ONE DEAD IN
STANDOFF
ARRESTS PAGE 3A
SEASIDE TUMBLES;
LADY FISH FLY
SPORTS • 7A
143rd YEAR, No. 145
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2016
ONE DOLLAR
Oregon LNG may seek state permits again
Department of State Lands hears
concerns from energy company’s foes
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
Within the next few weeks,
Oregon LNG may submit new permit
applications to the Department of
State Lands to build a liTue¿ ed
natural gas terminal and pipeline on
Warrenton’s Skipanon Peninsula,
Bill Ryan, the department’s assistant
director, said Tuesday evening at a
public meeting in Astoria.
The update came during the
department’s informal 4andA
style outreach event held at the Judge
Guy Boyington Building, where
dozens of Oregon LNG’s opponents
— most wearing red shirts and other
antiLNG symbols — gathered
before Ryan, Chris Castelli, a senior
policy adviser, and Sabrina Owings,
the department’s administrative rules
coordinator.
The main purpose of the meeting
was to follow up on a public hearing
the department held a month
ago regarding the rulemaking
surrounding historically ¿ lled lands,
waterway leasing, navigational
access maintenance dredging and
ocean renewable energy.
But the perennial matter of
Oregon LNG’s ongoing efforts to
erect an LNG facility on the North
Coast — and how the Department
of State Lands intersects with the
process — dominated the discussion.
The energy company originally
submitted state land use applica
tions for the terminal and pipeline in
2013 that were deemed incomplete.
The department found fault with the
company’s plans for mitigating the
See LNG, Page 10A
PUTTING
PIER 2 TO
THE TEST
Crabbers
boiling
over pay
Centuryold Port
pilings get thorough
state examination
Jessie’s Ilwaco Fish fails
to make full payments
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Crabbing boats unload on the west side of Pier 2 Tuesday. The Port of
Astoria is asking the state for just over $1.5 million to overhaul Pier 2’s
western dock and replace 35,000 square feet of failing dock.
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
G
ene Leon and Erick
Cain, part of a bridge
inspection team with the
Oregon Department of Trans
portation, bobbed up and down
Tuesday on the incoming tide in
a dingy below the western edge
of the Port of Astoria’s Pier 2.
The two men slowly followed
their colleagues in the cavernous
underside of the pier, marked by
the glow of their LED headlamps
and the cracks of their hammers
banging on each of the thousands
of pilings .
The Port, which makes the
majority of its money on century
old piers, signed up for a state
bridge inspection last summer to
help understand the maintenance
needs of Pier 2, built in 1915. The
bridge inspection crew returned
this week and are slowly making
their way around the entire pier as
high and low tides allow.
See PIER 2, Page 10A
Photos by Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
ABOVE: Erick Cain, front, and Gene Leon, both with the state Department of Transportation bridge
inspection team, check beams for rot and breaks underneath Pier 2 Tuesday. BELOW: Erick Cain,
right, and Gene Leon, both with the Oregon Department of Transportation bridge inspection team,
paddle in a small boat while checking beams for rot and breaks underneath Pier 2 on Tuesday.
By CYNTHIA WASHICKO
EO Media Group
ILWACO, Wash. — Crab ¿ shermen
selling their catch to Jessie’s Ilwaco Fish
Co . say they have been given only a portion
of the money owed to them for the second
year in a row — leaving some more than a
$100,000 short.
Now a number of ¿ shermen are
reportedly leaving Jessie’s to sell their
catch elsewhere. The reason for the stall in
payment has been an issue with the line of
credit coming to Jessie’s owner Don Alber,
according to ¿ shermen who had been in
contact with Alber.
Alber has not responded to multiple
attempts to reach him by phone. Alber runs
San Franciscobased Alber Seafoods, and
bought Jessie’s Ilwaco Fish Company in
late 2013.
Some locals faced the same issue with
Jessie’s last season, when the company
initially paid a fraction of what it owed
¿ shermen before paying the full amount
weeks later.
Even after the payment problems last
season, Al Malchow, who has been selling
to Jessie’s for six years, said he decided
to sell to the company again because he
assumed the backlash against the processing
company last season would keep Jessie’s on
time for payments.
“I honestly thought they would never do
that again,” Malchow said. “They lost a few
boats and people weren’t happy, I ¿ gured
they would get a clue.”
Malchow said the ¿ shing company owes
him about $127,000. As of Thursday, he
received only $35,000 or about 27.5 percent
of the total bill.
Brian Cutting got a call on his boat
letting him know that he wouldn’t be seeing
the full amount Jessie’s owed him, said
his wife, Kim. The couple received about
25 percent of the more than $100,000 the
processing company owed them
Cutting is one of multiple ¿ shermen
taking their business elsewhere. The
couple’s three boats — including a
brand new one launched in 2015 — were
scheduled to go crabbing last week, and
Cutting said they would take their catch to
Ilwaco Landing, a crab buyer that competes
with Jessie’s.
See JESSIE’S, Page 5A
Ilwaco cemetery slides: Graves all accounted for
Repairs could
be expensive
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
EO Media Group
ILWACO, Wash. — On
Monday morning, funeral
home owner Ron Hylton
shook his head as he stared
down into the enormous hole
where the “Fourth Addition”
section of the Ilwaco Cemetery
used to be. A few inches from
his feet, the ragged edge of the
cemetery lawn slumped over
the edge of a sheer dropoff.
Yards below, a headstone
rested in a ¿ eld of mud that
was the color and consistency
of butterscotch pudding.
“We can’t leave this. We’re
gonna have to ¿ x it somehow,”
said Hylton, who is one of the
¿ ve members of the allvol
unteer board that manages the
cemetery. Hylton said he and
the other cemetery caretakers
are actively working to
address the damage caused
by a landslide Thursday.
However, he cautioned that
¿ xing the cemetery could
be a slow, complicated and
expensive project.
“Everyone is
accounted for.”
“What did we have? Six
inches of rain in two days?
It just went down,” Hylton
observed as he surveyed the
pile of mud and rubble. About
a year ago, caretakers noticed
that the ground on this section
of the cemetery had started to
sag, but they did not realize
the change was a sign of
serious trouble.
“We’re not geologists. I
don’t think anybody could
have ever imagined something
like this,” Hylton said. “Did
we have an inkling that this
was gonna happen? No.”
As recordsetting amounts
of rain fell on Thursday, ,
the saturated clay soil along
the southern edge of the
Ilwaco Cemetery suddenly
See CEMETERY, Page 5A
Natalie St. John/EO Media Group
Record-setting rains on Thursday caused a landslide at
the Ilwaco Cemetery. Though the damage looks dramatic,
the slide only uprooted one casket.