DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2017
144TH YEAR, NO. 153
ONE DOLLAR
LADY WARRIORS EARN
THIRD-STRAIGHT
WIN
SPORTS • 12A
Tyla Little, the
team’s leading
scorer with
17 points.
DETOX
LACK OF LOCAL OPTIONS AN OBSTACLE TO RECOVERY
ODOT
culture
lacks
vision
$1 million audit fi nds
lack of accountability
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
A single room awaits a new patient at Bridge to Pathways detox center in St. Helens.
By DERRICK DePLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
D
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Amy Baker is the executive director at
Clatsop Behavioral Healthcare. “The
difficulty with addiction and substance
abuse is that people have windows of
readiness to be willing to seek treat-
ment,” she said. “And if it’s really hard
to get them into the services that they
need, then you often lose that window
of opportunity.”
octors and nurses at Columbia Memo-
rial Hospital can treat acute condi-
tions and symptoms of chronic drug
or alcohol abuse, but patients who need to go
through the painful withdrawal of detoxifi ca-
tion get a card with a list of local rehabilita-
tion facilities.
The closest medical detox center on the
list is in St. Helens, 66 miles away in Colum-
bia County.
The lack of local detox options can be an
obstacle to recovery, a gap in the health care
network that can keep people — especially
those on public insurance and the uninsured
— trapped in addiction.
At a Clatsop County Board of Commis-
sioners meeting in December, Commis-
sioner Lianne Thompson asked Amy Baker,
the executive director of Clatsop Behavioral
Healthcare, to describe an unmet need. Bak-
er’s thought was detox.
“Outpatient services for substance abuse
can be really effective, but if somebody’s
got dependency, they’ve got to get clean and
sober fi rst in order for those services to really
work,” she said in an interview.
Baker suspects a fair number of people
end up doing detox in jail or at hospitals, but
that is not the same as medically supervised
withdrawal with specialists who understand
the process. “It is pretty much St. Helens, pro-
grams in Portland, or people end up doing it
on their own,” she said.
See DETOX, Page 11A
‘We’re specialized in detoxing them’
St. Helens center
is a resource for
Clatsop County
By DERRICK DePLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
ST. HELENS — The base-
ment rooms of a medical detox cen-
ter may seem like a universe away
from the world of Harry Potter and
Harvard. The message on the bulle-
tin board Monday afternoon, drawn
in red marker, brought them closer
together: “Rock bottom became the
solid foundation in which I rebuilt
my life.”
SALEM — A long-awaited performance
audit of the Oregon Department of Transpor-
tation found the agency has a familial culture
that is lacking in dissent and accountability
and needs a clearer and more coordinated
strategic vision for its future.
“There is no uniform clarity at the senior
level, or with governing bodies, on priorities
and the metrics to track achieving them,” the
consultants with New York-based McKinsey
& Co. wrote in a report on their fi ndings.
Yet, overall, the consultants ranked
ODOT’s organizational health as better than
average, compared with other Western states.
The audit is intended to ensure the depart-
ment is prepared to effectively manage a
potential transportation package that state
legislators could approve later this year.
See ODOT, Page 4A
Burn victim
sues butane
hash oil
producers
October explosion
rocked Astoria building
By NOELLE CROMBIE
The Oregonian
Nurses at Bridge to Pathways
often write inspirational notes for
patients going through the agony of
withdrawal. The quote from author
J.K. Rowling’s commencement
address at Harvard in 2008 is about
the fringe benefi ts of failure, a use-
ful lesson that can apply to struggling
novelists as well as the addicted.
Bridge to Pathways, a nine-bed
facility that opened in St. Helens in
2015, is the closest medical detox
option for people in Clatsop County.
The detox center mostly serves
patients on the Oregon Health Plan,
the state’s version of Medicaid, and
concentrates on withdrawal from
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
A construction worker who spent a month
in a Portland burn unit after being injured
in a butane-fueled explosion in Astoria last
fall has fi led a lawsuit against the company
that made the cannabis extract, the property
owner and the company that sold the fl am-
mable gas used to make the product.
Jacob Magley, 34, of Portland is suing 11
businesses and three people for violations of
workplace safety laws. He fi led the suit in
Multnomah County and is seeking $8.9 mil-
lion in damages.
Magley was working as a contractor
in the building when it exploded. The suit
claims the company making the extract
failed to keep butane from fi lling the room.
See CENTER, Page 7A
Nurses at Bridge to Pathways in St. Helens often write in-
spirational notes for patients going through withdrawal.
See LAWSUIT, Page 7A
Cannon Beach Academy locks in school site
Charter school
hopes to open
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
CANNON BEACH — The
Cannon Beach Academy char-
ter school locked in its pro-
posed location at 171 Sun-
set Boulevard for at least one
more year.
The request for a per-
mit renewal, presented at the
Planning Commission Thurs-
day, provides the academy an
opportunity to operate a public
charter school in a portion of
the site’s commercial building.
The proposal calls for kinder-
garten, fi rst and second grades
next fall , growing to kinder-
garten through fi fth grade by
fall 2020. Maximum enroll-
ment would be 75 students the
fi rst year, rising to 150 students
by 2020. Maximum staffi ng
would start at six, reaching a
maximum of 10 by 2020.
“This proposal is similar
to one you approved a year
ago that has since expired,”
City Planner Mark Barnes told
commissioners. “Your con-
ditional use permits are good
for a year unless acted on.
This was not acted on and it
died from inaction, so they are
starting the process again with
a new conditional use permit.”
Revised plans for the char-
ter school were approved by
the Design Review Board
last spring. Board mem-
bers had hoped to open this
school year , but the applica-
tion was delayed when issues
with Seaside School District
arose. “Those issues have been
resolved,” Phil Simmons, the
director of startup operations,
said. “We’re ready to open this
fall. We’re ready to get the per-
mits and open the school.”
He said it was the same
request with some slight mod-
ifi cations to the fl oor plan.
“Everything signifi cant about
the last request is contained in
this request.”
See ACADEMY, Page 4A
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Phil Simmons, director of start up operations; Kellye Dewey,
president; and Barb Knop, treasurer of the Cannon Beach
Academy, at the Thursday Planning Commission meeting.