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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JULY 11, 2016
Repairs on waterfront may suspend trafic, trolley
City hopes
to avoid
shutdowns
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
Some needed repairs to
wooden bridges at the north
ends of Sixth through 11th
streets may disrupt vehicle
low and Astoria Riverfront
Trolley trips for a few weeks
this summer.
The Oregon Department
of Transportation recently
inspected the timber structures
and determined that the poor
condition may pose safety
risks. The repairs are intended
to keep the bridges at a 3-ton
load limit.
At a special meeting Fri-
day, the Astoria City Council
awarded a $43,031 contract
to OBEC Consulting Engi-
neers to assist in designing the
repairs.
The project is expected to
cost approximately $150,000.
The money will come from the
city’s capital improvement and
Promote Astoria funds.
The state gave Astoria until
Aug. 1 to get the repairs under-
way, though the city is work-
ing with the department to
extend that deadline, since the
design process alone could
take two weeks.
Meanwhile, the Public
Works Department is looking
to hire a contractor to start the
repairs immediately after the
design work is inished.
“We’re in a place where,
if the repairs are not done,
the bridges have to be shut
down due to the safety con-
cerns expressed by the ODOT
bridge engineers,” City Man-
ager Brett Estes said, adding
that the bridges would become
pedestrian-only.
The bridges provide access
to properties and businesses
built on the Columbia River’s
edge. They also support a sec-
tion of trolley tracks that run
east-west along the riverfront.
Nathan Crater, the assistant
city engineer, said he didn’t
know how often, or how long,
the bridges would be closed to
trafic and trolley rides during
the planned 30-day construc-
tion window.
“Really, the goal is to have
zero shutdown time,” he said.
“That might not be achievable.
‘We’re in a place where, if
the repairs are not done,
the bridges have to be
shut down due to the
safety concerns expressed
by the ODOT bridge
engineers.’
City Manager Brett Estes
There might be some minimal
disruptions.”
If there are disruptions, he
said, the construction crews
will try to work strategically to
avoid inconvenience. The city
may prioritize the work so that
most repairs are completed
during the irst two-and-a-half
weeks. The repairs will happen
underneath the bridges.
Estes said the city will keep
the Astoria Riverfront Trol-
ley Association, the Astoria
Chamber of Commerce, and
property and business own-
ers in the area apprised of any
scheduled shutdowns.
City Councilor Russ Warr,
noting the tight time frame,
said “it’s absolutely imperative
that we get moving on this as
quickly as possible.”
‘A balancing act’
Trolley
representatives
expressed concerns about the
repairs taking place during
their busiest time of year.
“August is our main mon-
ey-making month,” Frank
Kemp, the trolley’s mainte-
nance coordinator, told the
council. “We’re hoping to run
as much as possible.”
Jim Wilkins, vice president
of the nonproit trolley asso-
ciation, said, “We have peo-
North Carolina fugitive arrested
after surrendering in Warrenton
Suspected
of murder,
dismemberment
By KYLE SPURR
The Daily Astorian
A 25-year-old man wanted
for murdering a woman in
North Carolina knocked on
the back door of the Warren-
ton Police station Friday night
to turn himself in.
David Isaiah Godwin, of
Newport, North Carolina, told
a Warrenton oficer that the
police were “looking for me,”
and he was wanted for murder.
The oficer found Godwin
had an arrest warrant out of
North Carolina for homicide
and dismemberment and was
listed as armed and dangerous.
According to North Car-
olina media reports, God-
win is accused of murdering
37-year-old Wendy Tamagne
in her apartment Tuesday eve-
ning. Oficers said the woman
was found beaten, strangled,
stabbed, and her body was
dismembered.
Godwin was arrested with-
out incident and booked into
Clatsop County Jail.
A detective from Morehead
City Police Department in
North Carolina was contacted
by Warrenton Police and will
be starting the process to bring
Godwin back to face charges.
Godwin faces no local
charges and is believed to
David Isaiah Godwin
have possibly taken a bus from
North Carolina to Oregon,
according to police.
Monarch listing decision due in 2019
Endangered or
threatened status
could affect
biotech crops
By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Federal wildlife oficials
have three years to decide
whether monarch butterlies
should be protected under
the Endangered Species Act
under a legal settlement with
environmentalists.
The government’s decision
could have implications for
genetically engineered crops
resistant to glyphosate herbi-
cides, which environmentalists
blame for the loss of milkweed
that’s crucial for the monarch’s
survival.
The Center for Food Safety
and the Center for Biolog-
ical Diversity iled a law-
suit against the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service earlier this
year for failing to make a
timely decision whether to list
the species as threatened or
endangered.
Courtesy of Elizabeth A. Sellers/USGS
Environmental groups have settled a lawsuit against the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for not making a final deci-
sion whether to list monarch butterflies as endangered or
threatened within 12 months of finding such a listing may
be warranted, as required by federal law.
Under the terms of the set-
tlement deal, the agency has
until June 2019 to determine
whether Endangered Species
Act protection for the butter-
lies is warranted or not.
The environmental groups
will be entitled to compensa-
tion for their attorney fees as
prevailing parties in the law-
suit, according to the deal.
Unless they’re able to
strike an agreement with the
government as to the total
amount of compensation
within two months, the plain-
tiffs can ask the court to order
a payment.
The Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice may also get three addi-
tional months to make a deci-
sion, depending on whether
the Center for Biological
Diversity iles new lawsuits
related to Endangered Spe-
cies Act deadlines, or obtains
additional remedies in such
litigation.
The agency had found in
2014 that substantial evidence
indicated that a threatened or
endangered listing may be
warranted for the monarch,
but did not make a inal deci-
sion within a year, as required
under the federal law.
Populations of the but-
terly declined roughly 90
percent over the past two
decades, which the environ-
mental groups attribute to the
popularity of glyphosate-re-
sistant biotech crops.
These
crops
have
increased the prevalence of
glyphosate, which is highly
effective at killing the milk-
weed that monarchs depend
on for food at the larval stage,
according to the plaintiffs.
If the species does gain
Endandered Species Act
protection,
environmental
groups may push for federal
requirements that farmers set
aside reserves of non-biotech
crops, reducing glyphosate
usage.
Butterly watchers seek out the litting insects
By DIANE DIETZ
The Register-Guard
EUGENE — Four women
set out in the west Eugene
wetlands to chase the ephem-
eral lashes and lutters of
July-awakened butterlies.
They sought the East-
ern tailed-blue, the ochre
ringlet and — were they to
be lucky — the California
tortoiseshell.
The
comely
insects
skimmed the swaying heads
of dry grasses, wove down
among the stalks, popped up
and turned in the air before
disappearing again, low
down.
“Why don’t you stop and
stay still for a moment so we
can look at you?” retired psy-
chiatrist and volunteer nat-
uralist Jo von Hippel said to
a chocolate brown, common
wood-nymph butterly.
Though the litting creatures
are sometimes hard to follow,
the butterly ties together — as
if by invisible ilament — peo-
ple, landscapes and continents.
The butterly, for exam-
ple, was the subject of high-
level international diplomacy in
Ottawa recently at the so-called
three amigos summit of Mex-
ican President Enrique Pena
Nieto, President Barack Obama
and Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau.
The monarch butterly, Pena
Nieto told the amigos, “is a spe-
cies that, in its pilgrimage, we
can see how our countries are
intertwined.”
The butterly is a genteel
creature. Although a bird will
consume a butterly, a butter-
ly eats naught but the nectar of
lowers — a vegan without an
attitude.
“They’re beautiful and
sweet,” said Kathryn Kemp,
retired mental health counselor
and novice butterly watcher.
Unlike the pursuit of bird-
ing, butterlying takes place at
a civilized hour because but-
terlies don’t come out until
the day warms to at least
60 degrees. “If I can wear a
T-shirt it’s good butterlying,”
said David Hagen, member of
the North American Butterly
Association’s Eugene-Spring-
ield chapter.
Butterly watchers tend to be
gentle people, too. Some prac-
tice catch-and-release, which
allows them to net butterlies,
gently scoop them into a clear
cup, examine them — and then
set them free again.
“I’m sorry we’re disturbing
you,” Kemp said upon liberat-
ing a tiny Eastern tailed-blue.
“You are so cute.”
For some butterly watchers,
even a gentle netting is too dis-
turbing, and they advocate but-
terlying with special binocu-
lars that feature a short focal
point. A picture with a date and
time stamp is enough for verii-
cation that they saw the species.
In the west Eugene wetlands,
the butterly watchers saw three
common wood-nymphs before
they even left the parking lot.
In a half-mile walk, they spot-
ted 39 butterlies belonging to a
half dozen species.
The outing, one of three that
day, was for the purpose of an
annual count, which the orga-
nization compiles and scientists
can use to establish the range of
butterlies and the characteris-
tics of their habitat.
ple come from all over the
world to ride this trolley, and
we know that it’s going to
have to be shut down at some
intervals.”
Crater said the trolley asso-
ciation can join the planning
discussions so perhaps the
repairs can work around the
trolley schedule.
“We’ll work with you guys
to try to minimize disruption,”
Crater told Wilkins, adding,
“It’s a balancing act, and we’re
obviously trying to keep every-
body’s interests in mind here.”
He said OBEC is aware the
situation is dire, and that they
will need to work fast.
Eventually, all of the repair
work will be removed once
the bridges get replaced as
part of the Waterfront Bridge
Replacement Project, which
will be inanced with a $9.5
million grant the city received
in federal bridge replacement
funds through the State Trans-
portation Improvement Pro-
gram. That project is sched-
uled to begin in the fall of
2017.
The immediate repairs “will
be designed to include only
what has been deemed abso-
lutely essential in order to min-
imize the expenditure of funds
prior to the upcoming planned
replacement of the structures,”
according to the staff report.
In the meantime, how-
ever, “these are repairs that
are needed to be able to con-
tinue to keep the 3-ton vehicle
load that’s in place now,” Estes
said.
Waterslide repairs
In other business, the coun-
cil awarded a $12,125 con-
tract to The Pool & Spa House
to replace a broken pump and
failed valves on the Astoria
Aquatic Center’s waterslide.
The popular waterslide
has been closed since June 17
because of the needed repairs.
The Pool & Spa House hopes
to complete the work before
the end of July, said Angela
Cosby, director of the Asto-
ria Parks and Recreation
Department.
Though it might be too
soon to know whether the slide
shutdown has signiicantly
impacted the aquatic center’s
revenue, “June and July are
our busiest months of the year
with school being out,” Cosby
said, “so we have a lot of dis-
appointed kiddos right now.”
Citizen Police Academy
returns to Astoria this fall
The Daily Astorian
Astoria Police are host-
ing the ninth annual Citizen
Police Academy this fall.
Classes will be held every
Thursday evening from 6
p.m. to 9 p.m. from Sept. 15
to Oct. 20.
The academy is open to
community members who
are interested in learning
more about how their local
police department operates.
The goal is to form
and maintain partnerships
between the community and
the police by educating com-
munity members about the
role of law enforcement and
encouraging citizens and
the police to work together,
according to the police.
Participants will learn
about and experience the
day-to-day operations of
the department. They will
tour the department, learn
about criminal investiga-
tions, functions of patrol, see
basic defensive tactics, tour
the jail and have the option
to shoot various department
irearms.
Participants must be 18 or
older. All applicants are sub-
ject to a criminal background
investigation.
An application packet
can be downloaded from
the Police Department sec-
tion on the City of Astoria
website or by emailing Ofi-
cer Andrew Randall at aran-
dall@astoria.or.us.
Applications need to
be turned into the Astoria
Police Department no later
than 5 p.m. on Aug. 22.
Applicants will be noti-
ied by mail if they have been
accepted to the academy.
Cool weather, extra lows are a
boon to Yakima River sockeye
Associated Press
YAKIMA, Wash. —
Several thousand sockeye
salmon could soon make
their way up the Yakima
River, helped along by
cooler weather and a wave
of extra water lowing down
the river.
The Bureau of Reclama-
tion began releasing an extra
6,000 acre-feet of water
from its reservoirs Thursday
and continued the release
through the weekend to boost
the low of water reaching
ish in the lower section of
the river, the Yakima Her-
ald-Republic reported.
Bureau biologist Joel
Hubble said the cool and
potentially rainy conditions
in the forecast are ideal for
sockeye and summer Chi-
nook salmon that have been
waiting in the cooler Colum-
bia River rather than head-
ing up the warm Yakima
River toward their spawning
grounds.
“There’s three or four
thousand sockeye waiting
near Bateman Island,” said
John Easterbrooks, regional
ish program manager for the
state Department of Fish and
Wildlife. “The ish are hid-
ing in cool places, and they
will head up the Yakima if
conditions are good.”
Conditions in the lower
river are frequently a concern
for ish biologists because
the slow-moving water tends
to get too warm in the sum-
mer, making salmon stressed
and sick.
But the extra water isn’t
enough to cool the river on
its own, Easterbrooks said. It
takes almost a day for water
to low from the cool moun-
tain reservoirs to the warm,
slow lower river, and by that
time, it’s warmed up.
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