier at low tide by a broken post
underneath. He said the Port still
SALEM — Oregon is one of
more than 20 states that could feel
VLJQL¿FDQW LPSDFWV IURP D 86 6X-
preme Court case that seeks to strip
a longstanding power of public sec-
tor labor unions to collect fees from
workers who decline to join.
The Supreme Court heard oral ar-
guments Monday, in a case brought
by a group of 10 California teachers
who say the mandatory fees trample
on the free-speech rights of workers
who oppose the union’s causes. The
court is scheduled to release its rul-
ing in June, according to the Center
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If the teachers are successful, the
case could reverse a nearly 40-year
precedent the court set in 1977 to al-
low for the mandatory fees.
See STORMS, Page 10A
See UNION DUES, Page 10A
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Damaged pilings at Pier 2 as a result of boats hitting the pier during last month’s storms are shown.
RELATED STORY
Storm damage takes toll at Ecola State Park, Arcadia Recreation Site. Page 3A
Central waterfront
Possibly the hardest-hit agency
during the storms was the Port, one
of the largest waterfront landown-
er’s in the county.
The wave action in the marina
and around the Port’s central wa-
terfront broke and bent upward of
60 wood and metal pilings, Evert
said. A metal piling, used by Evert
to calculate replacement costs, runs
the Port $3,250, leaving nearly
$200,000 worth of pilings needing
replacement.
At the Port’s boat haul-out on
Pier 3, several pilings and a dock
were damaged, along with the
gangway to the underside of the
boat hoist, replaced temporarily
with a ramp of scaffolding boards.
The storms wreaked havoc on
boats tied to Pier 2, with whitecaps
Farm bureau leader calls out feds on burn policy
Similar practice
landed Oregon
ranchers in jail
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
OKANOGAN, Wash. —
It’s “outrageous and hypocrit-
ical” that the federal govern-
ment imprisoned two Oregon
ranchers for a backburn that
got away from them and
burned a little over 100 acres
of public land while federal
and state agencies backburned
thousands of acres of private
land in Okanogan County last
summer and were not held
accountable, the president of
the Okanogan County Farm
Bureau says.
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land security is America’s
ability to feed itself. There
is nothing more important.
America has to stop the war
on agriculture,” said Nicole
Kuchenbuch, a rancher and
county farm bureau president.
“If this nation’s farmers
and ranchers are forced out
of business, America has suc-
ceeded in staging her own
famine,” she said.
“The media tendency is
to turn things into racial or
socio-economic issues and
vilify ranchers as a bunch of
ignorant honkies. It’s import-
ant to realize the American
government is oppressive to
all colors of people and ev-
eryone just wants to be free,
healthy and prosperous,” she
said.
Incidents like ranchers
and militia occupying the
seasonally closed Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge
near Burns happen when
people feel so “abused” by
government that “they feel
they have no other choice,”
Kuchenbuch said.
“I don’t agree with having
a standoff, but they captured
the attention of the United
States,” she said.
See POLICY, Page 10A
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Casey and Nicole Kuchenbuch and her father, Rod Hae-
berle, look up information on a computer in their ranch
house between Okanogan and Conconully, Wash., in Au-
gust. They faced many decisions with loss of 6,000 acres
of grazing land to the Okanogan fire.