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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 24, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2018 Interior officials keyed in on Cascade-Siskiyou logging benefits Documents reveal internal deliberations Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian Dale Barrett, left, is helping Chris Sherby, co-owner of S&F Land Services, take over his land surveying on the North Coast. New firm takes over local land surveying By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian Dale Barrett, a land sur- veyor who joined HLB & Associates in 1986, has amassed a treasure trove of maps, plans and institutional knowledge from countless North Coast projects dating back to the 1970s. As he approaches retire- ment, Barrett is helping tran- sition HLB’s operations to S&F Land Services, a Port- land-based firm that has taken on his team of coastal surveyors. HLB was originally founded in Manzanita by Colin Handforth and Ron Larson in 1975 as Handforth and Larson Surveying and Engineering. Barrett, previously a county surveyor, joined the two in 1986, creating HLB & Associates. In 2006, the company merged with Port- land-based design, planning and engineering firm Otak Inc. to form HLB Otak. Otak recently gave HLB notice that it would be pull- ing out of the partnership, Barrett said. “They were just not that interested in the coastal mar- ket,” he said. “They want big-city stuff. Their primary focus is Denver, Portland, Seattle.” Otak reached out to S&F, an emerging small business formed in 2016 by Christo- pher Sherby and Matthew Faulkner, a former employee of HLB, about taking over the surveying team. This month, S&F took over all of HLB’s accounts. The company’s survey projects range in size from small residential property line disputes and municipal contracts to large commer- cial projects and the recon- struction of the system of jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River. S&F is able to provide cost-effective surveying locally because of the copious records and institutional knowledge from HLB’s 43-year his- tory, Sherby said. Former employees of HLB have also taken up many positions with local municipalities. “Dale’s been taking me around to introduce me to all the agencies, and every- where we go, it’s usually someone who’s worked for Dale,” Sherby said. HLB had more than 50 employees and offices in Manzanita, Gearhart and Long Beach, Washing- ton, when the merger with Otak occurred in 2006. But during the Great Recession, Otak cut the staff down to fewer than 10 and closed the offices in Long Beach and Manzanita, Barrett said. “All the work is still here,” he said. “The pos- sibility of growth is really good. The struggle is to find the staff.” With a staff of around seven, the company has been inundated with work so far and is looking to add more surveyors on the coast, Sherby said. Like others, it faces a lack of affordable housing that makes it dif- ficult to bring in new peo- ple. But for those who join, Sherby said, S&F provides a high-quality, family wage position. “We’re trying to provide a full, lifetime career,” he said. By COURTNEY FLATT Northwest Public Broadcasting While deciding whether to shrink Oregon’s Cascade-Siski- you National Monument, Inte- rior Department officials focused on the land’s logging potential. The information was revealed in mistakenly-re- leased documents. Conservation groups are frustrated by revelations in The Washington Post that Interior Department officials focused on the logging value and not the biological diversity the monument was designated to protect. Dave Willis, of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council, a conservation group working to protect the monument, said it’s a very important biological cor- ridor, connecting three moun- tain ranges in southern Oregon and Northern California. “It’s a crucial pathway for critters that don’t want to be isolated and have to marry their cousins all the time,” Wil- lis said. He said that connec- tive land bridge needs to be strengthened. President Barack Obama expanded the Cascade-Sis- kiyou National Monument a few days before he left office. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended shrinking Bureau of Land Management The Trump administration may shrink the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. its size, but President Donald Trump hasn’t made a decision yet. Willis wants the monu- ment’s boundaries kept intact. “It sounds like (Zinke is) ignoring not only the science, but the economics as well. Not only ignoring it, but hiding it under a rock,” Willis said. Willis said his group will take legal action if the monu- ment is downsized. “These forests need consci- entious protection, not heed- less degradation,” Willis said. Logging groups say Pres- ident Obama should not have been able to expand the mon- ument. Parts of the expansion included what are known as O&C lands, which were des- ignated by Congress for timber production. “These lands are the life- blood of rural communities in western Oregon,” said Travis Joseph, president of the Amer- ican Forest Resource Council, an industry group. Joseph’s group is part of a lawsuit that argues Obama didn’t have the authority to designate monument land after Congress had estab- lished that same land for tim- ber production. “If a president can do that, what prohibits a president from designating even more O&C lands for a national mon- ument?” Joseph said. Survey: Brown and Buehler tied for governor By PARIS ACHEN Capital Bureau Likely voters appear to be evenly divided in the race for governor between Gov. Kate Brown and state Rep. Knute Buehler, according to the first public results of a poll since the May primary. The random online survey of 770 registered voters, con- sidered likely to cast a bal- lot in the November election, was performed by Gravis Mar- keting, a nonpartisan research firm that has been repeat- edly scrutinized for inaccurate results. Kate Brown Knute Buehler The survey was conducted July 16 and July 17 and was weighted by voting demo- graphics. Gravis reported pay- ing for the survey and gave it a margin of error of 3.5 percent- age points. About 45 percent of those surveyed indicated they would vote for Brown; the same per- centage said they would vote for Buehler. Ten percent of respondents were uncertain. The campaigns for both candidates declined comment on the survey. Patrick Starnes, the Indepen- dent Party of Oregon nominee, and other third-party nominees for governor were not offered as an option, so it’s unclear how undecided and third-party vot- ers could sway the results. The governor’s race was just one of 25 questions posed to the survey participants. Oregon woman reunites girl with toy lion lost on remote hike Associated Press BEND — A little girl who lost her beloved stuffed lion on a hike in the Oregon backcountry was reunited with her favorite toy over the weekend after a community effort to identify her. Hiker Holly Spaman, who recently moved to Bend from Yakima, Washington, ran into Audrianna Flores and her family as they descended Broken Top Trail on July 16 on their way back from a hike to the remote No Name Lake. The distraught 7-year-old told Spaman about her lost stuffed lion, “Kitty,” which had fallen out of her moth- Holly Spaman A small stuffed lion was found along the Broken Top Trail near Bend. er’s backpack unnoticed during the trek, the mother, Erin Allen, told The Associ- ated Press. Spaman didn’t think she’d find the toy in such a vast wilderness, but she kept her eyes peeled and spotted Kitty a few miles later. She didn’t have the fam- ily’s name or number. So she put Kitty on a rock and snapped a photo of the well- loved beige-and-yellow lion in front of jagged peaks of Broken Top Mountain — snow in the background — and posted it online when she got home. “Yesterday late afternoon I met a sweet child on Bro- ken Top Trail to No Name Lake who asked me to keep an eye out for her stuffed ani- mal,” Spaman wrote. “Guess what? I found it! If anyone knows this kiddo, please help us connect.” Seattle OKs new rights for nannies, domestic workers Associated Press SEATTLE — Nannies, house cleaners and other domestic workers in Seattle would gain new labor protec- tions under legislation passed Monday by city leaders. The City Council unani- mously approved a so-called “bill of rights” that ensures domestic workers receive min- imum wage, proper rest, meal breaks and other rights. Eight states have passed similar legislation, including New York, Oregon and Illi- nois. Seattle is believed to be the first city to do so. “The reality is their work makes the work of this city possible,” said City Councilor Teresa Mosqueda, who spon- sored the legislation, adding: “They clean our homes and they clean our yards and they’ve been left out of labor laws.” The ordinance would cre- ate a panel of employers and workers to come up with rec- ommendations on wage stan- dards, retirement and health care benefits, training and other issues. It would also pre- vent employers from keeping a worker’s personal documents. The new rules, which take effect in January, would apply to those working in private homes, such as a nanny, house cleaner, home care worker, gardener or cook. It applies to independent contractors, full- time, part-time and temporary U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said in a statement that she was unhappy that the Trump administration made a deci- sion to “dismiss evidence,” when deciding whether to shrink national monuments. “The fact that the Trump administration places no value on the booming recreation economy that generates over $887 billion annually is no sur- prise to those of us who have been watching their shameful record of exploiting our pub- lic lands over the last two years. This ‘drill at all costs’ approach is wrong for our economy and wrong for the environment,” the Washington state Democrat said. workers and hourly or salaried employees. Mosqueda noted that most domestic workers are women, people of color or immi- grants, and that they have been excluded from federal labor laws that protect other work- ers or that give employees the right to organize. Several domestic workers, some speaking through Span- ish interpreters, spoke in favor of the measure Monday. Some described how they had been victims of wage theft in the past or knew others who were afraid to speak out. They told council members that workers deserve a minimum wage and other protections. For the past year, domes- tic workers have been organiz- ing for better labor protections with support from Working Washington, Casa Latina and the National Domestic Work- ers Alliance. WANTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 Spaman’s friends for- warded her note, which was then passed on to complete strangers as everyone tried to reconnect the girl with her lost lion. The Bulletin, the local newspaper, joined the search and after almost a week of community effort, a very happy Audrianna was reunited with Kitty on Saturday. On Monday, Allen told the AP that her daughter was sleeping — undoubtedly with Kitty — and wasn’t available for an interview. “This has been truly amazing — all of the kind people out there in this world,” Allen said. Gravis has a 67 percent accuracy in calling races, according to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. For example, in January 2016, a Gravis Marketing poll got a Maryland congressional race wrong by 96 percentage points, according to The Fix, a politics blog from the Wash- ington Post. This is the second time that Buehler has attempted to unseat Brown from a statewide elected position. In 2012, he challenged her for the office of secretary of state and lost with 43.2 per- cent of the vote compared with Brown’s 51.3 percent. Earthquake strikes off the Oregon Coast Associated Press PORTLAND — The U.S. Geological Survey recorded a 4.3-magnitude earthquake today in the Pacific Ocean off the Ore- gon Coast. The temblor struck about 125 miles west of Gold Beach. It occurred at a depth of 6.2 miles. There have been no reports of injuries or damage. Experts have said for years that Oregon and the Pacific Northwest are due for a major earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 or higher. Small quakes, like today’s, are fairly common.
