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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2018
Making her own MLK Day in Manzanita
Tillamook County
resident celebrates
civil rights icon
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
LaNicia Williams
MANZANITA — When LaNi-
cia Williams moved to Tillamook
County a few years ago, it was the
first place she had lived without any
sort of celebration for Martin Luther
King Jr. Day.
“I just didn’t know what to do
with myself. I was used to being a
part of something,” she said.
Williams decided to change
that last year by starting the Ore-
gon Coast Love Coalition, an activ-
ist group that focuses on equity edu-
cation and creating inclusive events
of all religions, races, nationalities
and sexuality. Last year, she pre-
pared a community breakfast with a
focus on racial issues. This year, the
coalition expanded celebrating the
holiday with three days of events,
including a movie with community
dialogue, presentations about civil
rights leaders at the Hoffman Center
for the Arts in Manzanita and a day
of service. More than 40 volunteers
were registered to help build six
different homes around Tillamook
County for Habitat for Humanity.
“Traditionally, Martin Luther
King Jr. Day is celebrated as a day of
service,” Williams said. “We live in
an individualistic society. We forget
that people have needs around us..”
It’s important to Williams to plan
these events, she said, because in a
time where there is an “upheaval of
political and social climate,” peo-
ple need to find what bonds them
together.
“It seems like (the community)
doesn’t have a lot of diversity, but it
does. And it is growing,” Williams
said. “I think it’s time to stop focus-
ing on what separates us and to start
focusing on what bonds us, which to
me is love.”
Part of what inspired Williams to
bring people together comes from
the struggles of feeling different
herself after moving to the coast. As
a black woman in a county that is 84
percent white, Williams noted diffi-
cult conversations with her neigh-
bors about race. Her devout faith
also separated her from her peers,
she said.
“Back in California, I grew up
in church. When I moved here, I
almost lost spirituality, because I
never had lived around a population
where most don’t have a belief in
God the same way I did,” Williams
said. “I had to learn to be respect-
ful of different viewpoints, holding
my truths but not casting down my
opinion upon others. I matured to a
place of listening.”
It’s a lesson she hopes her coali-
tion can continue to teach by incor-
porating new inclusion mentorship
programs through the Tillamook
and Neah-Kah-Nie school districts,
as well as continuing to bring differ-
ent people to the table to talk about
equity issues past just one day of the
year in January.
“You don’t have to agree on
everything to live with each other,
to live in a world of inclusion,” she
said. “To move forward, how do we
get different thinkers in the same
room and find that we have more
commonalities than we think?”
U.S. Coast Guard
A man is hoisted to safety after being stranded at Hug
Point in Cannon Beach.
Coast Guard rescues
man left stranded at
Hug Point by tide
The Daily Astorian
Erick Bengel/The Daily Astorian
Lewis & Clark Fire and Rescue personnel begin dousing a blaze in a second-story apartment complex on Riekkola
Road in Astoria.
Fire damages apartments
in Lewis and Clark
Chief Golightly
will investigate
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
Local
fire
personnel
responded to a blaze in a pair
of apartments on Riekkola
Road in Astoria early Sunday
afternoon. No injuries were
reported.
The fire damaged the only
apartments on the second floor
of a two-story building. The
occupants and building owner
weren’t home when the fire
started. One apartment sus-
tained far more damage, but
neither dwelling is habitable,
according to Lewis & Clark Fire
and Rescue Chief Jeff Golightly.
The lower level — which
includes a space used by
Affordable Towing & Repair
to store vehicles — was mostly
unaffected except for water
that came in as crew members
worked to put out the fire.
Lewis & Clark was joined
by Astoria, Warrenton, Gear-
hart and Knappa-Svensen fire
departments, and Medix. The
call went out shortly after 1:30
p.m., and the fire was extin-
guished around 2 p.m.
“It was starting to run pretty
hard there,” said Golightly,
adding that he was “getting
really nervous” they wouldn’t
be able to save the structure.
Golightly will head the
investigation into the cause.
Justices to hear Washington state
appeal of salmon habitat order
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
SEATTLE — The U.S.
Supreme Court said Friday
it will review a court order
that could force Washington
state to pay billions of dollars
to restore salmon habitat by
removing barriers that block
fish migration — a develop-
ment the state attorney gen-
eral is using to try to persuade
Northwest tribes to settle the
case.
The justices said they’ll
hear the state’s appeal of the
ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in San Fran-
cisco. That court affirmed a
lower court order requiring the
state to fix or replace hundreds
of culverts, large pipes that
allow streams to pass beneath
roads but can block migrat-
ing salmon if they become
clogged or if they’re too steep
to navigate.
The ruling stems from a
2001 lawsuit filed by 21 Native
American tribes and the Justice
Department. Because the pipes
block salmon from reach-
ing their spawning grounds,
thus reducing the number of
salmon, they deprive the tribes
of fishing rights guaranteed by
treaty, the lawsuit said.
Washington state has been
working to replace the culverts
with structures that allow fish
to pass, but at the rate it was
fixing them when the case was
filed in 2001, it would have
taken more than a century to
finish the work, the tribes said.
State Attorney General Bob
Ferguson acknowledged in a
statement Friday that Wash-
ington needs to do more to
restore salmon runs, and said it
shouldn’t take a court order to
get the Legislature to act. But
he said the 9th Circuit’s ruling
went too far, and he hoped the
prospect of a potential reversal
by the Supreme Court would
prompt the tribes to settle.
“Now that the Supreme
Court has accepted review
of the case, I hope that all 21
tribal governments will agree
on a proposal that recognizes
the state’s serious concerns
with the Ninth Circuit ruling
and allows us to continue our
conversations,” Ferguson said.
The state argues that its
treaties with the tribes created
no obligation to restore salmon
habitat. The ruling would
force it to perform work that
wouldn’t benefit salmon, and
would also make the state’s
taxpayers responsible for fix-
ing problems “largely created
by the federal government
when it specified the design
for the state’s old highway cul-
verts,” Ferguson said.
In a statement, Lorraine
Loomis, chairwoman of the
Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission, said the tribes
are confident the justices will
affirm the ruling.
“Instead of continuing to
appeal the culvert case, tribes
believe the state should use
the momentum it has gained
over the past four years to fin-
ish the job of fixing fish-block-
ing culverts, and focus on our
shared goal of salmon recov-
ery,” Loomis said.
In 2013, U.S. District Judge
Ricardo Martinez ordered
Washington state to fix or
replace more than 1,000 cul-
verts blocking access to 1,600
miles of salmon habitat. He
gave the state 17 years to
reopen about 450 of the worst
ones.
The Departments of Fish
and Wildlife, Parks, and Nat-
ural Resources have stayed on
schedule in fixing the culverts
on their land, Loomis said. The
Department of Transportation
would come close to meeting
the court’s deadline if it keeps
up its recent pace, but might
need more money to do so, she
said.
The DOT says that by
the end of next year, it will
have spent close to $200 mil-
lion responding to the injunc-
tion. The agency estimates the
cost of full compliance at $2.4
billion.
By the end of this year,
fewer than 400 culverts will be
left to repair, Loomis said.
“Opening up habitat is one
of the most important and
cost-effective actions we can
take toward salmon recov-
ery,” she said. “We are losing
the battle for salmon recovery
because we are losing salmon
habitat faster than it can be
restored.”
CANNON BEACH — A
man stranded at Hug Point
was hoisted to safety after a
Coast Guard rescue Sunday.
According to Coast
Guard officials, a call shortly
before noon brought the crew
to Cannon Beach after the
stranded tourist called 911
with his cellphone.
An MH-60 Jayhawk heli-
copter from Sector Columbia
River arrived at the scene at
about 12:30 p.m. and hoisted
the man to safety before
landing on a nearby beach.
The man was subsequently
treated by emergency med-
ical personnel from Cannon
Beach.
Cutter Steadfast back in
Astoria after 50-day tour
The Daily Astorian
The Coast Guard cutter
Steadfast is back in Astoria
after a 50-day, 11,000-mile
tour along the Mexican and
Central American coasts.
The crew returned Dec. 24
after stopping five separate
vessels suspected of smug-
gling drugs. Roughly 12,000
pounds of cocaine worth an
estimated $180 million were
recovered on the trip.
“Knowing we stopped
tons of drugs from reach-
ing America’s shores and the
streets of our allied nations
in Central and South Amer-
ica made this deployment
over the holidays even more
rewarding,” said Alain Bal-
maceda, the cutter’s com-
manding officer.
The cutter was also
involved in a search and res-
cue case involving three fish-
ermen stranded 300 miles
off the Mexican coast due to
engine failure. They rescued
the men, who spent 15 days
adrift.
Crew members also
trained with the Coast Guard
Maritime Safety and Security
Team and Navy air crews off
the Southern California coast.
The training included drills in
which Coast Guard members
lowered themselves onto the
cutters from ropes attached to
Navy helicopters.
WANTED
Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber
Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA
Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500
T he D aily a sTorian ’ s
c utest B aBy c ontest
If your baby was born
January 1st &
December 31st , 2017 ,
between
you can submit your
newborn’s picture either
via email at:
classifieds @ dailyastorian . com
or drop by one of our offices in Astoria or
Seaside and we can scan in the photo for you.
Deadline to enter is
Thursday, January 25 th at 5 pm
Entries will be printed in The Daily Astorian
on January 31st.
*Human babies only please!*