A2
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2019
Helping Hands considers
Wapato for housing center
IN BRIEF
Would convert
jail to space
for homeless
By MEERAH POWELL
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Warrenton Fire Department
A car crashed into the AT&T Store in Warrenton.
Car crashes into AT&T Store
in Warrenton on Sunday
A car crashed into the AT&T Store in Youngs Bay
Plaza in Warrenton on Sunday afternoon, causing sig-
nifi cant damage.
Police say the driver stepped on the gas instead of
the brake.
— The Astorian
DEATHS
Dec. 13, 2019
SHANER, Ruth Lou-
ise, 93, of Seaside, died
in Seaside. Caldwell’s
Funeral & Cremation
Arrangement Center of
Seaside is in charge of the
arrangements.
Dec. 12, 2019
BROWN,
Dennis
Michael, 57, of Seaside,
died in Portland. Ocean
View Funeral & Cre-
mation Service of Asto-
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
ON THE RECORD
Sex abuse
• Roajsha Roven Cal-
houn, 20, was arraigned
Monday for sexual abuse
in the fi rst degree, sexual
abuse in the third degree
and furnishing alcohol to
a person under 21 years
old.
Assault
• Rick R. Escalera,
41, of Bakersfi eld, Cali-
fornia, was arrested Sun-
day on S. Main Avenue
in Warrenton for assault
in the fourth degree and
criminal mischief in the
second degree.
• Bryan Keith Bri-
stow, 54, was arrested
Thursday at the Clatsop
County Jail for assault in
the fourth degree.
• Amber Leanne Wil-
son, 36, of Astoria, was
arrested Friday on Sunset
Beach Lane for assault
in the fourth degree and
harassment.
Restraining order
• Kenneth Jerome
Vanderlit, 42, of Warren-
ton, was arrested Sunday
at the Astoria EcoWash in
Astoria for violation of a
restraining order.
DUII
• Jacob McCleary, 33,
was arrested Sunday at
the Home Depot parking
lot for driving under the
infl uence of intoxicants.
• Matthew Charles
Johnson, 52, of Port-
land, was arrested Friday
on Oregon Highway 103
and U.S. Highway 26 for
DUII, driving while sus-
pended or revoked and
failure to install an igni-
tion interlock device. His
blood alcohol content
was 0.13%.
• John Leslie Tucker,
46, of Rainier, was arrested
Friday on S. Roosevelt
Drive for DUII. His blood
alcohol content was 0.22%.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
TUESDAY
Union Health District of
Clatsop County, 8 a.m.,
Providence Seaside Hospi-
tal, Room B, 725 S. Wahanna
Road, Seaside.
Port of Astoria Commis-
sion, 4 p.m., 10 Pier 1 Suite
209.
Astoria Historic Land-
marks Commission,
5:15 p.m., City Hall, 1095
Duane St.
Sunset Empire Park and
Recreation District Board
of Directors, 5:15 p.m., Bob
Chisholm Community Cen-
ter, 1225 Avenue A, Seaside.
Warrenton City Commis-
sion, 5:15 p.m., special
session on budget, City Hall,
225 S. Main Ave.
Seaside Planning Com-
mission, 7 p.m., work
session, City Hall, 989
Broadway.
Shoreline Sanitary District
Board, 7 p.m., Gearhart
Hertig Station, 33496 West
Lake Lane, Warrenton.
WEDNESDAY
Seaside Tourism Advisory
Committee, 3 p.m., City
Hall, 989 Broadway.
THURSDAY
Seaside Transportation
Advisory Commission,
6 p.m., City Hall, 989 Broad-
way.
Seaside School District
Board of Directors, 6 p.m.,
1801 S. Franklin.
Established July 1, 1873
Circulation phone number:
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Helping
Hands
announced Friday that it is
looking to turn n orth Port-
land’s never-used Wapato
Jail into a mixed-use facil-
ity for people experiencing
homelessness.
Helping Hands Reentry
Outreach Centers operates
emergency shelters and reen-
try program facilities in Clat-
sop, Tillamook, Yamhill and
Lincoln counties. It’s hoping
to do something similar with
Wapato.
Wapato owner Jordan
Schnitzer purchased the
facility from Multnomah
County last year, envision-
ing it as a homeless shelter.
He announced in October
that he planned to demolish
the building unless he could
fi nd funding to support that
vision.
“We decided that it would
be a shame if this was torn
down,” Alan Evans, founder
and CEO of Helping Hands,
said at a press conference
Friday.
Evans, who experienced
homelessness and addiction
for more than 25 years before
founding Helping Hands,
wants to turn the former
prison into the Bybee Lakes
Hope Center — a facility that
would offer support services
from outside partners, an
emergency shelter and a tran-
sitional housing program.
Meerah Powell/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Helping Hands Reentry Outreach Centers founder and CEO
Alan Evans spoke at Wapato Jail in Portland on Friday.
‘WE DECIDED THAT IT
WOULD BE A SHAME IF
THIS WAS TORN DOWN.’
Alan Evans | founder and CEO of Helping Hands
“I’ve been in a couple
prisons in my life and this is
not one of them,” Evans said.
“This is a building. This is an
opportunity, and we believe
that we can make a differ-
ence here.”
Helping Hands’ case
statement on Bybee Lakes
Hope Center estimates oper-
ating expenses for the facility
would be about $1.4 million.
Schnitzer said he esti-
mates the nonprofi t will need
$3 million to $4 million in
donations to get the proj-
ect off the ground. He said
he’d be willing to commit $1
million.
“You need some big
contributions
initially,”
Schnitzer said.
Although Helping Hands’
current operations near the
coast do not rely on any state
or federal funds, Schnitzer
acknowledged that Wapato
is a large facility. He said
his hope would be for com-
munity leaders to recognize
the project’s potential once it
begins to gain donations.
“Here’s a chance for them
to rise to the occasion and to
reach out to Alan (Evans) and
say, ‘Gee, we didn’t think
this thing could work, but by
gosh, if you have an orga-
nization that’s proven itself
and thinks it can, we want
to help,’” Schnitzer said.
“(Multnomah County Chair)
Deborah Kafoury, (Portland)
Mayor Ted Wheeler, county
commission, Metro council,
whoever it is — reach out
and see if we can make this
dream into reality.”
Oregon State Sens. Betsy
Johnson and Lew Frederick
also attended Friday’s press
conference and spoke in sup-
port of the project.
Schnitzer specifi cally said
that no deals were fi nal yet.
“This is just an interim
announcement about a new
program that has high hopes,
high risk, but it’s going to
take a lot of steps and a lot
of things need to go right,”
he said.
Schnitzer said he will
reevaluate the project — and
Wapato’s fate — in the next
few months.
Evans said Helping Hands
will begin to accept dona-
tions for the project through
its website immediately. He
said the nonprofi t will have
a specifi c website for Bybee
Lake Hope Center up in a
few days.
“We’re asking busi-
ness owners who are wor-
ried about the people sleep-
ing in their doorways to
join our team,” Evans said.
“We’re asking politicians.
We’re asking other people to
join together to see if we can
make a difference together as
a team.”
Northwest killer whales, prey shrinking in size
Chinook salmon
continue to
get smaller
By LYNDA V. MAPES
Seattle Times
Hungry young orcas
grow up to be stunted orcas,
new research shows, reveal-
ing that salmon-run down-
turns can have lifelong
effects.
The fi ndings, published
last month in the peer-re-
viewed scientifi c jour-
nal Endangered Species
Research, were based on
aerial photos taken by drone
of whales in both the south-
ern and northern resident
orca populations.
The photos document
just how closely the health
of resident killer whales
is tied to the abundance of
their favorite prey: big C hi-
nook salmon.
Younger whales born
since the 1980s in both the
northern and southern pop-
ulations of salmon-eating
resident orcas are shorter in
length than older whales that
grew up when C hinook runs
were more abundant, the
photos revealed.
It was a signifi cant dif-
ference: The stunted whales
growing up in lean times
were on average nearly
19.5 inches shorter than
older adults, according
to the paper published by
authors from SR3: Sealife
Response,
Rehabilitation
and Research, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration ,
Vancou-
ver Aquarium and Southall
Environmental Associates
Inc., an environmental con-
sulting fi rm.
The fi ndings suggest the
effects of hunger not only
can be lethal, taking out
calves and adults, but also
can have long-term conse-
quences for the condition
of the whales that survive,
said John Durban, author
and senior scientist with
Southall.
“It was shocking; some
of these effects are pretty
big,” Durban said. “The
average difference in size is
a couple of feet.”
The stunted whales actu-
ally were the lucky ones;
some of the others born
and growing up in the same
John Durban/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
A photo of northern resident killer whales taken with a drone above the surface. Images like
this were used to estimate individual lengths and patterns of growth in the population.
time frame didn’t make it at
all. A spike in killer-whale
deaths tracked closely with
a West Coast-wide crash in
C hinook abundance in the
1990s, according to a 2009
paper published in Biology
Letters, by lead author John
K. B. Ford, working then
for Canada’s Department of
Fisheries and Oceans.
While that relationship is
changing statistically, scien-
tists know lack of adequate
prey is affecting southern
residents’ survival. So are
boat noise and pollution.
Scientists also are looking
at inbreeding and disease as
contributors to the decline of
the southern residents.
Northern and Alaskan
resident killer whales have
grown signifi cantly in pop-
ulation even as the southern
residents have declined. The
northern and Alaskan res-
idents have several advan-
tages over the southern res-
idents. They have access to
a wider variety of fi sh runs
and cleaner, quieter water.
They also get fi rst crack
at Washington-origin fi sh.
Many of the C hinook born
in Washington rivers head
north to British Colum-
bia and the Gulf of Alaska,
where they are caught by
fi shermen and orcas before
the southern residents ever
get a chance at them.
The southern residents
were listed as an endangered
species in 2005. Their pop-
ulation goes up and down,
but recently has continued
to decline, and is now at a
30-year low. There are only
73 left.
Meanwhile C hinook are
also shrinking. Jan Ohl-
berger, of the School of
Aquatic and Fishery Sci-
ences at the University
of Washington, and other
authors have documented a
pattern of smaller body size
in C hinook over the past 40
years. Fish today measure
up to 9% shorter than in the
past. Chinook have shrunk
in Alaska. They shrank all
down the coast of Washing-
ton, and clear to California.
Predation by the other
growing populations of
killer whales is shrinking the
fi sh, more than human fi sh-
ing pressure, Ohlberger and
his co-authors determined
in a paper published Mon-
day in the research journal
PNAS.
“It really comes back to
the observation everyone
has, whether you are a sci-
entist or a fi sherman, C hi-
nook have been getting
increasingly smaller, and
size has really decreased
in the last 15 years,” said
Daniel Schindler, profes-
sor in the School of Aquatic
and Fishery Sciences at the
University of Washing-
ton and a co-author on the
paper. Computer modeling
of possible causes identifi ed
whales for the shrinkage
in part because fi shing has
declined even as the popu-
lation of killer whales has
nearly tripled — and whales
are even more size selective
in their catch than fi sher-
men, Schindler said.
Today killer whales are
estimated to consume more
than 2.5 million C hinook a
year, more than fi shermen
catch in the commercial,
recreational and subsistence
fi sheries combined.
Killer whales preferen-
tially target large C hinook
because they deliver more
calories for the hunting
effort. The shrunken C hi-
nook mean orcas have to
work harder to get enough to
eat. Declines in length imply
a reduction in caloric value
of an average sized C hinook
of 30% to 40%, Ohlberger
and his co-authors reported
in the paper.
As orcas and C hinook
shrink, transient killer
whales are doing well.
These orcas travel through-
out the coast, and eat only
marine mammals, including
seals, sea lions, porpoises
and minke whales. All of
those marine mammals have
rebuilt to healthy popula-
tions since people stopped
hunting them, with federal
protection enacted in 1972,
growing in population by
about 4% a year.