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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 4, 2017)
THE DECEMBERISTS FRONTMAN TO PLAY IN CANNON BEACH PAGE 2A 145TH YEAR, NO. 25 WEEKEND EDITION // FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 2017 ONE DOLLAR ASTORIA REGATTA AND COAST RIVER BUSINESS JOURNAL INSIDE TODAY Astoria to use chief search to assess police department By KATIE FRANKOWICZ The Daily Astorian Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian Police Chief Brad Johnston talks during an interview with The Daily Astorian last year. Astoria could take six months to fi nd a new police chief after the sudden retirement of Brad Johnston. An interim chief will likely be named within the next few weeks, but the city will take some time to determine what qualities it is looking for in a new leader. City Manager Brett Estes said Johnston’s retirement gives the city an opportu- nity to evaluate the needs of the police depart- ment, which has struggled with staff shortages and rising demands for service. Estes said he requested an independent assessment of the police department several months ago. He has been debriefed on some initial fi ndings, but has not received a fi nal report. See ASTORIA POLICE, Page 6A City nixes Dollar General design Collapsing culverts mar roadways Developers say they will try again for site By KATIE FRANKOWICZ The Daily Astorian Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Mark Buffington, left, and Felix Martinez, right, both with the Oregon Department of Transportation, look out over a site near Warrenton where work on a culvert was recently completed. According to information from ODOT, 30 percent of culverts in northwest Oregon under their jurisdiction are in poor or failing condition. State says 30 percent of tunnels are failing under highways By JACK HEFFERNAN The Daily Astorian hey lie underneath roads, unseen to the naked eye and disregarded by those who drive above. But when culverts fail, they can cause an abundance of issues for drivers on state highways. T The state Department of Transporta- tion estimates that 30 percent of culverts under highways in northwest Oregon are in poor or failing condition, and efforts to replace them before they fail have accel- erated in recent years. Culverts, ranging from a few inches to tens of square feet, allow water to fl ow from one side to the other through a road, trail, or any other obstructive passage- way. State highways in Clatsop County feature 826 of them. By comparison, the roughly 2,000 culverts on county and city roads have The Astoria Design Review Committee denied a permit Thursday night for a Dollar General retail store , but the developers say they are still interested in a location near Mill Pond. “It defi nitely alters our desired schedule,” said Mike Stults of Cross Development , “but it doesn’t discourage us from this project and from this particular site.” Stults said they will likely re submit their application. The developers hope to build a new, 9,100-square-foot building on a triangular lot located near City Lumber Co. and NAPA Auto Parts off Marine Drive on the east side of Astoria. City Planner Nancy Ferber said the devel- opers missed more than 10 requirements out- lined by city development code and further detailed by two overlay zones that affect the property . At the start of the meeting Thurs- day night, Ferber still had recommendations and questions about how Cross Development could address a range of issues, including the building type, windows, wall treatments, roofi ng materials, signage, awnings, height requirements and sensitivity to the location as an entrance to Astoria . In her staff report, she recommended denying the application. See CULVERTS, Page 7A See DOLLAR GENERAL, Page 6A Synthetic drugs present more of a threat Pink was the cause of death in an April case By JACK HEFFERNAN The Daily Astorian Clatsop County Medical Examiner JoAnn Giuliani’s jaw just about dropped on her desk. One night in July, she looked through an internet database that features results of potential overdose death examinations conducted by the state medical examiner’s offi ce. She searched for one particularly curious death that occurred in late April. A young man was found dead on his friend’s couch, but Giuliani was unable to determine which of the mul- tiple drugs he consumed was the primary cause of his demise. The results from the data- base were clear. H e died after swallowing a pill form of the synthetic opiate U-47700, commonly referred to as Pink or pinky. Giuliani was not expecting the result, but a moment she had feared had arrived: the fi rst recorded overdose death from someone in Clatsop County from the synthetic drug. She compares the arrival of this wave of synthetics to public health crises such as meningitis. “I’m scared. I really am, because nobody has seen any- thing like this before, really,” Giuliani said. The medical examiner also believes at least two other recent overdoses may be linked to f entanyl or its derivatives, though those tests are not complete. These sub- stances are more lethal than Pink and 100 times more powerful than morphine. They also can spread more easily, even through open sores in someone’s hand. “I’ve been having some weird overdoses lately that make no sense to me,” Giuliani said. “Something else is going on.” Alternative to morphine Pink, currently manufac- tured in China, was originally developed by a U.S. pharma- ceutical company in 1976. Intended to serve as an alter- native to morphine, it never received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Adminis- tration. Instead, Chinese lab- oratories learned the recipe, manufactured the drug and began sending it to an unregu- lated U.S. market. See PINK, Page 6A August 12-13 Saturday: 9 am- 5 pm Ԃ Sunday: 10 am- 3 pm Clatsop County Fairgrounds You Never Know What You’ll Find At A Collectors West Gun & Knife Show! U-47700, known as Pink or pinky. 92937 Walluski Loop collectorswest.com $ 7
