6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2008
Two pieces of naval antiquity were revealed for public
consumption for the first time since being discovered.
A group of approximately 80 people gathered Tuesday at
the maintenance shop at Nehalem Bay State Park in Manza-
nita to watch the unveiling of the cannons, which were sub-
merged in saltwater and covered with burlap after being
reclaimed Feb. 19.
According to park staff, the tanks will be drained weekly
with more and more fresh water being infused into the tanks
to slowly wean the cannons off their saltwater dependency.
“We have been very fortunate to be involved with two very,
very important artifacts,” said Larry Oswald, a park ranger.
Shelley Parker, interpretive ranger for the park, con-
firmed what has already been circulated — the cannons are
believed to be from the USS Shark. She said there was plenty
of evidence to support this supposition, including the location
descriptions of the wreckage given by the crew of the Shark,
all of whom survived the 1846 wreck that left the cannons on
the beach.
First a new boat, then a new helicopter?
As the Columbia River Bar Pilots await their new
pilot boat Columbia, the lighter, speedier version of
the existing model expected to arrive this spring,
they’re also hoping for state funding that will help
them purchase a new helicopter.
The pilots have requested $5.7 million from Con-
nectOregonII to help them fund a more efficient
version of the helicopter they use to deliver pilots to
inbound and outbound ships on the Columbia River.
50 years ago — 1968
Orville M. Wilmot, President of Terra Mar, a divi-
sion of Sherwood Pacific, announced today the autho-
rization of sale of land for a $30 million recreational
development on the Long Beach Peninsula near Ilwaco.
This 1440-acre development will offer recreation and
leisure living for the vacationer, conventioneer and
senior citizen.
Located on Highway 101 on the Long Beach Pen-
insula, Terra Mar stretches across the entire peninsula
from the Pacific ocean to Willapa Bay. Close to the
large population areas of the Pacific Northwest. Terra
Mar extends across forests and dunes, bounded on one
side by 1 1/4 miles of sandy beach and the surf of the
Pacific ocean ... on the other by 2 1/4 miles of front-
age on Willapa Bay. Between ocean and bay will run a
network of canals, connecting the areas with an inland
lake. Dredging has already started on the complex of
canals.
“We are attempting to look as far ahead into the
future as possible,” said Wilmot. “We are anticipating
a need for helicopter service into our project that will
serve commuters between Terra Mar and Portland and
possibly Seattle. A heliport can be built on top of our
motel, so that people may spend an evening, a day or a
Drawing shows the planned Terra Mar recreational development on the Long Beach Peninsula.
week at Terra Mar.”
One of the major proposed projects will be the con-
struction of a marina complex that will include a luxury
high rise motel that features a gourmet dining room and
lounge. A convention center is also planned that will
accommodate 1,600 people.
Also planned for Terra Mar are paddocks and bridle
paths, sites for permanent mobile homes, condomini-
ums, beach clubs and private homes facing the ocean
on one side and Willapa Bay on the other, along with a
shopping center and an airstrip.
75 years ago — 1943
With nothing less than astonishment,
Astoria food store operators today are surveying
the provisions of the food point rationing system,
under which they will do their merchandising next
week.
“Unbelievable,” was the statement of a repre-
sentative Astoria grocer today when asked what
he thought of the rationing program. “It means at
least a 30 percent cut in our total volume of sales
of rationed and so far un-rationed foodstuffs,” he
added.
Packers on the Columbia River processed a record-break-
ing 309,500 cases of albacore in 1942, received 11,000,000
pounds of the valuable fish and paid fishermen more than
$2,175,000 in the greatest tuna season of all time here.
Thus an industry, which before 1937 was unheard of,
booms into maturity and more firmly fixes Astoria in a posi-
tion of leadership among fishing centers of the Pacific coast.
Albacore were discovered first in 1937, but only an exper-
imental case was packed, and most of the catch that sea-
son was shipped to southern California canneries by rail.
In 1938 an estimated pack of 110,000 cases was put up by
local packers, the Columbia River Packers Association tak-
ing the lead, followed by Columbia Rive Salmon company
and the Sebastian-Stuart company in Washington.
The brief jaunt to the school ration board is
over for Mrs. Astoria housewife. Now before
Monday when canned goods go on sale again, she
must sit down with pencil and point plan chart in
hand to discover just what changes this war time
program will mean in the planning of her daily
menus.
The first juggling of 14’s, 16’s and 32’s together
to reach the precious 48 point allowance per person
brings the keen realization that now it’s a question
of what a family can’t have, rather than what it can.
Aside from baby food, which takes only one point,
and sauerkraut (liberty cabbage of World War I)
assessed at five or eight points depending on size of
can, a rare taste of most of the familiar canned fruits
and vegetables will be all that’s allowed.
For instance, if a married couple with 96 points
to spend, is accustomed to tomato or grapefruit
juice for breakfast, they’ll either have to change
this dietary habit or else spend all of their coupons
in this way. Four of the large (2 lb. 14 oz.) cans of
tomato juice would take more than the quota or 128
points, while four cans of grapefruit juice takes 92.
If this couple depends greatly upon canned soups for
a hurried lunch or evening snack, the quota would
allow five cans of soup (at six points each), two cans
of green beans, two cans of corn and one can of
grapefruit.
GUEST COLUMN
A new county jail is absolutely necessary
I
n a guest column published last week,
Richard Elfering, who identifies as
a mental health advocate, claims the
proposed new jail is utterly unnecessary, and
instead argues Clatsop County should fund a
massive treatment center, the cost of which is
not discussed.
After 25 years I am leaving public office
as your district attorney, so I have no personal
or professional benefit that would accrue
from the county finally having enough jail
beds. I’m weighing in because, as a citizen,
the failure to fund a new
jail will mean our failure to
appear rate will dramatically
increase above the current 33
percent, and worse — more
critically — vulnerable lives
will be put at risk.
This isn’t political
JOSHUA
MARQUIS hyperbole. I invite anyone to
come to court any weekday
at 1:15 p.m. I, or one of my deputies, will be
arraigning in-custody defendants and you’ll
see the court forced to release people accused
of felony domestic violence and other crimes,
even many with lengthy histories of convic-
tions. I’ll be happy to explain what and why
we’re doing what we have to that day.
A jail is not a prison. It has completely
different goals and design and it certainly is
not “only punitive.” A jail is used primarily
as a safe place to hold people not yet tried
for serious crimes who’ve shown they are
either unlikely to appear in court voluntarily
or pose an immediate and serious risk to
victims and the community. The claim that
“the state and nation are trying to get out of
the prison system” makes little sense. Oregon
has no private prisons or jails, nor should it.
It would be a utopian goal to “abolish pris-
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Sgt. Aaron Parks patrols the halls of the Clatsop County Jail.
ons,” and I suppose by extension even jails.
But that would be a massive abdication of
responsibility.
We already spend millions of dollars on
mental health services and while it’s still
not enough (as I have repeatedly publicly
advocated) the idea that we could — or
should — involuntarily detain mentally ill
people to force help on them simply won’t fly
legally. There is no legal way to “briefly hold
and detoxify” someone without due process.
Beyond that it is extravagantly expensive, far
beyond the jail proposed to be adapted from
the recently closed Oregon Youth Authority
facility.
It was hard enough — it took years and
special outside funding — to open the crisis
respite center in Warrenton and that only
offers about a dozen nonsecure beds. In a
better world we’d have a custodial psychiatric
unit — essentially what the writer suggests
— but that is far more expensive, takes far
more staffing and requires a different funding
stream.
Let’s start with our most immediate need
and what we actually can afford. I’d like a
brand-new Jaguar, but I can’t afford it. Few
counties 10 times our size can afford a large
treatment center.
The staff of the jail goes to great lengths to
avoid keeping people whose primary issue is
mental illness, not serious criminal behavior.
We have an elaborate and expensive process
for involuntary mental commitment. We
spend additional millions in Clatsop County
through the Oregon Health Plan. People in
jail are not there because they’re depressed
or addicted — they’re in for burglary, assault
and child molestation.
Oregon, including Clatsop County, has
a much lower incarceration rate than most
of the United States. Jail is used to leverage
cooperation by the 75 percent of those
convicted felons on probation. At 60-bed
maximum capacity, our jail is at about 30
percent of what the judges need. More impor-
tantly, nobody in Oregon — even someone in
“full psychosis” — can be detained without a
lawyer and a hearing.
Voters have turned down two previous
jail bonds that would have required entirely
new construction. This proposal about to
be discussed on March 14 at the county
commission uses an existing facility and will
be partly funded by county timber revenues.
Let’s not sink the jail proposal before it’s
even proposed.
Come to the county commission meeting at
6 p.m. March 14 at the Judge Guy Boyington
Building in Astoria to hear what we have to
say about the proposal to relocate the county
jail to a larger facility in Warrenton. We
desperately need more jail beds, which would
be accomplished much more economically by
this than any other plan.
Joshua Marquis is the Clatsop County dis-
trict attorney.