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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (May 25, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2018 New hope for stopping shoreline erosion emerges Some success at a Pacific County trouble spot By TOM BANSE Northwest News Network A stretch of shore aptly nick- named “Washaway Beach” in Pacific County, Washington, has long suffered from the most extreme coastal erosion along the whole West Coast. Now, a relatively low-cost defense is raising hopes among property owners and nearby cranberry growers. The rate of coastal erosion on the north side of the Wil- lapa Bay entrance has averaged an astonishing 100 feet or more per year. Over decades, ocean waves have taken a cannery, a lighthouse, school, grange hall, post office and innumerable homes and vacation getaways. But this last year much less land eroded. “There are very few areas this winter that took more than about 20-30 feet of loss,” coastal cranberry grower David Cottrell said. He said a pretty mild storm season helped, as did an exper- imental placement of cobbles. Tom Banse/Northwest News Network David Cottrell stands on an example of dynamic revetment protecting shoreline from further erosion at Washaway Beach. “Small rocks that are actu- ally meant to move, rather than static big rocks,” Cottrell said. “These little ones will rattle around in the waves, take the energy out of the waves.” Cottrell said a combina- tion of donated and drainage district funds paid for place- ment of the broken basalt rock as “soft armor” on several short stretches in advance of the last two winters, in some cases intentionally mixed with driftwood. “In the first storms, we lost 5-10 feet in those areas versus 140 feet alongside. That was something that told us we were onto something,” Cottrell said. Cottrell and the Pacific Conservation District now hope to win a state grant to add what’s technically known as “dynamic revetment” to about 1 ½ miles of vulnerable coast- line. That, they think, will go a long way to retiring the nick- name Washaway Beach and allow the community to be best known by its official name, North Cove. Pacific Conservation Dis- trict Manager Mike Nordin said an erosion control grant application seeking slightly more than $600,000 is pend- ing with the Washington State Conservation Commission. “This bang for the buck is pretty impressive,” Nordin said. Cottrell compared the func- tionality of dynamic revetment to a runaway truck ramp on a mountain highway. “If you’ve got a truck com- ing down a mountain at 100 mph, you can stop it with a rock wall, but it’s going to be ugly and pieces are going to go flying all over the place,” Cot- trell said. “That’s the way the waves hitting these vertical banks behave.” “But if you give it a gradual slope run up and a lot of loose material to rattle around and absorb the energy, that truck will be slowed gradually,” he continued. “If you’re lucky you may be able to drag it down, fix your brakes and drive away.” “That’s kind of what we hope these waves do,” Cottrell added. “They come up gradu- ally and they roll back gradu- ally like you see on a long, flat beach. Rather than come up and have an ugly collision that just keeps driving the erosion.” A potential long-term fix recently won initial funding from the Washington Legis- lature. State Rep. Brian Blake secured $650,000 for Pacific County to do technical and environmental analysis, engi- neering and permit preparation for erosion control structures. Those could include shoreline revetment, groin structures and beach nourishment. A top goal of the state grant is to protect a particularly endangered stretch of Wash- ington SR 105 and an under- lying tide gate. The highway and gate serve as the main line of defense against saltwater encroachment into hundreds of acres of low-lying cranberry bogs, including more than 50 acres farmed by Cottrell. Tax-free grocery initiative closer to state’s November ballot By PARIS ACHEN Capital Bureau SALEM — Petitioners for an initiative to ban any future taxes on groceries submitted nearly 180,000 signatures by Wednesday to place the con- stitutional amendment on the Nov. 6 ballot. If verified by the secretary of state’s office, the number of signatures would exceed the 117,578 needed under statute. Joe Gilliam, president of the Northwest Grocery Asso- ciation, called Wednesday a “major milestone.” “Since statehood, Ore- gon has never taxed grocer- ies, yet politicians in Oregon continue to push for a tax on grocery sales,” Gilliam said. “This initiative will end these efforts and other future efforts by proactively prohibiting the taxing of groceries from farm-to-fork.” Jaime Valdez/Portland Tribune Quy Pham pushes a cart of groceries from Hong Phat gro- cery store on Southeast 82nd Avenue in Portland. Initiative Petition 37 would prohibit local or state taxes on all food for consumption, except for alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. Personal hygiene products were excluded from Amazon: Echo device sent conversation to family’s contact By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press SEATTLE — An “un- likely” string of events prompted Amazon’s Echo per- sonal assistant device to record a Portland, Oregon, family’s private conversation and then send the recording to an ac- quaintance in Seattle, the com- pany said Thursday. The woman told KIRO-TV that two weeks ago an employee of her husband con- tacted them to say he thought their device had been hacked. He told them he had received an audio file of them discuss- ing hardwood floors, she said. In a statement Thursday, Amazon confirmed the wom- an’s private conversation had been inadvertently recorded and sent. The company said the device interpreted a word in the background conversa- tion as “Alexa” — a command that makes it wake up — and then it interpreted the conver- sation as a “send message” request. “At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?”’ the statement said. “At which point, the background con- versation was interpreted as a name in the customers con- tact list. “Alexa then asked out loud, ‘(contact name), right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right.”’ The statement continued: “As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.” The woman, who was iden- tified only by her first name in the news report, said every room in her family’s home was wired with the Amazon devices to control her home’s heat, lights and security system. She said the family unplugged the devices and contacted Amazon after they learned the recording had been sent. Ryan Calo, a law profes- sor who co-directs the Univer- sity of Washington’s tech pol- icy lab, agreed that the sort of glitch Amazon described is unlikely. But it may trou- ble customers nevertheless, he said the measure, based on the results of the campaign’s inter- nal polling, said Dan Floyd, spokesman for the “Yes! Keep Our Groceries Tax Free!” cam- paign. “When we add in other products — even restaurant foods — support started to waiver. Some of those prod- ucts might be viewed as more of a luxury.” Katherine Dreissen, spokeswoman for Our Ore- gon, a labor-backed social jus- tice political group, said the measure is an attempt by major retailers to prevent lawmakers from passing a gross receipts tax. Our Oregon campaigned for a gross receipts tax in 2016, which voters rejected, but law- makers have since discussed passing a more moderate tax to help raise revenue for schools and social services. The measure also would prevent a tax on sugary drinks, something being considered in Multnomah County. Dreissen said the initiative isn’t aimed at protecting con- sumers. “It’s about padding the pockets of Walmart, Safe- way and other big retailers that WANTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA have already spent more than $2 million to qualify this mea- sure,” she said. Most of the $1.9 million the campaign has raised this year came from major national retailers, such as Kroger, the parent company of Fred Meyer; Costco and Albertsons, which merged with Safeway in 2018. While the campaign for the initiative claims restau- rant food could still be taxed, the Oregon Attorney Gener- al’s Office has indicated only restaurant taxes that already exist — such as those passed in Ashland and Yachats — would still be allowed under the initiative. 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