148TH YEAR, NO. 9
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JULY 21, 2020
$1.50
CORONAVIRUS
Fishermen
seek relief
from observer
coverage
Waiver sought amid coronavirus
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Astorian
Photos by Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
Baker’s General Store and the Elderberry Inn off of U.S. Highway 26 are among the businesses in the rural region
of Clatsop County that suff er from the lack of reliable internet.
Broadband issues
worsen in Elsie and Jewell
A technology gap
in rural areas
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
S
andwiched between two
parking spaces in front of
the Elderberry Inn off of
U.S. Highway 26 sits a banged
up junction box with a bundle of
exposed cables.
Operated by CenturyLink,
the junction box serves the
Elderberry Inn, Baker’s Gen-
eral Store , nearby homes and the
Elsie-Vinemaple Rural Fire Pro-
tection District.
“It has been knocked over and
run over at least once every two
months. All there is out there is
a pile of cables that are taped
together,” said Brian Baker, the
owner of Baker’s General Store.
“It handles everything. And
we’re totally dependent on that
box that’s laying on the ground
that they continue to run on.
“With the slow connections
like we have, people come in
and business walks out because
they’ve got to pay with cash,
because you can’t use a credit
card without the internet,” he
said. “So we literally lose a lot of
business.”
And it is getting worse .
The coronavirus pandemic
has made the broadband gap too
diffi cult to ignore, as network
capacity in rural parts of Clatsop
C ounty has been overwhelmed
by more people working and
Rene Armstrong works the checkout station at Baker’s General Store off
of U.S. Highway 26. When the internet cuts out, Armstrong and other
workers struggle to process credit card payments.
‘Extremely costly’
Baker also works full time
from his home in Elsie as the
director of sales and service for
Legacy Automation Inc., a Wash-
ington state-based company that
manufactures machinery for the
pulp and paper industry.
“And there’s times when I can’t
make targets, there’s times I can’t
communicate data to my custom-
ers around the world,” he said.
“The way we do orders for the
store here, for the grocery store
part of it, is we have to do that
with our supplier over the inter-
net. So if it’s down then we can’t
get our order in for the week. It’s
just a cascading, horrible effect
that hits us, and extremely costly.”
See Broadband, Page A6
By GARY HENLEY
The Astorian
gal and Spain for a week. We were
also going to Boston on the way
there, and a few days in Philadel-
phia on the way back.
“It was a nice big loop that we
had planned. Instead, we’re just
restoring rotten parts of some
homes around the area.”
But, no worries. Erickson still
enjoys life wherever he happens to
be. His work in home restoration
and being a grandfather of six keeps
him busy.
Deb Kloeden Photography
See Erickson, Page A6
Some fi shermen want waivers from
a federal observer requirement.
Coast Guard outlines
disaster response
Plan designed to
protect marine
transportation
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
He sees music as
positive change
e is Astoria’s man of many
talents.
Professional musician, teacher,
bus driver, world traveler, disc
jockey, the voice of Fishermen
football and restorer of old homes.
He has not done much of the
above this summer, but Mark Erick-
son still keeps busy, despite corona-
virus travel restrictions.
“My wife (Ann) and I had our
fi rst European trip planned, paid for,
then canceled,” Erickson said . “We
have dear friends in the Azores,
and we were going to spend a week
there. Then we were going to Portu-
See Fishing, Page A2
Oregon Trawl Commission
schooling from home.
The barrier for communities
like Elsie, Jewell and Knappa is
the “last mile” of fi ber — extend-
ing lines that bring high-speed
internet connection .
Over the past several months,
improving internet access has
become a higher priority for
county leaders .
Commissioner
Lianne
Thompson, who represents most
of the southern part of the county,
including Elsie, said the county
is working on several possible
solutions.
“The need is huge,” she said.
“I think COVID has shifted
the world in terms of how edu-
cation is going to be run, and
health care and commerce and
employment.”
Erickson refl ects on the ’60s
H
West Coast trawlers and fi shing industry lead-
ers looking to minimize the risk of exposure to the
coronavirus are asking for an emergency waiver
from a requirement to carry human observers.
The National Marine Fisheries Service provided
a two-week waiver from observer coverage in the
spring. Chris Oliver, assistant
administrator for NOAA Fisher-
ies, clarifi ed in a message posted
MORE
Thursday that waivers remain
INSIDE
available on a vessel-by-vessel
County
basis .
reports
According to a spokesman,
three
the federal agency has issued
new virus
some individual vessel waivers
cases • A6
for trips in the p ast three months
— all were for times when
observers were not available, not
for other reasons, such as a vessel operator’s con-
cerns about the coronavirus.
Industry representatives argue that further steps
are needed as the threat of the pandemic continues
and case numbers rise.
In a letter to the agency , they said social distanc-
ing is impossible on commercial fi shing boats. T he
information human observers collect, they said, can
be temporarily collected through monitoring cam-
eras already installed on many boats, logbooks and
by the fi shermen themselves.
“There is no debate that an emergency exists,
and the emergency was unforeseen,” the industry
letter states. “The emergency regulations being pro-
posed are not controversial within the industry …
and they pose no conservation or biological risks.”
In his message , Oliver maintained that observ-
ers “create no more risk than a crew member. ” B ut
Heather Mann, executive director of the Midwater
Trawlers Cooperative, said vessel operators have a
level of control with crew members that they do not
have with observers.
Mark Erickson sings and plays the saxophone.
U.S. Coast Guard Sec-
tor Columbia River has
outlined a plan to respond
to natural or man-made
disruptions to the marine
transportation
system,
from a damaged dam
to a Cascadia Subduc-
tion Zone earthquake and
tsunami.
The plan, fi nalized in
February, is standard-
ized so crews from other
sectors can carry out the
response.
Sector Columbia River
serves coastal Oregon and
southern Washington state
and the 33 ports along the
Columbia, Snake and Wil-
lamette r iver systems that
extend from the Pacifi c
Ocean to Lewiston, Idaho.
The $20 billion mari-
time transportation system
includes 8.5 million tons
of grain exports, 1,500
foreign vessels, 50,000
cruise ship passengers,
295,000 recreational boat-
ers and 2,000 commercial
fi shing vessels.
Capt. Gretchen Bailey,
the deputy commander at
Sector Columbia River,
called the busy waterways
a “little hidden gem.”
“A major disruption to
this maritime transpor-
tation system would be
felt around the world. We
are the major exporter of
grain in the United States,
so it would have a world
impact. It is the top gate-
way for America’s wheat
barley export, as well as
a major exporter for corn,
bulk materials, timber and
paper products,” Bailey
said.
See Coast Guard, Page A6