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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2016 SOUTHERN EXPOSURE 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 Water under the bridge Compiled by Bob Duke From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers 10 years ago this week — 2006 Tom Wilson of Astoria helped represent the western end of the Lewis and Clark Trail at last month’s ceremony in St. Louis commemorating the oficial end of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. Wilson, a fourth-grade teacher at Lewis and Clark elementary School and history re-enactor, was joined by two other western delegates to the Sept. 23 event, which honored the 200th anniversary of the Corps of Dis- covery’s return from its historic trek and brought the 3 1/2 year nation- wide Bicentennial to a close. The federal government can put a liqueied natural gas facil- ity wherever it wants one, the director of the Oregon Depart- ment of Environmental Quality told a group gathered in Asto- ria Thursday. Considering there are four proposed LNG projects on the Columbia River, as well as several plans for natural gas and coal-ired power plants, a member of the Oregon Environmen- tal Quality Commission suggested DEQ look into the collective impact of industrial activity in the region. A unit of four emergency care teams on the North Coast received a state Emergency Medical Service Unit Citation for a cliff-side rescue near Cannon Beach in April. Medix Paramedic Don Thomas was named the state EMS Paramedic of the Year for his role in the incident, as well as his 20 years of patient care. What a whale! A 54-foot-long humpback whale washed ashore on the Long Beach Peninsula about a half-mile south of Klipsan Beach Wednesday afternoon. Onlookers crowded the site Thursday evening. 50 years ago — 1966 The new 17th Street dock was more than 90 percent complete this week, city officials said. It is to be ready for berthing the Coast Guard cutter Yocona by Nov. 1. Still to be completed are a build- ing on the dock, a railway crossing, street light and water line. Council faces problem of finding funds to complete the $60,000 project, officials said. Available money has been exhausted. WASHINGTON – The House today approved a Senate passed bill to extend from 3 to 12 miles the offshore ishing limits off the U. S. coasts. The Angora Hiking club, which for years has explored on foot the woods and mountains of the Sunset Empire, is fully aware of the importance of knowing where one is in the outdoors. So it is appropriate that this organization has given a bronze relief map to the city government, placed it in front of the Asto- ria Column where visitors use it to orient themselves with regard to the large masses of surrounding terrain visible from the column. By coincidence, the House of Representatives passed a bill for a 12-mile coastal isheries protective zone just when a Japanese trawler showed up off our coast, apparently trying to snap up the bottom ish the Russians left. The appearance of this sole Japanese craft is ominous. No doubt it is engaged in research to determine productivity of the ishing banks along the coast, and once ish are found to be there, other Japanese craft will descend like locusts in future years, just as the Russians did this year. 75 years ago — 1941 Construction of 100 homes for defense workers and enlisted personnel on the Tongue Point naval reservation south of the lower Columbia highway in that area has been approved by President Roosevelt upon recommendation of the Defense Housing Coordinator Charles F. Palmer, it was learned today from United Press dispatches. Clatsop County schools near national defense projects are crowded, particularly in the lower grades, it was disclosed today by Ann Lewis, county school superintendent. With an increase in grade enrollment of 42, the Warrenton primary school is in need of more space. There are 28 more pupils in the Lewis and Clark Consolidated school, which has also caused overcrowding. These school buildings were erected to take care of the normal population of their communities. After 15 years of tuna ishing, Capt. William Magellan of San Diego today sailed into the Columbia River as master of his own boat, the new 114-foot tuna clipper Anna M., named after his daughter. The $180,000 vessel was launched at Tacoma two weeks ago and is now on her maiden trip. She will ish for alba- core off the mouth of the Columbia. R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Seaside student leaders Kara Ipson, Lizzy Barnes and Emma Dutcher hope to raise awareness of the tsunami threat. Seaside campus bond slims down in 2016 I By R.J. MARX The Daily Astorian t used to be called the barbershop circuit. When guys hung around in vinyl-covered metal chairs reading Field & Stream. You could be sure that whatever news — and whatever opinions around it — would be fully explored in their entirety, although not always without embellishment. Something went very wrong for Seaside School District bond supporters in 2013. That was the irst go-around in the drive to move three schools — Seaside High School, Broadway Middle School and Gearhart Elementary School —from the tsunami inundation zone to safety. Proposed only six days after the closure of Cannon Beach Elementary School, the bond measure would have created a new 50-acre campus at a location to be determined after the vote. With a substantial turnout in an off-year election, of the 11 voting precincts in the school district, only one, Precinct 40, passed the measure, and it did so by a mere 12 votes; Here’s what I heard in the bar- bershop about that bond: • The proposal was oversized, indulgent and ill-timed. • The school district couldn’t be trusted to stick to a budget. • High property taxes would force residents from their homes. • And don’t they always over- state the risk? Add to that a few more ill-tem- pered comments, personal or otherwise, and you might be plenty lathered up. Dire need The barber shop topic this year — heard from Gearhart to Cannon Beach — is the $99.7 million bond to move Seaside schools out of the tsunami zone. The three schoools were built with an expected lifespan of 45 to 50 years, according to district Superintendent-emeritus Doug Dougherty. Each school building has been used beyond that span — they’re unsafe, deteriorating and ineficient. At Broadway Middle School, students sit in classroom structures with aging utilities, cinder-block construction and walls torn by hori- zontal shearing. Gearhart Elementary school’s gym is riddled with dry rot and “would collapse in an earthquake,” said Dougherty, who has vol- unteered his time to supporting passage of the bond. Leaks are so bad in the 68-year-old school, “It’s pretty much like playing whack-a- mole, where you are pretty sure the leak is not coming directly from the spot it’s leaking from. Often it’s many feet away and trying to track it down is very, very dificult.” At Seaside High School, classrooms are water-damaged and pipes covered with asbestos. Mold ills storage areas. An oil boiler is ineficient and must be “patched together” to remain functional. On rainy days, leaks quickly ill large garbage cans — “everything from slow drips to streams of water.” R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Members of the Seaside School District board considered the word- ing of the bond at their first meeting in September. R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Doug Dougherty speaks with supporters of the school bond at the Seaside Coffee House. It’s one thing to make a decision by choice to enter a burning building. It’s another to be under 18 and told you have no alternative. Then and now In 2013 local residents were unprepared — or unimpressed — by the Cascadia subduction zone threat. In 2013, supporters said the proposed campus would “capture an aesthetic that relects the com- munities within the Seaside School District.” Today there is no talk of aesthetics. No Cadillac plan or gold- plated doorknobs. Proponents are focused on the dire risk and the state of crumbling schools — along with coastal risk, each of the three schools in Seaside’s tsunami zone face criti- cal needs for infrastructure repairs. Barbershop conversation is less about denying the potential tsunami risk, but how to prepare for it. We’ve had a few more years to contemplate the tsunami threat, and as geologist Tom Horning says, “Get our heads out of the sand.” Science is catching up with fears, and it is apparent that our risk for tsunami on the coast is not if, but when. Bonnie Henderson’s book “The Next Tsunami” traced the history of our ecosystem and outlined the severity of our risk. Last year Kathryn Schulz magniied those concerns in a New Yorker magazine piece that won the Pulitzer Prize for noniction writing. New numbers from Oregon State University researchers show that tsunami interval frequency is even greater than previously thought. Property owners would pay $1.35 per $1,000 of assessed property value, as opposed to $1.86 in 2013. Low interest rates work in the dis- trict’s favor. Because of the luck of the draw, Seaside could see further cost reduc- tions. The district is irst in line for an additional $4 million in state-aid lottery funds and considered likely to win them. Instead of a vague, unknown location in the hills, this time the district has a speciic location on 80 acres south of Seaside Heights Elementary School. Better yet, resi- dents don’t have to pay for it — it’s a gift from timber giant Weyerhaeuser Co. The new K-12 campus site plan is modest: showing a new high school, middle school, gymnasium and cafeteria. Main entryways for the middle and high schools are demarcated, as well as roadways, bus drop-off areas, parking and athletic ields. No helipad. No theater. No gold- plated doorknobs. The catch: The funds are contin- gent on the district passing the bond. The next generation Even if lifelong residents can’t be persuaded, a new generation can. They’re taking the lead. In 2015 Seaside High School students founded the “Don’t Catch This Wave” campaign. They shared their compelling per- sonal statements on the web, social media, to students, faculty, legislators in the state and beyond. This year the torch is carried by a new class of motivated students, among them, Seaside City Council student representative Lizzy Barnes and Associated Student Body co-presidents Emma Dutcher and Kara Ipson. The school bond is foremost on their minds. “Think about the children,” Barnes said. “Think about the future and beyond yourselves,” Dutcher added. “It might not affect us graduating, but it will affect those coming up.” My barbershop comment: It’s one thing to make a decision by choice to enter a burning building. It’s another to be under 18 and told you have no alternative. R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori- an’s South County reporter and edi- tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette.
