A2
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2021
IN BRIEF
Gearhart zeroes in
on Highlands fi rehouse site
GEARHART — City Attorney Peter Watts pro-
vided an update on a shift in direction for the city’s
proposed fi rehouse and resiliency station.
“It really feels like everything’s falling together,”
Watts said at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. “I
am working on putting together a written agreement
regarding the Cottages property, which is where we
will be putting our fi rehouse.”
He said he expects to have the agreement ready
for the council’s review at their next meeting.
The city is working with planners to bring the
30-acre Cottages at Gearhart subdivision off of High-
lands Lane into the city’s urban growth boundary. As
long as the land remains in Clatsop County, devel-
opers are limited to two lots per acre. If they come
into the Gearhart urban growth boundary, developers
could build on four lots per acre.
The elevation at the Highlands site is between 70
feet to 72 feet, 10 feet higher than the High Point site
on North Marion Avenue.
Residents and city offi cials have sought for
years to replace Gearhart’s fi rehouse, which was
constructed in 1958 and is considered vulnera-
ble in a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and
tsunami.
GEARHART — A lawsuit against the city over
a homeowner’s mismatched pipes moved ahead
in Clatsop County Circuit Court. The city fi led a
response in late April, stating the complaint fails to
“assert ultimate facts suffi cient to constitute a claim
for relief against the city.”
“There’s no easy solution to the problem,” City
Attorney Peter Watts said at Wednesday’s City
Council meeting.
A complaint fi led in Circuit Court claims the city
is responsible for mismatched stormwater pipes off -
set by 5 inches, causing water to escape from the gap
in the pipes, which created a sinkhole on Julie Ham-
ilton’s Fifer Heights Road property.
Hamilton wants $50,000 in damages and the city
to permanently repair the mismatched pipes. The city
continuously foregoes fi xing the root of the issue in
favor of cheap, temporary measures that do not last,
she said in court documents.
Watts said the system was engineered before the
property was annexed into the city. The developer
was likely responsible, but sold the property and is
now dead.
“We are sympathetic to the homeowner,”
Watts said. “There is no obvious solution, but
the good news is that our insurance carrier is han-
dling it, so we don’t have to worry about it quite as
much.”
— The Astorian
ON THE RECORD
Strangulation
On
the
Record
• Judith
Anne Elder,
54, of Seaside, was arraigned
Thursday on charges of strangulation, assault in the
fourth degree, harassment and attempted assault in the
fourth degree.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
TUESDAY
PUBLIC
MEETINGS
Sunset Empire Park and Recreation District, 5:15 p.m.,
work session; 7 p.m., budget committee meeting, 1225
Avenue A., Seaside.
Cannon Beach City Council, 6 p.m., special meeting and
work session, (electronic meeting).
Lewis & Clark Fire Department Board, 6 p.m., board and
budget meeting, main fi re station, 34571 U.S. Highway 101
Business.
Seaside Planning Commission, 6 p.m., 989 Broadway.
Warrenton City Commission, 6 p.m., City Hall, 225 S. Main
Ave.
Clatsop Community College Board, 6:30 p.m., (electronic
meeting).
WEDNESDAY
Clatsop Soil and Water Conservation District Board,
10 a.m., (electronic meeting).
Clatsop County Budget Committee, 1 p.m., (electronic
meeting).
Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, 6 p.m., (elec-
tronic meeting).
Warrenton School District Budget Committee, 6 p.m.,
(electronic meeting).
Astoria School District Board, 7 p.m., (electronic meet-
ing).
THURSDAY
Seaside Civic and Convention Center Commission,
5 p.m., 415 First Ave.
Warrenton Planning Commission, 6 p.m., City Hall, 225 S.
Main Ave.
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Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
Astoria High School students head to prom after taking photos at the Astoria Column on Saturday evening. Prom was held
beneath a large tent at CMH Field.
Gearhart responds to
mismatched pipe lawsuit
Established July 1, 1873
PROM
Printed on
recycled paper
Longtime Seaside educator to retire
Brown relished
her many roles
By KATHERINE
LACAZE
For The Astorian
SEASIDE — Since 1990,
Sande Brown has fi lled a
variety of roles in the Sea-
side School District: teacher,
assistant principal, princi-
pal and, most recently, direc-
tor for curriculum and the
English as a second language
program.
“They were all the right
place to be at that point in
time,” she said. “I loved
being with students, I loved
being principal. ... I love the
three communities: Gear-
hart, Cannon Beach and
Seaside.”
At diff erent times, she
was principal of all three of
the school district’s elemen-
tary schools, including the
former Cannon Beach Ele-
mentary School and Gear-
hart Elementary School.
“I’ve been really lucky to
work in areas I’m passionate
about,” Brown said.
Now, she is preparing to
move into full-time retire-
ment. Her resignation,
which is eff ective June 30,
was approved by the school
Katherine Lacaze/For The Astorian
Sande Brown is retiring from
the Seaside School District.
board in March .
Brown originally retired
in 2016 before accepting her
part-time position for what
she intended to be six years.
Her retirement at that time
felt diff erent than it does now
— less fi nal. When she fi rst
retired, she was exhausted,
but “not really done with
education,” she said.
“I thought I could be a
part of education and make
change in education from
a diff erent perspective,”
Brown said.
One part of her job has
been to choose new curric-
ulum . Each year, school dis-
tricts in Oregon adopt new
curricula for a particular con-
tent area that they can use for
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other activities and focuses.
“I still love doing my job,
and it has been an honor to
serve the families of the S ea-
side district, but I also want
to do things like spend more
time with grandchildren, and
take some trips, read some
books,” she said.
She anticipates commu-
nity service will also be part
of her retirement. She serves
on the board of Consejo His-
pano, formerly the Lower
Columbia Hispanic Council.
Brown feels the school
district is in good hands
under Superintendent Susan
Penrod, and she’s enjoyed
the collaborative eff orts of
her fellow educators .
“We all work as one big
team to move students for-
ward and support them in
their education,” she said.
Additionally, several of
the projects relating to equity,
teaching strategies and edu-
cational excellence that
Brown helped spearhead are
being done with the help of
outside consultants who can
help a small district move
forward. Because of that, she
has confi dence they will con-
tinue to progress under the
future administrator.
“Those are things that
meet our strategic plan
goals,” she said.
Orca pod shows ‘signs for optimism’
By LYNDA V. MAPES
Seattle Times
She was a mother who
happened to be an orca, whose
plight resonated around the
world as she clung to her dead
calf, refusing to let it go.
Mother orca Tahlequah,
J35, brought front and cen-
ter the extinction crisis threat-
ening the southern resident
killer whales that frequent
Puget Sound. There are only
75 left.
She swam through the Sal-
ish Sea for 17 days and more
than 1,000 miles in the sum-
mer of 2018, in what many
interpreted as a journey of
grief. It’s possible she never
let the calf go; when it was
last photographed by scien-
tists at the Center for Whale
Research, the calf was falling
apart.
But having just celebrated
Mother’s Day, there is some
cause for cautious optimism
for some of the most famous
mothers in the region, on
whom the future of this fragile
population of orcas depends.
Since Tahlequah lost her
calf that lived only one half-
hour, she has birthed another,
J57, a male born in Septem-
ber 2020 — and still going
strong. Two more calves also
have been born to J pod, J56,
a female born in 2019, and
J58, a female born in 2020.
“There are signs for opti-
mism; in general over the last
several years J pod is in bet-
ter condition than in much of
the last decade,” said John
Durban, a professor at Ore-
gon State University and
research associate with an
orca health monitoring proj-
ect led by Holly Fearnbach of
SR3, a science and research
and marine mammal rescue
nonprofi t.
Using a drone fl own
more than 100 feet above
the whales, they take photo-
graphs to document the orcas’
body condition. And lately,
what they are seeing in J pod
generally is improvement.
“There is hope in our
images,” Durban said. “But it
is fragile.”
After all, the region was
celebrating a baby boom of
southern residents in 2015
with fi ve births — but three
of those calves and two of the
mothers subsequently died.
By the summer of 2018,
J50, not even 4 years old,
was wasting away, spurring
an attempt at an international
rescue eff ort, even as mother
orca Tahlequah was clinging
to her dead calf.
But since then a birth to L
pod, L124 born in May 2019,
and L125, born in Febru-
ary 2021, as well as the three
J pod calves, have given the
region something to root for:
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the next seven years. Even-
tually, they cycle through
each subject.
On top of that, Brown has
been responsible for coor-
dinating music, art, English
language arts and summer
programs, as well as science,
technology, engineering and
mathematics programs. She
has also worked with those
involved in English as a sec-
ond language and eff orts to
develop partnerships with
external agencies.
“I have a really varied
position, which is really fun
for sure,” she said. Yet, the
job has “become so much
bigger than half time.”
That is part of the reason
she is leaving a year earlier
than planned. It enables the
school district to create a full-
time assistant superintendent
of curriculum and instruc-
tion to address these growing
duties and responsibilities.
“It’s a great opportunity
for the district and will help
us as we work to achieve the
goals of the strategic plan,”
Brown said. “I am happy to
move aside so that the some-
one can be in place full time
for next fall.”
Additionally, Brown is
retiring — for good this
time, she adds — because
she feels ready to pursue
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not only the new orca babies,
but also their moms.
To a greater degree than in
many other animals, includ-
ing humans, the southern res-
ident orcas put family fi rst.
Their society is matriarchal,
with the pods led by grand-
mothers and mothers.
Every baby brings both
hope and risk for the popu-
lation, as the mother under-
goes the most costly and risky
stage of her life, carrying,
birthing and nursing her baby.
Published peer-reviewed
research led by Sam Wasser
at the Center for Conserva-
tion Biology at the Univer-
sity of Washington has found
two thirds of southern resi-
dent orca pregnancies are lost
because of nutritional stress.
The southern residents eat
primarily Chinook salmon,
which mostly are in decline
throughout the orcas’ forag-
ing range.
The sharing never stops;
orca moms care for their
young lifelong.
When adult male orcas
lose their mother their own
chances at survival are dimin-
ished. “He has a higher
chance of mortality, even in
the prime of life,” Durban
said. “Some of that may be
emotional, but it is also direct
for support from their moth-
ers they are dependent on.”
Orca society is one of the
few animal communities on
Earth, in addition to humans,
in which mothers persist
decades into their post-repro-
ductive years. These grand-
mother orcas play a crucial
role in the pods, with the eco-
logical knowledge they carry
of where to fi nd fi sh, particu-
larly when times are lean.
L25 is the oldest orca
grandmother left. Durban and
Fearnbach last photographed
her last September. In 2019,
she also was photographed
by whale watchers all the way
down south of San Francisco
— where she had taken her
family to fi sh for Chinook.
Born in about 1928, L25
learned the foraging routes
of the southern residents
from her grandmother — in
a time before many of the
major dams in the Northwest
were built and the Columbia
and Lower Snake rivers were
still free fl owing — and when
winter Chinook, unique in the
world, were still abundant
in California’s Sacramento
River.
She knew an environ-
ment of cleaner, quieter, more
abundant waters.
L25, J35 and the other
orca grandmothers and moth-
ers still work to feed their
extended families, now in a
vastly changed world.
Today two of the 10 most
endangered animals protected
by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric
Administra-
tion are the southern resident
orcas and California winter
Chinook. Twin monarchs, in
a struggle for survival.
Yet there is hope.
“We are encouraged that
in the last two years J pod has
in general been in better body
condition than over much of
the last decade,” Durban said.
“We hope it continues and
these calves can thrive. Every
calf counts in a population
this small.”