A WILD AND
PRECIOUS LIFE
WEEKEND BREAK • PAGE 1C
TOP SPORTS
PHOTOS OF 2017
PAGE 5A
145TH YEAR, NO. 120
ONE DOLLAR
WEEKEND EDITION // FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2017
Oregon to
challenge
FCC on net
neutrality
Several states plan to
file a lawsuit over repeal
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum said she plans to join a law-
suit to challenge the Federal Communica-
tions Commission’s decision to repeal a rule
barring internet providers from blocking or
charging more for to access to one website
over another.
The FCC voted 3-2 Thursday along party
lines to scrap the rule approved in 2015. The
commission’s two Democrats voted against it.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Cheri Lerma, owner of Cheri’s Cafe, grabs a pastry for a customer.
Ellen Rosenblum | Oregon attorney general
PAYING THE PRICE
Delays in federal flood maps leave Cannon Beach
businesses feeling the pinch of high insurance
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
C
ANNON BEACH — For the past
two years, Cheri Lerma of Cheri’s
Cafe & Cannon Beach Cookie has
spent almost $10,000 on flood insurance
she knows she doesn’t need.
As a part of a countywide study by
the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, preliminary mapping in 2014
showed flood hazard zones shrinking by
27 percent in Cannon Beach. The changes
take almost all of downtown out of a zone
that requires mandatory flood insurance.
But the federal government has been
slow to adopt new flood plain hazard
maps, leaving some downtown busi-
nesses like Lerma’s to pay thousands of
dollars in insurance.
A letter of determination, which rat-
ifies the new maps, is scheduled to be
delivered later this month, said David
Ratté, a regional engineer for FEMA.
After the city receives the letter, it will
go through a six-month adoption period
before the maps will be recognized.
“In my mind, I’ve taken a match to
$10,000,” Lerma said. “Everyone knows
I’m not in the zone, but because it hasn’t
been ratified I have to pay for it. Some
bigger companies could withstand this,
but to me, a small business? Paying this
much can knock me out of the park.”
‘WE ALL RELY
ON A FREE AND
OPEN INTERNET.’
Steve Sinkler looks over his inventory at The Wine Shack in Cannon Beach.
Delays
The project to update flooding risks
along the coast started more than seven
years ago.
There are a few reasons FEMA’s
mapping project has faced delays,
Ratté said. Concerns with the draft
coastal analysis in the Columbia River
Estuary, as well as assessments of a
levee in Warrenton, stalled creating pre-
liminary maps. While Gearhart, Seaside
and Cannon Beach raised no concerns
about the maps, Ratté said separating
out these communities from the estuary
would have been costly and logistically
difficult.
See FLOOD MAPS, Page 7A
“The decision today by the FCC to reverse
course on net neutrality will have lasting neg-
ative impacts for our economy and almost
every aspect of our lives,” Rosenblum said.
“We all rely on a free and open Internet, and
we will no longer have an even playing field
if we start to incentivize Big Cable over other
companies.”
The vote came despite calls from state
attorneys general, consumer advocates, tech
executives and even some Republican law-
makers to postpone or cancel the decision.
Rosenblum spearheaded a letter from 18
state attorneys general to the FCC urging
them to delay a vote until investigators could
determine whether fraud was committed in
the FCC comment process.
New York Attorney General Eric Schnei-
derman’s office has been investigating
whether commenters to the FCC on the pro-
posed rule change illegally used the identities
of Americans from around the country to give
feedback on net neutrality.
Schneiderman released new information
Wednesday that his office had identified a
total of 2 million fake comments on net neu-
trality to the FCC using stolen identities.
His office has a search engine where resi-
dents can look to see if their identity was used
fraudulently in comments.
Oregon is one of more than a dozen states
expected to join New York in launching a
legal challenge of the FCC decision.
“I’m proud to stand up with other attor-
neys general and join New York to petition
for review,” Rosenblum said.
Supporters of the rule change argue that it
will benefit consumers by spurring more com-
petition between broadband providers and
cutting internet providers’ expenses.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenwor-
cel, one of the two FCC commissioners who
voted against the rule change, told NPR’s
“The Takeaway” Tuesday that half of U.S.
households have only one choice for a broad-
band provider.
‘Protect our Puffins’ sweatshirts raise money for scientific research
Data could
help explain
bird decline
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
Lisa Sheffield
A puffin on Haystack Rock.
CANNON BEACH —
In July, John Underwood
donated his time and money
to create and sell sweatshirts
with the mission “Protect our
Puffins” embedded on the
front.
The goal was to raise the
profile of and money for the
Haystack Rock Awareness
Program. It was his way of try-
ing to help after hearing how
the tufted puffin population
has declined for the past 20
years.
Almost six months later, the
money raised from the sweat-
shirts — which totals more
than $4,000 — will help fund
research to figure out why.
During a talk Wednes-
day at Cannon Beach Library,
Shawn Stephenson, a wild-
life biologist with the Oregon
Coast National Wildlife Ref-
uge Complex, gave a presen-
tation about the town’s iconic
seabird.
Stephenson is waiting to
hear back from a research
grant that would allow
him and other biologists
to collect blood samples and
study migration patterns more
thoroughly than any other
study done in Oregon in the
past couple of decades. If
awarded, 80 percent of the
money raised for the sweat-
shirts would go to match the
grant.
“Getting that info gives us
more power to get these birds
onto the threatened species
list, where they’ll get more
protections,” Stephenson said.
“There is something going on
here — they’re not just mov-
ing out.”
Detecting the problem
The tufted puffin population
See PUFFINS, Page 7A