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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2017
Ship: ‘A little drop or two of oil can make a big difference’
Continued from Page 1A
harmful oil, fuel and solvents
into the water.
“There wasn’t ever any
significant spill, but any time
a boat goes down, there is
always some level of sheen in
the water,” Glenn said. “Just
a little drop or two of oil can
make a big difference.”
Workers placed booms
around the boat to keep pol-
lution from spreading. Glenn
also contacted the Coast
Guard and the state Depart-
ment of Ecology, and began
working on finding the own-
ers of the boat.
“We brought in divers on
Saturday evening,” Glenn
said. “They plugged up any
kinds of vents, tried to mini-
mize any leaking coming out
of the boat.”
Coast Guard contractors
pumped the remaining fuel
out of the boat Sunday. Ecol-
ogy officials have taken water
samples, and are testing them
to learn whether the demise of
the Lihue caused any signifi-
cant water pollution.
Glenn said the Lihue II was
a “transient boat,” meaning
that it was traveling between
destinations when it arrived in
Guy Glenn Jr.
A life ring recovered from
the Lihue II.
Guy Glenn Jr. photos
The fishing vessel Lihue II sank at her mooring at the Port of Ilwaco over the weekend.
Ilwaco in mid-November.
Records
from
the
Inter-American Tropical Tuna
Commission show the wood-
hulled boat was built in 1939
by Hawaiian Tuna Park-
ers Ltd. — which eventually
became part of Bumble Bee
Seafoods, based in Astoria.
As of March, the boat
was owned by Stuart Arnold
of Astoria, and registered in
Warrenton, according to fed-
eral records. It appears that
Arnold owned the boat for a
number of years, as he com-
pleted the federal registration
paperwork at least 12 times.
However, the boat may
have recently changed hands,
Glenn said.
“That’s part of the prob-
lem, actually,” Glenn said.
“We’re trying to determine
ownership.”
Authorities are also try-
ing to determine what, if any
insurance coverage the boat
had.
“It’ll be a process, figuring
all that out, and figuring out a
plan to salvage,” Glenn said.
Fishermen told Glenn the
boat appears to have gone
down “pretty quickly”, but no
one knows exactly why.
“When the divers went
down to check everything,
they noticed the wood is not
in good condition,” Glenn
said. “We are not sure about
the integrity of the hull. We’re
still trying to investigate that.
I don’t know if it can be deter-
mined or not.”
Over the coming weeks,
Ecology will continue to
monitor the boat and test
water samples to make sure
it isn’t causing environmental
harm. However, actually get-
ting the boat out of the water
could be a slow, complicated
process.
Commercial fishing boats
are often subject to over-
sight from multiple juris-
dictions and agencies, each
with its own rules and pro-
cedures. Derelict boats are
money-sucking
liabilities,
so owners sometimes let the
documentation lapse into dis-
repair along with the boats,
or offload them through
less-than-official channels.
It can prove extremely diffi-
cult to determine who is actu-
ally legally responsible for a
sunken boat.
Further complicating mat-
ters, removal is expensive. If
the owner of the boat or an
insurance company can’t pay
for removal, it might not hap-
pen. Washington state has a
derelict vessel program, but
it doesn’t have nearly enough
funding to deal with all of
the decaying and abandoned
boats in the state.
Glenn doesn’t know yet
what will happen with the
Lihue II.
“All I can say is we’re still
in that process,” Glenn said.
O’Meara: Oversees
more than 50 people
Continued from Page 1A
“I didn’t think I was wor-
thy,” he said. “You didn’t
come here unless your com-
mand held you in high
regard. I just didn’t think I
was good enough.”
It took O’Meara a year or
two to get his boat-handling
abilities up to snuff for the
school.
“If you’re good here,
you’re the best boat driver in
the Coast Guard,” he said.
O’Meara became an exec-
utive petty officer at Station
Umpqua in Winchester Bay,
and later the officer in charge
of Station Juneau in Alaska.
He then did a tour as the
operations chief for the Coast
Guard Auxiliary in Hawaii,
before being assigned as
commanding officer of Sta-
tion Yaquina Bay in Newport.
As leader of the lifeboat
school, he oversees more
than 50 people, including
Senior Chief Boatswain’s
Mate Jeremiah Wolf, a for-
mer student.
“It’s uncommon to have
former instructors here,”
Wolf said. “It’s a great first-
hand experience.”
O’Meara said Wolf helps
him focus on the school and
turning out the best possi-
ble surfmen, with the help
of eight instructors. They
usually take in nine students
a year, but recently added
another class as the Coast
Guard tries to fill a shortage
in the position.
Being a surfman is tough
on the body and can take
half a decade of training.
O’Meara has had multiple
foot and knee surgeries, all of
which he credited to the chal-
lenges of the profession.
“To be a surfman instruc-
tor is a totally selfless job,”
he said. “You’re not going
out and saving the day.
You’re teaching people how
to save the day.”
O’Meara has 22 years
in the service. His family
remains in Newport while his
son Sean, 17, finishes high
school. Next year, his wife
Summer, a medical assistant,
and daughter Meghan, 14, a
freshman, will join him.
O’Meara is working on
his bachelor’s degree and
hopes to eventually retire to
Alaska to ply calmer waters
as a ferry captain.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Pilings are replaced Monday at the West End Mooring Basin while elsewhere at the facility, a routine dredging opera-
tion was underway.
Dredging: In-water work period ends Feb. 28
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Officers: Both were
raised on Oregon Coast
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Murray was raised in
Astoria, serves in the Air
National Guard and previ-
ously worked on tugboats.
He also studied fire science at
Clatsop Community College.
Winfrey was raised in
Tillamook and also studied
fire science. He is an Army
Reserve sergeant and has
worked as a volunteer emer-
gency medical technician
and firefighter in the Banks
and Tillamook areas.
Spalding joked that
though both Murray and
Winfrey have fire back-
grounds “they made the right
choice” to pursue careers
with the Astoria Police
Department.
In other business, the City
Council …
• Approved an intergov-
ernmental agreement with
the Columbia River Estuary
Study Taskforce for plan-
ning and engineering assis-
tance. The city’s Community
Development Department
has used CREST’s plan-
ning services over the past
decades.
A memo from City Man-
ager Brett Estes noted
that with all the changes
in the department right
now — Estes is serving as
interim director while the
city searches for a replace-
ment for former Commu-
nity Development Director
Kevin Cronin — “there has
been a need for additional
support for staff reports to
the Planning Commission
and for minor administrative
permits.”
CREST will provide up
to 10 hours of planning ser-
vices per week, according to
the agreement. The city will
pay a rate of $60 per hour for
the work.
• Finalized a modification
of city code to allow Astoria
High School students to park
at Tapiola Park. The school
is experiencing increased
demands for student park-
ing and the parking lots on
school grounds are at capac-
ity, Estes wrote in a memo.
City ordinances had prohib-
ited students from parking at
the park. The modified ordi-
nance will now let people
authorized by the high school
to park in the lower parking
lot during regular school
hours. It is up to the school to
determine how it will autho-
rize and permit students to
park at Tapiola.
• Approved a liquor
license for a new bottleshop
set to open on Duane Street,
Bridge and Tunnel Bot-
tleshop and Taproom. Before
the Council voted, Councilor
Zetty Nemlowill declared a
potential conflict since her
husband is one of the own-
ers of Fort George Brewery,
a business that distributes
alcohol and may do busi-
ness with the bottleshop in
the future.
Workers prepare pipe Monday to be moved into place for a dredging operation at the
West End Mooring Basin at the Port of Astoria.
A replacement piling is lowered into place Monday at the Port of Astoria’s West End
Mooring Basin.
The Port of Ilwaco is
a smaller agency mostly
based around a marina.
To maintain that marina,
Ilwaco has a much smaller
hydraulic suction dredge —
a waterborne aardvark that
loosens and sucks up sedi-
ment before piping it away
for disposal.
“We’re always talking
about what we do with our
dredge,” said Guy Glenn Jr.,
the Port of Ilwaco’s executive
director. “We dredged the Port
of Chinook last dredging sea-
son earlier this year.”
Ilwaco’s dredge was
trucked across the Columbia
River on the Astoria Bridge a
couple of weeks ago and low-
ered into the water by Asto-
ria’s boat lift at Pier 3. After
waiting for permits, the crew
received the go-ahead Mon-
day to start dredging, with
Port of Astoria crews provid-
ing support.
John
Demase,
man-
ager of marinas for the Port
of Ilwaco, said his crew
will work in Astoria until
January. The multiyear effort
will start at the northeastern
end of the marina, where a
growing sand bar leaves boat
slips high and dry at low tide.
Ilwaco’s dredge will work
westward toward the Port of
Astoria’s fueling dock, before
heading back to Washing-
ton in January to finish other
dredging projects by the
time the federally designated
in-water work period ends
Feb. 28.
“We’ll be kind of monitor-
ing how things go in Astoria,
and hopefully things will turn
out well, and there will be
other opportunities,” Glenn
said.