DailyAstorian.com // WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018
145TH YEAR, NO. 167
ONE DOLLAR
Ordering a retreat
Civil War re-enactment will relocate from Fort Stevens after 27 years
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The annual re-enactment at Fort Stevens
will not be held this year.
With suspicions they are no lon-
ger welcome after 27 years, organizers
of an annual Civil War re-enactment at
Fort Stevens State Park — the largest of
Port supports
Cannery Pier on
oil spill cleanup
City, county
could follow
By EDWARD
STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
The Port of Astoria Com-
mission passed a resolu-
tion Tuesday to work coop-
eratively in the cleanup of a
costly oil spill at the Cannery
Pier Hotel.
A dilapidated pier next
to the hotel collapsed last
month and damaged a tank
underneath filled with Bun-
ker C oil used to fire the boil-
ers of a former cannery.
The Coast Guard and
contractors deployed con-
tainment booms around the
property, removed the tank
and about 2,200 gallons of
oil, placed peat moss to help
clean surrounding seawalls
and cleaned boats soiled in
the Port’s West Mooring
its kind in the Pacific Northwest — will
relocate.
After years of waiving fees, the park
planned to impose day and camping fees
for each of the roughly 800 re-enactors
as part of a special use permit, organizers
say. They claim the park took five months
to respond to their permit application
when the process typically takes weeks.
“We also felt that the state parks no
longer want us here,” said Earl Bishop,
the group’s chairman.
See RETREAT, Page 5A
SNOW BLAST
Icy conditions close schools, public events
Basin just west of the hotel.
The hotel and the adja-
cent pier are owned by local
developer Robert Jacob, who
bought the property from the
Port in 1999 to develop the
boutique hotel on the site
of the former Union Fisher-
men’s Cooperative Packing
Co. Hotel staff have said they
did not know about the tank,
which has been under the pier
since at least 1921, according
to the Coast Guard.
The Port had purchased
the property from Peter Pan
Seafoods in 1984.
The cleanup costs for the
spill are now close to $1 mil-
lion, said Jim Knight, the
Port’s executive director.
While it’s obvious the
tank was on the property of
the hotel, it will take time for
the Coast Guard to determine
who is responsible and what
is owed, he said.
See PORT, Page 7A
Katie Frankowicz/The Daily Astorian
Snow made driving difficult near Clatsop Community College in Astoria.
Homeless shelter
could open in July
Beds and
outreach in
Uniontown
By KATIE
FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
A new shelter and re-en-
try program for the home-
less in Clatsop County could
open in Uniontown as early
as July.
Helping Hands, which
runs similar facilities across
four counties in Oregon
from its base in Seaside,
will not need to go through
a conditional-use process
with Astoria, Raven Brown,
the nonprofit’s develop-
ment director, announced
Tuesday.
The city determined Help-
ing Hands is taking the for-
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
W
mer Finnish boarding house
on Marine Drive next door
to Motel 6 back to its initial
use, with the same number of
units and parking spaces.
“That’s going to get us
up and running a lot faster,”
Brown told a city homeless
solutions task force at the
group’s third meeting Tues-
day afternoon.
Helping Hands has a
purchase agreement with
Northwest Oregon Hous-
ing Authority, which owned
the property. The sale was
contingent on the nonprofit
obtaining any necessary per-
mits from the city to operate
and on placing the four occu-
pants of the building into
housing.
Helping Hands has given
the occupants up to 90 days
to find new housing. All of
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
ith the exception of Jew-
ell, schools were closed
throughout Clatsop County
this morning as icy conditions set in
after a snow day that wouldn’t quite
start or stop.
A number of Astoria city ser-
vices were also closed, including Lil’
Sprouts and Port of Play. The Astoria
Aquatic Center and the Astoria Rec-
reation Center opened later than usual
at 9 a.m. The Kids Zone at the recre-
ation center was closed. The Astoria
Column gift shop also had a delayed
start, opening from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
A special Astoria School Board
meeting to tour schools tonight has
been postponed until March 7. A
community facility engagement
event at Astoria Middle School
planned for Thursday has been post-
poned until March 8.
A meeting with federal veterans
officials at Clatsop Post 12 American
Legion that had been set for Thurs-
day has been canceled.
Pedestrians cross a slush-covered Commercial Street in Astoria
as snow falls.
See SNOW, Page 7A
See SHELTER, Page 7A
Guns a hot topic at Merkley town hall
More than 100
people gathered
in Seaside
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
R.J Marx/The Daily Astorian
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley greets attendees at a
town hall Tuesday in Seaside
SEASIDE — U.S. Sen. Jeff
Merkley listed gun-control ideas,
including bans on assault rifles and
large magazines, and asked people
at a town hall in Seaside on Tues-
day to raise their hands for each
one they supported.
Nearly all of the more than 100
people packed in the Bob Chisholm
Community Center expressed their
support for each measure.
“It was a forest of arms up, and
only a couple of people opposed to
those measures, and that’s a little
bit of feedback,” the Oregon Dem-
ocrat said after the meeting.
The town hall touched on topics
from health care, the environment,
immigration and tax policy to pres-
idential politics, the Russia inves-
tigation and corporate influence on
elections.
Guns were the most oft-men-
tioned topic, though. Gun control
has again become a focal point of
national discussion following a
shooting at a Florida high school
last week that left 17 people dead.
President Donald Trump, who
campaigned as a defender of the
Second Amendment, has come
out in support of expanded back-
ground checks and has ordered
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Ses-
sions to explore a ban on bump
stocks, which make it easier to fire
rounds more quickly. Bump stocks
were used on guns in a mass shoot-
ing in Las Vegas in October.
While recognizing that some
gun-control measures have bipar-
tisan backing, Merkley — a sup-
porter of such reforms — remained
skeptical about whether any legis-
lation could be passed.
“Well, I’m not yet optimis-
tic even with the president’s state-
ments because the Republican
leadership has to decide to bring
it up. I’m not sure that they will
be willing to do so,” the senator
said. “It’s essentially paralyzed by
See MERKLEY, Page 5A