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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, FEbRuARY 20, 2019
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
More health care is always a good thing
CMH announces plans to
build new Seaside clinic
F
or years on this page we
have been celebrating incre-
mental and occasional huge
gains in health care services on the
North Coast.
For too long, residents had to
travel to Portland or Longview
for services, incurring additional
costs of travel and lodging — not
to mention wear on tear on them-
selves and their relatives.
In recent years, all that’s been
changing.
Our two primary hospitals,
Columbia Memorial in Astoria and
Providence in Seaside, have been
making major gains. We salute
their leadership for seeing needs
and investing the resources to try to
fill them.
Columbia Memorial Hospital will expand
to Seaside.
The latest venture is the
announcement by CMH of a new
urgent care and multi-specialty
clinic to open later this year.
Construction will begin this
summer on the so-far unnamed
Seaside location, with an opening
planned next winter.
In making the announcement,
CEO Erik Thorsen said the clinic
will include primary, specialty,
urgent and virtual care, along with
diagnostics such as imaging and
lab work.
It’s part of a broader plan to
better serve North Coast patients
throughout the region, exemplified
by the opening of its first primary
care clinic in the Warrenton High-
lands shopping center in 2013. An
expanded version of that facility
will take shape shortly when CMH
relocates it to a 8-acre site recently
bought from Clatsop County in the
North Coast Business Park.
CMH’s board and executives
are not resting on their laurels from
the terrific success of the Knight
Cancer Collaborative, a partner-
ship with Oregon Health and Sci-
ence University for chemotherapy
and radiation therapy, that opened
in 2017 next to the hospital’s main
campus in Astoria. They also added
another clinic in the adjacent Park
Medical building in Astoria last
year.
Providence Medical Group oper-
ates a primary care clinic on the
main campus of Providence Sea-
side Hospital off Wahanna Road.
But with continued evidence
of the high demand for all kinds
of health care services through a
recently completed Community
Health Needs Assessment, there’s
ample proof that CMH’s latest ven-
ture will succeed.
The Astoria-based hospi-
tal expanding operations to Sea-
side should not be seen as an issue;
both CMH and Providence pro-
vide quality care. And more facili-
ties mean a choice in provider and
likely shorter wait times. Every
patient would welcome those
enhancements.
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2009
Oregon Attorney General John Kroger wants to stop
the Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas project
from moving forward while court appeals and state per-
mits for the facility are still in the works.
Kroger filed a request Friday with the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission asking the board to
stay the effectiveness of its September approval of the
Bradwood project until the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
rules on the state of Oregon’s challenge and until Ore-
gon issues the permits needed to build the LNG facility.
The Coast Guard has proposed a regulation
that some small boat advocates are concerned
could greatly restrict access to the Columbia
River bar for them.
The proposed rule would allow the Coast
Guard to close and restrict access to as many
as 16 river bars on the Oregon and Washington
coast when certain safety concerns are pres-
ent, designating these river zones as Regulated
Navigation Areas.
The creation of the zones would make
closing or restricting access to the river bars
because of extreme weather a much easier pro-
cess for the Coast Guard, according to spokes-
woman Lt. Cmdr. Emily Saddler. The change
in regulation doesn’t alter when or why the bar
gets closed, she said, but instead is really about
expediting the official procedure the Coast
Guard uses when it does so.
For Oregon Fish and Wildlife commissioners, a visit
to Astoria might have been just what they needed to
understand the importance of commercial fishing to the
lower Columbia River area.
The commission, department staff members and
members of the public met Thursday to tour commer-
cial fish facilities and crab and fish processors.
50 years ago — 1969
Snow in Clatsop County hills still poses a threat of
flooding in lowland streams, Don Leach, district con-
servationist, said Friday after he took readings at four
highway summits.
“Water content of the snow is extremely heavy,”
Leach said, “with each 2½ to 3 inches of snow contain-
ing an inch of water. Normally it takes 10 to 12 inches
of snow to one inch of water.”
Removal of the Job Corps training program
Don Roberts/The Daily Astorian
1969 — Pier 2 suffers extensive damage in collision by Norwegian vessel.
from the Office of Economic Opportunity, a
move in which Astoria has a vital interest, was
announced today by President Nixon.
The president told Congress he was dele-
gating the work of the Job Corps to the Labor
Department.
A 564-foot Norwegian motor ship, the Star Cariboo,
knifed into Pier 2 at the Port of Astoria in dense fog
early today, causing extensive damage to the vessel and
pier.
Port Manager C.E. Hodges estimated damage to the
face of Pier 2 at $200,000. The bow of the Star Cariboo
plowed a furrow in the heavy concrete deck of the pier
about 60 feet from the face.
The Astoria City Council voted Thursday to
join the Clatsop Intergovernmental Council,
(CIC), apparently satisfying one of the federal
government’s requirements for aiding War-
renton in its water system expansion.
Astoria officials had balked at joining the
new council, formerly just a discussion group
called the Clatsop Intergovernmental Com-
mittee, because of a provision that each mem-
ber government would have one vote on set-
ting CIC policies. They felt that Astoria should
have more voting power than the smaller com-
munities in the county.
is the only project comparable to the Warrenton work in
point of progress.
The soil conservationist stressed however that work
cannot be slackened for even a short period. There is
continual danger of the sands beneath the surface being
re-disturbed and beginning a “blow” destructive of all
previous work.
When late May rolls around this year and
Astoria High School’s some 130 graduates
march forward to receive their “sheepskins,”
it will have been 50 years since Mrs. Clara
Barker Franks, a visitor in Astoria for a few
weeks, stood up with her class of three — two
boys and herself — to receive a similar honor.
Mrs. Franks was a member of the class of
1894, second to be graduated from the city’s
first high school, the McClure building (now
torn down) which stood on Franklin Street
between Seventh and Eighth.
75 years ago — 1944
Oregon communities were advised to look to their
airport facilities in preparation for postwar development
of aviation, which will probably see the establishment
of a number of “feeder” lines, Walter Underwood, Asto-
ria Chamber of Commerce secretary, reported upon his
return home Wednesday from the meeting of Oregon
chamber secretaries at Eugene.
“Astoria would be a ‘natural’ for such a feeder line,”
Underwood declared, and recalled that the Oregon
Motor Stages have already applied for a franchise to
establish a helicopter route from Astoria to Portland.
The work of controlling the sand dunes in the War-
renton district has progressed further than any other
dune control work in the United States, with one possi-
ble exception, according to Robert L. Brown, assistant
manager of the regional nursery division of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s soil conservation service.
Speaking last night at the meeting of the Warrenton
dune soil conservation district in the Pacific grange hall,
Brown said that the dune control in Golden Gate park
Dr. B.G. Bailey, of the naval air station, des-
ignated the Columbia River area as one of the
three great malaria breeding regions of the
Pacific coast when he spoke at the Clatsop
County Health Association annual dinner at
Club 13 Thursday night.
The Navy doctor, who has served in the
islands of the South Pacific, discussed tropical
diseases on the home front.
WHERE TO WRITE
• State Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell (D): State Cap-
itol, 900 Court St. NE, H-285, Salem, OR 97301.
Phone: 503-986-1432. Email: rep.tiffinymitchell@
oregonlegislature.gov. Web: oregonlegislature.gov/
mitchell
• State Rep. Brad Witt (D): State Capitol, 900
Court St. NE, H-374, Salem, OR 97301. Phone:
503-986-1431. Email: Rep.BradWitt@oregonlegis-
lature.gov. Web: oregonlegislature.gov/witt
• State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D): State Capitol,
900 Court St. NE, S-209, Salem, OR 97301. Phone:
503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsyjohnson@oregon-
legislature.gov. Web: oregonlegislature.gov/john-
son. District Office: P.O. Box R, Scappoose, OR
97056. Phone: 503-543-4046. Astoria office phone:
503-338-1280
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D): 2231 Ray-
burn House Office Building, Washington, DC
20515. Phone: 202-225-0855. District office: 12725
SW Millikan Way, Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005.
Phone: 503-469-6010. Web: bonamici.house.gov
• U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D): 221 Dirksen Sen-
ate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510. Phone:
202-224-5244. Web: wyden.senate.gov
• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313 Hart Senate
Office Building, Washington, DC 20510. Phone:
202-224-3753. Web: merkley.senate.gov
• Port of Astoria: Executive Director, 10 Pier
1 Suite 308, Astoria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-
3300. Email: admin@portofastoria.com
• Clatsop County Board of Commissioners:
C/O County Manager, 800 Exchange St., Suite 410,
Astoria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.