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