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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
Water
under
the bridge
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
Bureau of Commercial fisheries; and Don Johnson,
Seattle, regional director of the bureau.
The small maritime museum assembly room
overflowed with federal and state fishery officials,
representatives of fishermen’s unions and pack-
ers representatives as Crowther outlined a “mas-
ter plan” for future development of the fishing
industry.
“There is no overall solution to the fishery prob-
lems,” Crowther said. “We must look at each seg-
ment of the industry since the problems are not the
same.”
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2008
“Hold tight with a leather fist, watch out when he starts to
twist,” a country song goes and so it was Friday and Saturday
at the Clatsop County Professional Rodeo Cowboys Associa-
tion Rodeo, with riders coming from all over the Northwest to
try their luck against broncs, bull and a stop watch.
Amongst those competing for the lowest recorded time in
an event was Jon Englund of Astoria, heading for his son Jay
Englund in the team roping event Saturday night.
“It’s so much fun to be here,” said Englund. “It’s so nice to
see a good crowd.”
Organizers estimated the crowd totaled more than 1,500
Friday and saw about the same number in attendance Satur-
day as well.
Warrenton Fire Chief Ted Ames is worried about
his agency’s ability to protect the public if a lique-
fied natural gas terminal is built in Clatsop County.
Ames knows his department doesn’t have the
resources to handle an LNG emergency right now.
In fact, with 800 service calls a year, he said, the
agency struggles to keep up with day-to-day oper-
ations as it is.
Two Long Beach Peninsula heritage projects are in the
lineup for Washington state money.
The Chinook School gym and the Columbia Pacific Heri-
tage Museum in Ilwaco earned high scores in a statewide com-
petition when the Washington State heritage Capital Projects
Fund advisory panel announced rankings and recommended
distribution of $10 million for historic projects.
50 years ago — 1968
While sportsmen’s groups clamor for further
curtailment of commercial fishing and the gover-
nors of Oregon, Washington and Idaho solemnly
2008 — Bryan Jones, of Elko, Nev., charges out of
the gate aboard War Paint during the bareback riding
competition at the Clatsop County Professional Rodeo
Cowboys Association Rodeo.
confer on how to do something about it, the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers is giving an unusually
graphic example of what is really the matter with
the salmon runs of the Columbia.
The slaughter of salmon caused by construction
of John Day Dam has become so immediately enor-
mous that dead fish are scattered on the banks and
the loss between dams is graphically demonstrated
by the fish counts.
John Day Dam already in a month has killed
more fish than the entire commercial fishery har-
vests in a year. And the ones that the dam kills are
the ones depended upon to reach the spawning
grounds and reproduce the species.
The anti-commercial fishing efforts of the steel-
header associations and the governors seem rather
misdirected and futile when one considers the enor-
mous butchery of fish that this one dam is doing.
Preliminary plans were presented Tuesday night for a
convention-exposition center at Gearhart, a facility that
would be “the only public playground on the coast,” in the
view of county commissioner Hiram Johnson.
Demanding immediate federal action to curb
foreign fishing in U.S. coastal waters and imports of
foreign-caught fish, Northwest fishermen painted a
gloomy picture of the industry’s future Wednesday
at an Astoria hearing.
On the receiving end of a barrage of questions
was Harold E. Crowther, national director of the
Gov. Tom McCall said today there is new hope that the
Columbia River Highway between Portland-Astoria might
be included in the interstate highway system.
He said Rep. Wendell Wyatt, R-Ore., advised him that a
Senate-House conference committee has added 1,500 miles
to the interstate system.
If the Portland-Astoria section is added, it would become
a four-lane freeway.
Wyatt urged the governor and Oregon highway officials
to file an application immediately.
75 years ago — 1943
A careful watch must be kept at the Bonneville
dam next fall if migrating salmon are to be passed
over that barrier, in the judgment of Arne Somela
of the Washington Department of Fisheries who is
in Astoria this week.
With eight units of the power plant now in oper-
ation, control of the gates will be extremely difficult
during the low water period, he says, and this may
change the attraction to the fish ladders. He was at
Bonneville last week and conferred with the U.S.
engineers on the problem.
Somela, who was raised at Ilwaco and who was
with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service before going
to the Washington department recently, has been
assigned to the Columbia River by the depart-
ment. He plans to remain at Bonneville most of the
time during the low water period to watch develop-
ments at the ladders.
To teach recognition and combating of war gases, the
Clatsop County defense council with aid of representatives
from the state defense council will begin a two-day school
at 8 a.m. Saturday in the auditorium of Lewis and Clark
school.
A group of gas experts from the state defense council will
assist in conduct of the school. This Clatsop County school
is the first to be held in the state.
GUEST EDITORIALS
Excerpts from Oregon
newspaper editorials
East Oregonian
on nominee Ryan Bounds
yan Bounds’ career on the federal
judiciary likely came to a sudden end
last week, just minutes before it was
set to begin.
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell abruptly pulled President
Donald Trump’s appellate nominee — who
was born and raised in Hermiston and grad-
uated from Hermiston High School — when
it became apparent that Bounds did not have
enough votes to pass the Senate.
Enough Republican senators — it
only takes two in the closely divided
body — voiced concerns about writings
Bounds authored while an undergrad at
Stanford.
The New York Times reported that Sen.
Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) had been attempting
to persuade Republicans in their cloakroom
directly off the Senate floor that Bounds’
writing was disqualifying and he should be
rejected.
Oregon’s other senator, Jeff Merkley, was
equally strident in the cause of defeating
Bounds’ nomination. Neither senator returned
a “blue slip,” which had been required for a
federal court nomination to proceed.
By now you are familiar with those deeply
immature columns, for which Bounds apol-
ogized and claimed — convincingly, we’d
argue — that they do not represent who he is
as a person or a jurist.
But when you have the razor-thin margins
that Republicans are dealing with in the
Senate — and a Democratic bloc that has
remained steadfast in opposition to many of
Trump’s nominees — even the smallest issue
can grind the whole process to a halt.
It’s unfortunate to see Ryan Bounds’
nomination crash and burn because of a few
opinion pieces he wrote more than 20 years
ago. We argued previously that while the
columns were boneheaded and dumb, most
all of us have done boneheaded things when
we’re 21 years old, and we don’t think anyone
should be judged for all eternity on immature
mistakes.
But we also realize the power — and the
responsibility — of the blue slip. As we go
through this political movement of anarchic
upheaval, we must hold onto our time-hon-
ored norms and protect them at all costs.
The ability of home-state senators to have
outsized sway is an important one, and should
be respected by everyone who supports local
control in federal decisions. Sure, the process
can be twisted to be partisan and petty — and
that may be the case here. But the principle is
crucial.
R
Albany Democrat-Herald
on election reform
resident Donald Trump recently pledged
his administration would aggressively
try to prevent Russian efforts to inter-
fere in the upcoming midterm elections in
November.
If Trump is serious about trying to find
ways to make U.S. elections more secure,
here’s one terrific way to start: He could take
a hard look at Oregon’s vote-by-mail system.
Oregon’s system tosses a number of hurdles
into the paths of would-be election hackers:
The paper ballots we use are mailed to elec-
tion offices or inserted into secured drop-off
boxes. Results are counted on computers that
are not connected to the internet. By its very
nature, the system leaves a paper trail that can
be audited. It adds up to a system that, while
not foolproof, offers unique challenges to
potential hackers.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon has for
years been pushing legislation to pave the way
for other states to follow Oregon’s lead on
paper ballots. Yet the measure hasn’t gotten
much traction. That’s a surprise: You would
think state election officials would be inter-
ested in at least exploring a system that not
only could foil meddlers but also in Oregon
typically has led to higher voter turnouts than
in other states. Trump’s administration could
encourage other states to explore vote-by-mail
systems.
P
At the same time, the administration could
encourage states to overhaul their election
systems, which can be inviting targets for
hackers: Some estimates say that across the
nation, 10,000 or so local jurisdictions rely on
obsolete or imperfectly secured technology.
Now, we’re not recommending that the
federal government take on a role overseeing
elections; these functions are best left to state
and local governments. (And the fact that
U.S. elections are decentralized offers another
challenge to cyberattackers.) But surely the
federal government can encourage states to
improve their election systems and to help
pay for improvements.
Finally, Trump should resist the temptation
to renew accusations he’s levied in the past
about how widespread voter fraud cost him
the popular vote in the 2016 election. There’s
a reason why the presidential commission he
convened on this issue crashed and burned:
There’s just no evidence of the kind of
widespread voter fraud that would have been
required to steal the popular-vote victory
away from Trump. Besides, as the president
sometimes seems to forget, he won the elec-
tion where it matters, in the Electoral
College.
But revisiting this phony voter-fraud issue
now would run the very real risk that we
won’t focus on an issue that’s very real: The
prospect that the meddling of 2016 was just a
warmup for 2018.
The Eugene Register-Guard
on tolling plan needing
to account for visitors
regonians are nearly as allergic to tolls
as they are to sales taxes. The state
has had no toll roads since pioneer
days and has only two toll bridges, both on
the Columbia River. But tolling will soon
become a bigger part of Oregonians’ lives,
because the 2017 Legislature could devise no
other way to pay for an estimated $1.1 billion
in freeway improvements needed in the
Portland area. As the state seeks to craft an
efficient tolling system there, it should bear in
mind the needs of those outside the Portland
area.
A tolling system for those who drive
Portland’s freeways daily or weekly can
employ an electronic pass system that bills
freeway users based on frequency, time of
day or both. But the tolling system must also
be convenient for people in other parts of
Oregon who visit the Portland area only occa-
sionally. There will have to be an easy way to
buy a day pass — or perhaps the fee could we
waived for the first few uses of the toll roads
within a fixed period.
One day, tolling could be incorporated into
a transponder-based pay-per-mile system that
would replace the current state fuel tax. Until
then, visitors to the Portland area won’t want
to find themselves fumbling for exact change
while waiting in long lines at toll booths.
O