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THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2022
Ferry: Shuttled across Columbia River before Astoria Bridge opened
Continued from Page A1
On Tuesday, Vicki Walker, the director
of the Department of State Lands, cited
the emergency removal of the Tourist No.
2 as part of an update to the State Land
Board on plans to seek $40 million in the
next state budget process to remove aban-
doned and derelict vessels from Oregon
waterways. The department said a lack
of dedicated funding has meant using
money from the Common School Fund.
The state described the Tourist No. 2
as “an imminent threat to public health
and safety.”
“Not taking action to remove this
hazard from the water is not an option,”
Walker said in a statement. “But Ore-
gon’s schoolchildren are paying yet again
to clean up a mess created by an irrespon-
sible vessel owner. The department will
take every action to recoup the more than
$1 million this cleanup will cost.”
In Astoria, the response has been
complicated.
Christian Lint, the owner of the Tour-
ist No. 2, is disputing ownership. He con-
siders himself the caretaker after a group
of locals abandoned plans to purchase
and restore the vessel .
He claims he did everything in his
power to protect the ferry and keep it
afl oat , but said his pleas for help were
ignored.
“But they got to do what they got to
do,” Lint told The Astorian. “They didn’t
do anything for two years when I begged
for help. So I’m sure they’ll be very quick
to punish me for their ineptness.”
Lint said he is “so sad, so sorry. B ut
you know what? I t is a burden off my
chest. And they can now come to the
plate and do something. Thank goodness.
What a shame. What a shame.”
‘Extremely complex’
The state is contracting with Global
Diving & Salvage, the Seattle-based
company that led clean up eff orts with the
U.S. Coast Guard, to handle removal of
the ferry. The company recovered about
525 gallons of diesel with sorbents and
active pumping. Five cubic yards of haz-
ardous material were also recovered.
The cause of the incident is still under
investigation.
Ali Ryan Hansen, a spokesperson for
the Department of State Lands, said the
state is still in early conversations with
Global Diving & Salvage about the total
cost, but an estimate at the low end is over
$1 million.
The Tourist No. 2 is in very poor con-
dition, according to Hansen. “And that
makes the removal extremely complex,”
she said.
Global Diving & Salvage expects to
have to crush the ferry in place and pull
pieces from the water onto a barge. Bar-
riers will be set out to capture any fl oat-
ing debris.
Full removal could take about two
weeks , according to Hansen. The state
is concerned that leaving the ferry in the
water and at the mercy of the tides much
longer could be dangerous.
The ferry sank near a fuel dock
and a navigation channel.
The condition of the ferry was exacer-
bated by sinking and being slammed up
against steel pilings, but Hansen said div-
ers also found extensive dry rot and evi-
dence of previous damage that had likely
weakened the hull.
Lint was not given permission to
dock the ferry at the pilings near the
Sixth Street v iewing p latform, in an area
owned by the Department of State Lands.
He was cited by the state last year, but did
nothing to address the situation, accord-
ing to the state.
“We are just paying close attention to
the actions of this owner,” Hansen said.
‘Sole owner’
The Tourist No. 2, built in the 1920s,
shuttled across the Columbia River
between Oregon and Washington state
before the Astoria Bridge opened in
1966.
Lint purchased the ferry after a fi re
in 2010 took the vessel out of service as
the M/V Kirkland. He sailed the vessel to
Astoria from Bremerton, Washington, in
2016 after a local group expressed inter-
est in a restoration project .
The Astoria Ferry Group hoped to turn
the ferry into an event space and take pas-
sengers on river cruises. But the nonprofi t
fell far short of fundraising goals for the
expensive restoration.
The ferry, which had been docked at
Pier 39, relocated near the Sixth Street
viewing platform in 2020 and was up for
sale.
Lint said the Astoria Ferry G roup was
in over their heads and abandoned the
project , leaving him with the responsibil-
ity. He believes the nonprofi t is the owner.
But he acknowledged that the title had
not been transferred .
“You have to put yourself in my
place,” Lint said. “You spend a lot of
money, bring it down, you don’t get paid
and then they default on the contract and
just abandon it. What would you do?”
Cindy Price, an Astoria planning com-
missioner who has served on the City
Council, helped lead the Astoria F erry
G roup. She disputes Lint’s claim about
the vessel’s ownership.
“The sole owner of the Tourist No. 2,
since he purchased it (as the M/V Kirk-
land) from Argosy Cruises, Seattle, in
2010, is Christian Lint,” Price said in an
email.
Lint said h e feels let down.
“For two years, I’ve been fl ying into
Portland, going down there, oversee-
ing everything, maintaining that boat —
100% not my responsibility — but I did it
because nobody else would take charge,”
he said. “And I am livid.”
Lint would like to see any part of the
ferry preserved.
“I’m so sad I and the city have lost this
most precious icon of Astoria, ” he said in
a text message.
This story is part of a collaboration
between The Astorian and Coast Com-
munity Radio.
The Tourist No. 2 capsized near
the Sixth Street viewing platform.
Lissa Brewer/The Astorian
Plan: ‘The last-minute striking of so much text by legal counsel felt like a gut punch’
Continued from Page A1
He called on the Planning
Commission to work harder
to involve the public in land
use decisions.
Cheryl Johnson, a mem-
ber of the Northeast Citizen
Advisory Committee, said
that her committee and the
rest “deserve time to read
and consider and under-
stand this drastically diff er-
ent draft.”
Nadia Gardner, the for-
mer chairwoman of the
Planning Commission who
presided over the original
approval of the commu-
nity plans, suggested kick-
ing the drafts back to the cit-
izen advisory committees to
make sure committee mem-
bers are comfortable with
what they’ve put their names
to. The outcome of the legal
review, she said, “certainly
warrants that extra scru-
tiny and involvement of our
community members.”
Chris Farrar, the chair-
man of the Planning Com-
mission, said the commis-
sion recognized that a great
deal of changes had taken
place in recent weeks, but
that they were largely a
matter of moving the poli-
cies to a more logical place
in the document. “Now,
that requires a little trust on
everybody’s part that that
was done with good fi del-
ity,” he said.
He said the Planning
Commission feels strongly
that the work the citizen
advisory committees put
into the comprehensive plan
hasn’t been ignored. “It’s
being massaged and put into
a format that is more appro-
priate for the fi nal docu-
ment,” he said.
The Planning Commis-
sion also approved the com-
prehensive plan’s land use
goals at Tuesday’s meeting.
Only Farrar voted against
recommending the goals to
the Board of Commissioners.
He objected to a Goal
1 policy: “In order to pro-
vide increased transparency
and opportunities for public
involvement in the land use
planning process, the c ounty
should review options for
redrawing the planning
area boundaries in order to
create boundaries that are
coterminous with the Board
of Commissioners district
boundaries.”
Planning areas, Farrar
believes, are better defi ned
by the natural environment
— topography, geographic
features and so on — than
by political boundaries that
can shift with the census
every decade.
The Board of Commis-
sioners will look at the entire
comprehensive plan — both
the community plans and
land use goals — at meet-
ings in September. Written
comments from the public
are due at the end of August.
“It’s, I think, understood
by all that this process got a
little bit rushed at this par-
ticular point, but that there
is still time to get your com-
ments in order and in to the
Board of Commissioners
before they make their fi nal
vote on whether to accept
these plans for the county,”
Farrar said. “So I encourage
people to do that.”