OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
OUR VIEW
Salmon return
amid changing
water conditions
Temps, birds and sea lions
continue to pose obstacles
ate summer’s inlux of returning salmon has inally started in
earnest thanks to recent rainfall, a natural phenomenon that
coincides this year with much interesting isheries news of a
legal and regulatory nature.
For the many around the Columbia estuary who pay attention to
such matters, this week’s good rain was cause for thanksgiving, as
the pulse of fresh water signaled to salmon that the time has come
to rush toward spawning beds and hatcheries. Tuesday’s count of
fall Chinook passing Bonneville Dam reached 32,446, nearly three
times as many as the day before.
Coho, too, noticed the switch to more autumn-like conditions.
This Tuesday, 3,120 adults passed Bonneville, up from 368 just a
week before. The total for the year through Tuesday was 10,876, a
few more than last year on the same date, but far below the 10-year
average of 26,907.
Clearly, salmon are an exquisitely ine-tuned gauge of conditions
in the river and ocean — moving, reproducing and dying in a care-
fully choreographed dance with the seasons.
L
Water temperatures
As the planet marches toward another record-setting year for
heat, warming temperatures in the Columbia River watershed are
ratcheting upward in terms of public concern and agency attention.
Dealing with the issue will become an extremely active new front in
the battle over competing uses for the Columbia/Snake system.
The always informative Columbia Basin Bulletin reported this
week that ive conservation groups are edging toward a lawsuit
against the federal Environmental Protection Agency over the EPA’s
lack of action. Last year, water temps were sometimes far more
above the 68 degree F danger zone for salmon, hot enough to dec-
imate an endangered run of Snake River sockeye salmon. Only 1
percent of the run survived as far as their spawning grounds.
Though litigation is undesirable way of achieving environmen-
tal ends, in this instance the EPA stalled out on inalizing tempera-
ture pollution rules it was on the verge of implementing in 2003. At
times, only a federal court order provides EPA with the backbone to
overcome counter-veiling political pressures.
“We need a comprehensive plan to deal with dams’ impacts
on water temperature, or we may be telling our kids stories about
salmon instead of teaching them to ish,” an attorney for Columbia
Riverkeeper said.
Habitat alternative
In the competition between economic interests and salmon-re-
covery goals on the Columbia, most residents would agree it’s best
when everyone comes away a winner. NOAA Fisheries is helping
achieve this by experimenting with a new variety of mitigation bank
in the Kelso area.
Long familiar as a tool to make up for illing wetlands, this irst-
in-the-region habitat bank allows private developers to buy credits
that Habitat Bank LLC will turn into funds to pay for a restoration
project on the Coweeman River, Columbia Basin Bulletin reports.
This complex multi-agency deal is an admirable way to rebuild
a nice, solid piece of habitat of suficient size to make a noticeable
difference. While developers still have to minimize construction
impacts, in some cases these habitat-bank credits will allow devel-
opment that would otherwise have been unable to overcome habi-
tat-loss objections.
Fish birds, sea lions
Also noteworthy is news that a federal judge will allow contin-
uation of efforts to bring double-crested cormorant numbers into
closer alignment with the Columbia River’s carrying capacity. In
addition, problem individuals of another salmon-eating species,
California sea lions, can continue to be killed for another ive years
by the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, according to a new
decision by NOAA Fisheries.
Both decisions will dismay those who wish wildlife could live in
perfect harmony in the modern world without human intervention.
But most local residents consider predator control to be a responsible
and pragmatic way of keeping the environmental scales in balance,
while safeguarding salmon runs that are nurtured at great expense.
Those tough chum
Finally, it is worth briely noting the inherent durability of our
region’s least appreciated salmon, the chum. Washington State
University research recently found young chum were completely
unaffected by a toxic stew of urban runoff that quickly kills coho.
With white lesh that was unappealing to our ancestors who liked
their salmon the redder the better, chum were deliberately driven
toward extinction in Willapa Bay, but continue to endure both there
and in the Columbia estuary. Their presence is good for the environ-
ment — and they’re good to eat, particularly smoked.
We should appreciate them more.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
New motel plans
cut close to home
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
A
ntoine Simmons and his
wife Rocio want to build a
48-room hotel on the Prom.
The neighbors think it’s too big
and intrusive.
At the end of an August Sea-
side City Council meeting, Coun-
cilor Jay Barber made a plea for
conciliation.
“I’d like to hear everyone come
together to ind ways to make
these plans work,”
Barber said. “You
are good neigh-
bors, clearly. I
challenge you to
work toward a
solution.”
From all accounts, the neigh-
bors — Susan and Dan Calef,
Avrel Nudelman, Antoine and
Rocio Simmons — are good
friends, and spent many a sunset
together enjoying the bounty of a
great view and a beachfront prop-
erty. They came through for each
other in a pinch.
“I am friends with my neigh-
bors,” Simmons told councilors.
“We watch each others’ homes.”
But neighbors do sometimes
go against neighbors, and friends
against friends, especially in the
world of real estate development.
What seems to have started as
a cozy corner of Seaside residents
near the beach and the Prom in
now a matter occupying the agen-
das of the Planning Commission,
which approved a variance for the
48-room Pearl of Seaside, and the
City Council.
Simmons and neighbors laid out
their cases at the council’s appeal
hearing.
For Simmons, it was an opportu-
nity to share his vision for the Pearl
of Seaside, a 48-room motel to be
built at 341 South Prom.
For many in the audience, it
was a chance to vent about a pro-
cess they see as far from a done
deal.
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Front yard of Inn at the Prom. The building would be replaced with
the Pearl of Seaside.
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Seaside City Councilors are tasked with resolving a planning appeal.
Mayor Don Larson, Council President Don Johnson and Jay Barber
listen to testimony Aug. 22.
Hard work pays off
Simmons told councilors he
and his wife, Rocio, “followed a
dream” in 2000 by moving to Can-
non Beach. They purchased and
managed the Blue Gull Inn on
South Hemlock. “We worked there
24 hours a day, seven days a week,
doing everything. It was a labor of
love.”
Their hard work paid off.
In 2003, the Simmonses acquired
the neighboring nine-unit Inn at
Haystack Rock and the couple
formed Haystack Lodging.
They acquired the Edgewater
Inn in Seaside in 2011, transforming
it into the 15-room Inn at the Prom,
Simmons said.
“It was in disrepair,” he said.
“We took it apart, put it back
together and in six months opened.”
In 2014, the Simmonses
acquired the neighboring Gilbert
Inn.
“We were lucky to get it — just
an amazing piece of history,” Sim-
mons said.
The former home of Seaside
founding father Alexandre Gilbert
— built in 1885 and expanded in
1892 — was turned into a roman-
tic getaway, a bed-and-breakfast for
adults. Today it is lovingly main-
tained by the Simmonses.
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Hotel owner Antoine Simmons ad-
dresses the Seaside City Council.
Pearl of Seaside
The Pearl of Seaside, as devel-
oped by David Vonada of Tolovana
Architects, will feature three loors
of lodging with a penthouse capped
by a tower roof and spire.
The need for 51 parking spaces
“is really the nut of all of this,” Sim-
mons said. “If I could build the
property 8 feet from Avrel’s prop-
erty, we wouldn’t be here today,”
he said.
And that’s the problem. “I’m not
opposed to a development,” Nudel-
man said. “I’m opposed to it being
3 feet from my property line. I don’t
know why we have this zoning ordi-
nance if we’re going to go against
it.”
Dan Calef said his grandfather
inherited their duplex home in the
1930s from the photographer Wil-
liam Montag, who built the duplex
as a companion property to a larger
1912 home.
“My sister and I have lived here
every summer of our lives,” Calef,
62, said. “We are concerned about
the size. It will dwarf our property,
completely shade our property, and
be much taller than our house and
put us in a dark, dank hole.”
“I agree, Mr. Simmons does an
outstanding job on his motels and
his properties,” Eldon Wexler, a
builder, said. “But that doesn’t pre-
clude him from doing things under
city ordinance to protect the small
person.”
Some in the audience pointed to
an obvious answer: negotiation.
“There’s a win here,” Seaside’s
Pat Golding said. “It takes a little
bit more money. You have to plan a
little better. The extraordinary cir-
cumstances are, there’s not enough
property. You either get enough
property, or you look for property
elsewhere.”
“Either scale down the project
or pay Mr. Nudelman for the land,”
Marc Golding said.
“I don’t think either Avrel or I
are particularly interested in sell-
ing,” Dan Calef said after the
August meeting.
“We realize we are a small res-
idential unit in a resort residential
area, and can expect to have expect
to have motels around us, but some-
thing smaller we can live with, that
doesn’t tower over us,” Calef said.
Regardless of what happens at
the next City Council hearing on
Monday, “I know we’re going to
remain friends,” Simmons said of
his neighbors. “That’s just the way
it is.”
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s
South County reporter and editor
of the Seaside Signal and Cannon
Beach Gazette.