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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 28, 2020)
B1 THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 2020 THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 2020 • B1 WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE COMPILED BY BOB DUKE From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers 10 years ago this week — 2010 D espite multiple calls to slow down, the Port of Astoria Commission moved ahead with a lease of Pier 1 for log exports Tuesday night. The board voted unanimously to approve a fi ve-year lease of 3.1 acres on Pier 1 to Westerlund Log Handlers of Bremerton, Washington, for $11,208 per month – around $134,500 a year. The project is expected to deliver $1 million in annual revenue to the Port. Many at the meeting told c ommissioners to slow down and explain to the public exactly what the impacts of the export project will be. Jay Bornstein of Bornstein Seafoods asked the board members why they hadn’t done an environmental and economic impact study on the effects of the log project. “We’ve heard it’s $1 million to the Port, but we hav- en’t heard the cost to the Port,” he said. Whether you had a hankering for an up-to- your-elbows crab dinner or a wine fl ight of fancy, if you were among the thousands of vis- itors to the Astoria Warrenton Crab, Seafood & Wine Festival over the weekend, surely your taste buds got a treat. There were so many choices — from seafood and snacks to wine and beer — that it was diffi - cult to even know where to begin. Twenty years ago, a massive dredging effort to deepen 103 miles of the mighty Columbia River held the promise of securing Oregon’s connection to the rest of the world. At 43 feet, the channel — otherwise too shallow to compete with deep-water ports — could play host to today’s larger vessels and more effi ciently send North- west wheat and steel to markets around the globe. But with the Columbia River Channel Improve- ment project drawing to a close by the end of this year, the environmental and economic promises of the now $178.4 million project could fall short of the taxpayer investment, especially in an economy that’s resulted in an unprecedented decline in international trade, a review by T he Oregonian found. The Holland America cruise ship Zaandam steams past the Hammond Marina after spending Sunday docked in Astoria in 2010. Following a vote to lease Pier 1 for log exports, the Port of Astoria held a ‘dress rehearsal’ of what it will be like maneuvering cruise ship tourists through a log yard in 2010. Terry Hartill, right, serves a customer at the Bell Buoy booth during the Astoria Warrenton Crab, Seafood & Wine Festival in 2010. 50 years ago — 1970 The Warrenton-Clatsop Plains area suffered the most damage from Monday’s freak “winter weather” storm, with one building struck by lightning, about 2 inches of hail deposited in spots and a mixture of rain and snow. The storm, described by Richard Jones, manager of Pacifi c Power & Light , as a “pocket of winter weather,” knocked out power in the Warrenton area for as long as two hours, and some isolated outages took longer to repair. A site east of where the old Hammond mill stood, just west of Tongue Point, was chosen Tuesday night by the Astoria City Council for a 25-acre sewage treatment lagoon. In so acting, the council accepted the recom- mendation of a special chamber of commerce committee, which issued a report last week say- ing that the mill site area would affect the few- est people out of some 10 lagoon sites. Final engineering plans for an interceptor sewer and the lagoon will now be made. The council heard objections to putting the lagoon at the mill site from a few residents of that area, but the objections didn’t seem as numerous or adamant as those that came from residents of the Alderbrook area and Bumble Bee Seafoods, when the council originally con- sidered putting the three-cell lagoon facility near 39th and Lief Erikson Drive, west of the mill site. Minus tides encourage clam diggers in 1970. NAHCOTTA — An estimated 200 persons crowded into the parking area of Northwest Oyster Farms to wit- ness the world’s championship oyster opening c ontest held Saturday. Some climbed onto the pilings to get a better view of the contestants as they worked fast and furiously at the pile of oysters in front of them, to see how many they could open in the 20-minute compe- tition. Spectators were amazed at the speed and deft- ness with which the experts pried open the shells and scraped the oyster into a pan, swept the shell into a bin and started on the next one, all in a matter of seconds. Cheers and jeers from the audience reminded the con- testants that a $100 prize was at stake. Minus tides starting this morning and con- tinuing through next Monday are expected to bring razor clam diggers out to Oregon and Washington state beaches “en force,” if weather is favorable for the popular beach sport. 75 years ago — 1945 For more than three years Astoria eyes have rolled skyward to watch the antics, the tight formation fl ying and the breathless speed of N avy fi ghter, bomber and torpedo planes winging off the Astoria naval air sta- tion’s airport on the south shores of Young s Bay. But what they don’t know about the airport, which is the nest of these lethal birds of prey, would fi ll several books, since the fi eld became a major aviation facility strictly as a war-baby, and grew up under strictest wraps of military security. Not many people know the extent to which women have been given responsibility, in uniform of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service , to keep things buzzing at the fi eld. This story is something about what those women are doing. The nerve center — where landings and take-offs are directed, where weather reports are available, where logs and records of pilots and planes are compiled — is “operations” in the control tower of the naval air station Contestants compete in the oyster opening contest on the Long Beach Peninsula in 1970. Footprints make impressions on hail in 1970. airport. It is a glass-walled room atop the tower where the entire fi eld and its approaches may be scanned. T he work room of the control tower is where operators and specialists direct the air traffi c of the station. But the operations staff includes not only the specialists, but also yeoman , mechanics, storekeepers, aerologists, radiomen — both men and women. The latter has been true only eight months, for it was September and Luc ille Waska, specialists (Y) third class, who were the fi rst women to take up duty as con- trol tower operators at the Astoria air station. Now oper- ations has women working throughout the tower and even as mechanics. NAVAL AIR STATION, Astoria — Naval radio station, Astoria, operates today on the site where 30 years ago the fi rst “wireless” sta- tions were on the W est C oast. Four steel towers that reach 300 feet into the air have marked the Young s B ay horizon since their erection in 1915, the year the station was put into operation. Constructed primarily to communicate with a similar station in Ketchikan, Alaska, it served as a commercial station until taken over by the N avy on April 10, 1917. Erection of the four giant towers (one was brought here from Juneau, Alaska, the others built for the station) was an outstanding engi- neering achievement, the N avy pointed out. The low, sandy tideland, while an excellent site for communications purposes, did not offer much of a base to support tons of steel nearly 100 feet higher than the deck of the Golden Gate bridge. The Marconi company’s engineers were sat- isfi ed they had the right answer to the prob- lem. Pacifi c winds that have reached over 100 miles per hour at the site have proven their judgment. In 30 years of storm and soaking rains only one of the 16 legs supporting the four towers has settled, and that one is down only a few inches.
