CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES!
CLASS OF 2019 • INSIDE
146TH YEAR, NO. 231
WEEKEND EDITION // SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 2019
$1.50
Port
invests in
dredging
Project could help
reduce waiting list
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
The Port of Astoria Budget Commit-
tee has approved spending $150,000 on
dredging at the West Mooring Basin,
where the agency faces slips fi lling in
with silt and boats bottoming out.
The west side marina has a waiting list
of more than 100 . But the marina has not
been effectively dredged in more than a
decade. Some slips go dry at low tide,
leaving boats exposed .
Tom Brownson, an Astoria city coun-
cilor and member of the Astoria Yacht
Club, said members provide between
$40,000 and $50,000 to the Port through
moorage, the lease for their clubhouse
in the Chinook Building and other boat
work .
“The tenants that are using this, we
need it dredged,” he said. “We need a
place that is serviceable. I’ve been to other
small ports up and down the coast, and
most of them are in pretty good shape.”
A recent partnership between Asto-
ria and the Port of Ilwaco, Washing-
ton, removed half of the expected sedi-
ment and opened less than a third of the
intended slips, requiring private media-
tion to avoid a lawsuit.
The Port still has to fi nd a fi rm capable
of dredging the marina.
“If we’re looking purely at the num-
bers, it makes sense if we’re going to
make an investment, to make it into the
west basin,” said Will Isom, the Port’s
fi nance director. “It’s been I think one of
the success stories of the Port since I’ve
been here.”
The Port collects $460,000 in annual
moorages at the marina, nearly breaking
even despite having $320,000 a year in
debt payments related to its development,
Isom said.
See Port, Page A7
a cormorant kingdom
grows on the astoria bridge
Thousands of
birds at home
on the span
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
I
Photos by Rex Ziak
Cormorants nest underneath the Astoria Bridge.
Val Winstanley
Francine Reingold
Group plans
endowment to
fund library cards
A path to reading
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
A local library outreach group needs
help starting an endowment covering
library cards for kids outside Astoria,
Warrenton and Seaside.
Former Astoria and Seaside library
directors Jane Tucker and Reita Fackerell
formed a partnership in 2009 with school
districts to ensure every child in Clatsop
C ounty had access to books . Their efforts
focused on kids in unincorporated inland
areas , away from the three public librar-
ies on the northwestern edge.
The Libraries Reading Outreach in
Clatsop County, formed in 2015 out of the
partnership, now provides library cards
to around 1,300 kids out of an estimated
2,900 living in unincorporated areas.
The group relies on donations, but
has an opportunity to create the Francine
Reingold & Val Winstanley Endowment
under the Oregon Community Founda-
tion, named for a late reading teacher and
the wife of the Seaside city manager.
t is near the peak of double-crested cor-
morant nesting season, but federal biol-
ogists have yet to see a single egg on a
Columbia River island that once hosted
the largest breeding colony in North
America.
The opposite is happening just upriver
of East Sand Island on the Astoria Bridge.
A network of cormorant nests cov-
ers portions of the bridge . Photos show
nests with clutches of eggs in a line on
bridge struts and tucked into corners of
the span’s vast understructure.
In mid-May, James Lawonn, avia-
tion predation biologist with the Ore-
gon Department of Fish and Wildlife,
recorded as many as 10,000 cormorants
on the bridge — a major jump from the
3,400 the state counted last year.
“That doesn’t tell us the full story,”
Lawonn said.
Not all of the birds are nesting, he
said, and from his post to the west of the
bridge, Lawonn can only count the birds
he sees on one side.
A more complete count will soon be
undertaken by U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service contractors, who will work by
boat to count active nests on both sides
of the bridge and on the understructure.
However, without any confi rmed
breeding by double-crested cormorants
on East Sand Island so far this year,
Lawonn’s counts are still a signifi cant
data point in trying to understand where
the birds are nesting in the estuary.
“We’re coming up on the time when
we would expect to see peak cormorant
numbers,” Lawonn said. “That there’s no
breeding activity on East Sand Island is
extraordinary.”
No eggs
A cormorant guards a nest under the Astoria Bridge.
See Endowment, Page A8
Around 2,500 double-crested cormo-
rants have been seen on East Sand Island
this year, according to Jeffrey Henon, a
spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers.
The agency manages the island
located at the mouth of the Columbia
River, as well as the Caspian tern and
double-crested cormorant colonies that
nest there seasonally.
“The cormorants have begun con-
structing their nests, but we haven’t
observed any eggs yet,” Henon said.
The agency began hazing and shooting
double-crested cormorants and destroy-
ing eggs and nests on the island in 2015
to control the colony’s numbers. Cormo-
rants dine on fi sh, in particular young
salmon species. T he Army Corps deter-
mined it was necessary to reduce the
number of breeding pairs on East Sand
See Cormorants, Page A7
Eggs occupy birds’ nests under the Astoria Bridge.