A2
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2021
Tide gates: ‘A lot of money for a small producer’
IN BRIEF
Continued from Page A1
Gearhart curtails Sunday
contractor work hours
GEARHART — Commercial contractors must
refrain from work in Gearhart on Sundays.
A new ordinance aims to provide residents a day of
rest from a city with a growth spurt.
Measure proponents Bebe Michel and Eric Halp-
erin said they recognized that houses need to be built
and repaired and gardens need to be maintained.
“We understand construction companies and land-
scaping companies have a job to do and need to be
able to make a living,” they wrote. “But companies
should also understand the needs of the people in the
community. We think it’s important and fair that resi-
dents have one day a week of peace and quiet in their
homes.”
The passage at a special City Council meeting last
week comes over the objections of contractors who
have said the ban would cripple operations and hurt
their ability to serve customers.
In an August public hearing, Tim Mancill, of
Mancill Lawn and Yard Maintenance, said sentiment
was overwhelmingly against the ordinance. “That
should tell the council what the majority of people
want,” he said. “I think if it was on the ballot ban-
ning Sundays the ordinance would be voted down in
a landslide.”
Mancill plans to pursue a court challenge to the
new ordinance. “We’re not going to just lay down and
crawl over,” he said after the meeting.
State clarifi es details of virus death
The Oregon Health Authority on Friday clarifi ed
the details of a coronavirus-related death linked to
Clatsop County.
The health authority reported that the case involved
a 60-year-old woman who died on Oct. 8 after test-
ing positive on Oct. 6. The state had initially said she
tested positive and died on Oct. 6.
The county’s Public Health Department has said the
person was from out of state and only happened to be
visiting the area.
The health authority, meanwhile, reported six new
virus cases for the county on Friday and seven new
virus cases on Thursday. Since the pandemic began,
the county had recorded 2,395 virus cases as of
Friday.
— The Astorian
DEATHS
Oct. 18, 2021
In SECORD,
Brief
Jeanne
Margaret, 95, of Warren-
ton, died in Warrenton.
Deaths
Caldwell’s
Luce-Lay-
ton Mortuary of Asto-
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
Oct. 17, 2021
CLAUSEN, Jerry, 63,
of Astoria, died in Asto-
ria. Caldwell’s Luce-Lay-
ton Mortuary of Asto-
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
Oct. 13, 2021
PARMELEE, Cheryl
Lynn, 50, of Hills-
boro, died in Astoria.
Caldwell’s
Luce-Lay-
ton Mortuary of Asto-
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
SULLIVAN,
Bar-
bara, 85, of Clatskanie,
died in Longview, Wash-
ington. Groulx Fam-
ily Mortuary of Rain-
ier is in charge of the
arrangements.
ON THE RECORD
Criminal mischief
On
• Brian the
Anthony Record
Carlos, 46, of Astoria, was arrested
Thursday in Astoria for criminal mischief in the fi rst
degree, a hit-and-run involving property damage and
criminal trespass in the second degree.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
TUESDAY
PUBLIC MEETINGS
Port of Astoria Commission, 4 p.m., workshop, (electronic
meeting).
Lewis & Clark Fire Department, 6 p.m., main fi re station,
34571 U.S. Highway 101 Business.
The aging tide gates
block fi sh from swimming
between the ocean and river
estuaries, disrupting a cru-
cial part of their life cycle.
Though some tide gates
still function despite being
as much as a century old,
they’re considered outdated
under modern regulatory
standards.
“They’re at the end of
their lives, a lot of them,
so the need to replace them
is something we can antic-
ipate will be happening,”
said Irma Lagomarsino, a
senior policy adviser with
the National Marine Fisher-
ies Service.
Innovative new tide
gates don’t obstruct fi sh but
they’re much more expen-
sive, potentially costing
hundreds of thousands or
even millions of dollars,
depending on their size and
complexity.
“That’s a lot of money for
a small producer,” Herman
said.
In its most primitive
form, a tide gate is basi-
cally a door attached to the
end of a culvert or channel:
The build up of river water
behind it forces the gate to
swing open, draining estu-
aries and farmland of fl ood
waters. Otherwise, the door
remains closed against the
rising ocean tides, protect-
ing upriver property from an
incursion of saltwater that
damages crops.
“It kills the grass and it
screws up the dirt,” said Zac
Mallon, the coordinator of
the Lower Nehalem Water-
shed Council. “You change
up the soil chemistry. It
modifi es the pH,” a measure
of acidity.
The trouble with this sim-
ple but eff ective mechanism
is it doesn’t comply with
fi sh passage regulations that
Oregon lawmakers imposed
two decades ago.
Farmers who want to
replace or signifi cantly repair
old tide gates must comply
with these standards, which
means the structures must
remain open to fi sh more
than half the time. Water
traveling through the open-
ing also cannot be fl owing
so fast that fi sh are unable to
swim upstream.
While engineers can meet
those standards, some grow-
ers suspect that offi cials in
the state and federal gov-
ernments would rather see
non compliant tide gates
removed than be replaced
with more advanced devices.
“You get a sense from
some of these agencies that
they’d do anything not to
allow a tide gate replace-
ment, because they want
fully reconnected water-
ways,” said Chad Allen, a
dairy farmer in Tillamook.
Without a tide gate serv-
ing as a barrier, the natural
rhythms of outgoing river
water and incoming tide
and a hard place,” he said.
Farmers who are able to
obtain funding don’t escape
adverse impacts, since
grants and permits are con-
tingent on making opera-
tional changes to benefi t
habitat, said Sharon Water-
man, a Coos County grower.
Fencing streams, planting
trees and re-digging chan-
nels so they meander are
common requirements that
reduce the farmable acres
and complicate manage-
ment, she said.
“You can’t do anything
without mitigation,” Water-
man said. “Unless you do
the mitigation they want,
you’re not going to get a
permit.”
New partnership
Tom Josephson, left, the habitat restoration program manager
with the Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce, discusses
the function of a tide gate near Warrenton with Narayan
Elasmar, the nonprofi t’s habitat restoration biologist.
water would return to the
estuary, restoring its ecolog-
ical function — at the cost of
productive farmland.
“We’re not going to be
developing more high-value
farmland,” Allen said.
Planning ahead
Even farmers who obtain
funding for sophisticated
tide gate structures still face
permitting hurdles that can
delay replacement projects
for years. For that reason,
they must begin planning
long before tide gates break
down.
“If we hadn’t gotten it
done, eventually they would
have forced me out,” said
Steve Neahring, a dairy
farmer near Nehalem. “If
you get a failure, you can’t
wait two or three years to get
a permit to fi x it.”
Without a tide gate,
roughly
one-fourth
of
Neahring’s farm would be
vulnerable to inundation
with tide waters.
However, the structure
that had long protected his
property had stopped func-
tioning eff ectively — the
culvert had partially col-
lapsed, impeding the water
fl owing out of the estu-
ary. While the tide gate still
blocked saltwater, it contrib-
uted to fl ooding upstream.
“I was taking on more
water than I could get rid
of,” Neahring said. That
decreased the quality of his
forage and prevented him
from letting cows out to pas-
ture as often. “It was just a
maintenance nightmare, ” he
said.
“Your fi eld is sitting
under water and you’re get-
ting fewer rotations on it,”
said Mallon, of the Lower
Nehalem Watershed Coun-
cil, which helped the dairy
replace the aging tide gate.
Luckily for Neahring,
the Nehalem River’s estu-
ary is considered valuable
fi sh habitat, which meant
that grants were available to
replace the tide gate in 2017.
About 70% of the $460,000
project was covered by state
and nonprofi t dollars.
The new structure is a
muted tidal regulator that
stays open for fi sh by default,
until a fl otation device indi-
cates that tidewaters have
risen to the point that the
gate must close. Once the
tide level drops again, the
door re opens and stays that
way.
While the device doesn’t
allow tide waters to rise
to historic levels, they still
inundate part of the estu-
ary while fl ushing sediment
from ditches to the bene-
fi t of farmland, said Leo
Kuntz, a tide gate specialist
with Nehalem Marine Man-
ufacturing who designed the
mechanism.
“That’s what a muted tide
is: It’s a small tide,” Kuntz
said. “We’re trying to raise
fi sh and cows together, and
we’ve been real successful
at it.”
The problem is that some
tide gates only aff ect a rela-
tively small number of acres,
said Herman, the cattle and
hay farmer. They’re not cost
eff ective for the landowner
to replace without fi nan-
cial help, but they’re also
not a priority for habitat
restoration.
“You’re not big enough
to get any grants. The little
guy is caught between a rock
Five years ago, lobby-
ists from agricultural and
conservation organizations
convinced state lawmakers
to create the Oregon Tide
Gate Partnership, which is
intended to bring state and
federal agencies together
to solve the modernization
problem.
Lawmakers also allo-
cated $3 million to plan and
construct new tide gates.
“They really sit at the
intersection of working
lands and natural resources,”
said Jillian McCarthy, the
state’s tide gate coordinator.
“On the one side is the ag
community side and on the
other side is the fi sh side.”
At this point, the partner-
ship has developed an inven-
tory of the state’s 1,000 tide
gates with help from Oregon
State University and other
partners. The Oregon Water-
shed Enhancement Board
is also funding two com-
puter-based projects to help
with replacement planning.
One software tool esti-
mates the correct size of
pipes needed for tide gate
replacements that meet reg-
ulatory standards, which
reduces some of the prelimi-
nary engineering costs.
The other is a decision
support tool to help prior-
itize funding for tide gate
replacements, based on the
value of estuary habitat and
the property protected.
“How do we pick which
tide gates to replace? The
answer really depends on
who is asking the question,”
said Jena Carter, Oregon
C oast and marine director
for The Nature Conservancy,
which developed the tool.
The decision support
software allows the ques-
tion to be examined through
multiple lenses to examine
whether an investment is
worthwhile, she said.
“Whether
a
proj-
ect occurs on the ground
requires a lot of factors to
come together,” Carter said.
“It will be imperfect because
every property is unique, but
it will give us a hypothetical
ballpark estimate.”
See Tide gates, Page A5
Seaside Planning Commission, 6 p.m., work session, City
Hall, 989 Broadway.
Seaside School District Board, 6 p.m., (electronic meet-
ing).
WEDNESDAY
Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, 10 a.m., work
session, (electronic meeting).
Astoria City Council, noon, executive session, (electronic
meeting).
Seaside Tourism Advisory Committee, 3 p.m., City Hall,
989 Broadway.
Knappa School District Board, 6:30 p.m., Knappa High
School Library, 41535 Old U.S. Highway 30.
THURSDAY
Seaside Transportation Advisory Commission, 6 p.m.,
City Hall, 989 Broadway.
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McCommons: Flotilla earns his highest praise
Continued from Page A1
The broad smile —
noticeable even behind his
COVID safety mask — made
clear both his reaction and his
answer.
He, his wife, Michelle,
and their daughters, Rilee, 10,
and Harper, 7, have returned
to a locale they enjoy. “We
love the area,” he said, noting
the family savors the outdoor
and historical opportunities
of the region.
McCommons, 41, was
originally from Monterey,
California. He grew up play-
ing football and baseball and
enjoyed the team element. He
attended junior college at San
Luis Obispo and obtained
his associate degree. “But I
decided that college was not
for me,” he said.
At 22, he joined the Coast
Guard and immediately
embraced the team concept
of the service.
“I enjoy the aspect of help-
ing people, the team dynam-
ics and sense of teamwork,”
he said. “The Coast Guard
is a very rewarding organi-
zation and they take care of
their people.
“It’s a team. We cannot do
these missions without each
and every person, no matter
what their role.”
After basic training, he
had a brief posting in San
Diego before the fi rst of his
two stints at the Motor Life-
boat Station in Yaquina Bay,
which lasted six years. He
taught at Cape D for fi ve years
between 2010 and 2015,
returned to Newport as exec-
utive petty offi cer, then was
back at the l ifeboat s chool in
Ilwaco in a similar leadership
role for a year. Before tak-
ing his current command, he
served as a training offi cer in
Louisiana, working closely
with the Coast Guard Auxil-
iary in New Orleans.
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The local Auxiliary —
Flotilla — earns his highest
praise.
“They help out tremen-
dously with the station and
all we do,” he said. Members
have painted the Coast Guard
buoy, which is positioned next
to the 1937 36-foot motor
lifeboat at the station, and
helped renovate base locker
rooms. Representatives attend
planning meetings and assist
with educational projects. “I
am very appreciative of their
work,” he said.
McCommons said he is
looking forward to partnering
with other agencies. “We get
a lot of great support in Clat-
sop and Pacifi c counties,” he
said. One theme will be par-
amount. “Training is a very
important piece of the puzzle
to deal with the challenging
environment of the Columbia
River,” he said.
“I am very familiar with
the Columbia River Bar
— it is very humbling. The
weather is very dynamic and
challenging. One day to the
next is never the same. We
need to be able to respond
any time, night or day.”
Station Cape Disappoint-
ment has traditionally had a
commissioned offi cer in com-
mand. His predecessor was
Jessica Shafer, a lieutenant
who transferred to Washing-
ton, D.C. McCommons has
earned commendation and
achievement medals, includ-
ing a letter of commendation
from the Coast Guard com-
mandant. His rank bridges the
level between enlisted per-
sonnel and the more senior
offi cers. He said his appoint-
ment follows a trend at simi-
lar West Coast stations.
“This aligns it with Grays
Harbor, Newport and Coos
Bay,” he said.
McCommons’ specialty is
as a boatswain’s mate, oper-
ating small boats in heavy
weather in search-and-rescue
and towing operations. He is
certifi ed to run all the rescue
vessels at his disposal. With
his surfman status, the high-
est level of profi ciency, he
expects to suit up alongside
personnel on the 47-footers
sometimes — but not every
mission.
“It’s important to be there
with the crew, but as the com-
manding offi cer, it is import-
ant to be able to take a step
back to enable our people to
grow, ” he said.