DailyAstorian.com // WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2016
144TH YEAR, NO. 54
ONE DOLLAR
Vacation
rental
rules in
the works
Warrenton likely to adapt
Seaside’s regulations
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
WARRENTON — With the Airbnb trend
hitting the North Coast, Warrenton is turning
to Seaside’s vacation rental regulations as a
model for establishing rules of its own.
Last month, the City Commission
directed Skip Urling, the community devel-
opment director, to produce some ideas pre-
scribing how and where short-term vacation
rentals should be run in Warrenton. Que-
ries about such rentals have gone up, but the
development code lacks standards for oper-
ating them.
Urling has said he suspects that an
unknown number of property owners in town
already rent out homes on a short-term basis.
Seaside treats vacation rentals as con-
ditional uses that need approval from city
administration unless the rentals are located
in an area where 20 percent or more of the
structures within 100 feet are also vacation
rentals.
Possible policies
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Bruce “Buck” Nelson from Fairbanks, Alaska, poses for a portrait in his kayak Tuesday at the East End Mooring Basin in
Astoria. Nelson was on the last leg of his journey hiking and kayaking the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.
Ocean in view for adventurer
Urling said Seaside’s vacation rental
requirements could be “fairly easily incorpo-
rated” into the Warrenton code.
Property owners would need to obtain a
business license and pay the hotel-room tax.
Rules regarding sanitation, smoke alarms,
mechanical and electrical features, and other
site safety issues would apply.
A rental property owner would need to
provide enough off-street parking to accom-
modate guests; on-street parking will be
prohibited.
See WARRENTON, Page 10A
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
W
ith a jaunt down the Fort to Sea Trail from
Fort Clatsop to Sunset Beach this morning,
Bruce “Buck” Nelson inished retracing the
steps of Lewis and Clark.
His arrival at the Paciic Ocean marked the end of a
journey more than 3,300 miles and nearly six months
long. The adventurer made his way down the Lewis and
Clark National Historic Trail by foot and kayak from the
conluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in St.
Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River.
“I kind of had it in the back of my mind to do the
Lewis and Clark Trail some day, so I started research-
ing how dificult it would be to paddle up the Missouri,
and I found … some people who had done it,” he said. “I
igured if they did it, I could work hard and do it as well
— an interesting, great, outdoor, epic adventure, which is
what I enjoy.”
Neal Maine/Submitted Photo
A new federal roadmap addresses the
impact of ocean noise on whales and
dolphins.
Feds combat
ocean noise
on marine
mammals
The journey
Nelson started walking March 24 from Camp
Dubois on the Illinois side of the Missouri River near
St. Louis. The Corps of Discovery started its journey
nearby on May 21, 1804. Nelson passed through Mis-
souri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, North
Dakota and into Montana on his way up the Missouri
River, walking the initial 800 miles to avoid danger-
ous currents caused by wing dams, then kayaking the
next 1,500 miles.
See ADVENTURER, Page 10A
Bruce Nelson/Submitted Photo
Bruce “Buck” Nelson reached the Continental Divide at Lemhi
Pass on the Montana-Idaho border Aug. 6 while retracing the
Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail on foot and in a kayak.
‘Son of a Blob’ springs to life in Paciic
Patch of warm ocean
water makes its return
By MATT WINTERS
EO Media Group
LONG BEACH, Wash. — The Blob, a
news-making patch of unusually warm ocean sur-
face water from late-2013 through autumn 2015,
was reborn this month.
The ocean warmed quickly. As recently as July,
“The northeast Paciic off our coast was slightly
above normal, but nothing exceptional,” Univer-
sity of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass noted
Sunday in his popular blog.
By Saturday, some limited areas well off the
coast were 5.4 to 7.2 degrees above normal,
Mass said, while satellite monitoring shows an
See BLOB, Page 10A
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Satellite monitoring on Saturday found a huge area of
warmer than normal surface temperatures in the north-
east Pacific Ocean.
Whales, dolphins use
sound to navigate
Associated Press
The federal government says a new strategy
to address the issue of noise in the ocean will
better protect the safety of marine mammals.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration released its Ocean Noise Strat-
egy Roadmap on Tuesday. The agency says the
roadmap will guide it in managing ocean noise
and its effects on ocean life through the next
10 years.
The roadmap lays out roles for federal
government agencies, researchers, industries
and environmental advocates to play in man-
aging noise in the ocean. NOAA crafted the
plan using more than 85,000 public comment
responses.
Sound plays a key role in the survival of
marine animals and can be caused either by
human actions or the ocean’s natural ecosys-
tem. Whales and dolphins, for example, use
sound to navigate and ind food.
“NOAA has the scientiic and techni-
cal expertise to assess what’s happening with
ocean noise, help identify gaps in knowledge,
and use various tools to alleviate or mitigate
its effects,” Richard Merrick, NOAA Fisher-
ies’ chief scientist, said in a statement. “Our
approach looks for creative and wide-ranging
solutions to ensure the agency is effectively
understanding and addressing how ocean noise
affects the resources placed in our trust in the
coming decade.”