COAST RIVER BUSINESS JOURNAL: A TREASURE HUNT
FOR CHERISHED MEMORIES AT HOME ON BROADWAY
147TH YEAR, NO. 7
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JULY 16, 2019
$1.50
#TIMBERUNITY
Different ship, same mission
Movement
fi nds a voice
after cap
and trade
Legislation exposed a
rural and urban divide
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
Photos by Edward Stratton/The Astorian
Brian Schneider, top left, a chief warrant offi cer on the Coast Guard cutter Elm, says hello to his children after almost six
months away readying the vessel for its move to Astoria.
Coast Guard cutter
Elm arrives in Astoria
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
he Coast Guard cutter Elm arrived
in Astoria on Monday to relieve
the Fir and continue the mission
of maintaining the region’s naviga-
tional buoys.
The ship’s crew maintains around
115 buoys in the Columbia River
and along the Oregon and Washing-
ton state coastlines. Yeoman’s work
compared to rescues and drug sei-
zures , maintaining the buoys helps
keep open multibillion-dollar lanes
of commerce along the West Coast .
The Fir and the Elm are among
16 225-foot Juniper-class ships the
Coast Guard rolled out beginning in
the 1990s to replace 180-foot buoy
tenders, including the Ironwood, now
an instructional vessel for Tongue
Point Job Corps Center.
T
LEFT: Chief Warrant Offi cer Cliff ord Mooneyham, engineering offi cer aboard the
cutter Elm, has 20 years at sea. RIGHT: Cmdr. Jason Haag is the lead offi cer on the
cutter Elm.
Moving the vessels around is a
long-term maintenance plan based on
putting the hulls in different environ-
ments, said Cmdr. Jason Haag, lead
offi cer of the Fir since 2017 who is
now at the helm of the Elm. “How
can we make these vessels last 30
years?”
The Elm, commis-
sioned in 1998, spent
the fi rst 20 years
based in Atlantic
The failure of cap and trade in Salem
was a victory for the emerging #Tim-
berUnity movement. Now activists are
using the momentum to keep people
engaged on issues that often divide rural
and urban Oregon.
#TimberUnity stickers have cropped
up across the North Coast and people are
doing grassroots organizing.
On Thursday afternoon, a few dozen
people met at Warrenton City Hall at an
event organized by Oregon Women in
Timber.
Their hope is to start a chapter in Clat-
sop County and educate people about for-
estry and the timber industry.
“We want to work on that education,
getting our faces out there and to get peo-
ple aware of what is going on so they are
not hearing the other side of the story
all the time and believing that to be the
truth,” said Jill Bell, a forest engineer
and the chairwoman of the Lane County
chapter of Oregon Women in Timber.
“We want them to know our truth.”
Many of the people in the audience
wanted to talk about the future of cap and
trade. After the state Senate abandoned
House Bill 2020, which would have
placed caps on industry to reduce green-
house gas emissions, Gov. Kate Brown
said she would use her executive power
to take steps to counter climate change.
See Timber, Page A6
Beach, North Carolina, maintaining
buoys in a more hot, humid, oceanic
environment on the East Coast before
heading for a yearlong midlife over-
haul in the Coast Guard Yard in Bal-
timore, Maryland. The Fir, commis-
sioned in 2003, spent the fi rst part of
See Cutter Elm, Page A6
Nicole Bales/The Astorian
#TimberUnity stickers have popped up on
the North Coast.
Mitchell
criticized
for vote on
climate bill
The cutter Elm, the region’s new buoy tender,
arrived in the Columbia River on Monday after
a 6,200-mile steam from the Coast Guard Yard
in Baltimore, Maryland.
Cap and trade an issue
at Seaside town hall
Lessons from loss
By R.J. MARX
The Astorian
SEASIDE — State Rep. Tiffi ny
Mitchell came to the Seaside Library
on Saturday to present a
legislative update at her
fi rst Seaside t own h all.
While housing, health
care, education and the
environment were at
the top of her legislative
agenda, it was her vote
Tiffi ny
for a cap-and-trade bill
Mitchell
that drew many of the 50
or so in the audience to
hear the Astoria Democrat .
House Bill 2020, which would
have placed a cap on greenhouse gas
emissions to help counter climate
change, passed the state House but
died in the Senate a fter a Republican
walkout and doubts about Democratic
support.
Morgan is a Reiki master
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
hil Morgan fi nds guidance in
the wisdom of a story by Thich
Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist
monk and peace activist, about
washing dishes.
In the story, Hanh refl ects on the
unpleasantness of washing dishes
when he is anticipating the chore
and when he washes the dishes in
a hurry thinking about what he is
going to do afterward. He said that
if he can’t wash the dishes with
P
joy, then he is equally incapable of
enjoying what he does before and
after . However, when his mind is
focused on the present , washing
dishes becomes pleasant, and the
chore becomes a means and an end.
“It’s one of those enlightenment
moments where you realize, I need
to be present right now, not about
what happened or what’s going
to happen,” Morgan, who lives in
Astoria, said. “And it makes life a
lot easier.”
Nicole Bales/The Astorian
See Morgan, Page A6
Phil Morgan volunteers at the Knight Cancer Collaborative.
See Mitchell, Page A6