A8
Hood River News, Saturday, January 17, 2015
Rotary Ski Day returns Jan. 19 at Meadows
S TEIGHNER
By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA
News editor
Continued from Page A1
announce the award. Nomi-
nations are accepted on be-
half of elementary, middle,
high school and colle ge
music teachers in every
facet of music education -
including band, choral, or-
chestral, and more.
“This is a huge honor for
Mark, and a formal recogni-
t i o n o f t h e i m p a c t M r.
Steighner has had on the
music community in the
Gorge and beyond,” Polk-
inghorn said.
“I am humbled and very
appreciative to be hon-
ored,” Steighner said. “I es-
pecially appreciate the ef-
fort that Rebecca Nederhis-
er took to nominate me and
gather the letters of sup-
port,” he said. “I know that
there are many, many hard
working music educators
that deserve it more than I
d o. ” N e d e r h i s e r i s t h e
m u s i c t e a ch e r at H o o d
River Middle School, and
now has a Steighner script
in production for debut on
Feb. 27.
(See sidebar for more de-
tails on “The Girl Who
Lived With The Bears” and
other upcoming Steighner
projects.)
Steighner has been teach-
ing in Hood River since 1979.
He began teaching choral
and instrumental music at
Hood River Valley High
School in 1984. During his
tenure, he has directed 50
musicals at the high school
and in the community, in-
cluding eight original musi-
cals. His ensembles have
commissioned over 20 new
pieces. His choirs and/or
bands have qualified for the
state contest every year since
1988 and he has taken his en-
sembles to Europe eight
times. Steighner also directs
the community orchestra
and choir while also teach-
ing music for Columbia
Gorge Community College.
“The Hood River County
School District congratu-
lates Mr. Steighner on re-
ceiving this award and is
grateful for his years of ser-
vice to the students of the
district,” Polkinghorn told
Photo by Kirby Neumann-Rea
The best deal on skiing
you’ll find all year will be Jan.
19 at Mt. Hood Meadows.
The occasion is the annual
Rotary Ski Day, for all the ski-
ing you can do from 2-9 p.m.
The price is $15 in advance,
$20 at the gate.
“We’ve got our fingers
crossed for snow this weekend
and it looks like we’re going to
get some,” said Rotary presi-
dent Craig Ortega. “It’s one of
our largest fundraisers of the
year and really makes it possi-
ble for us to provide as much
as $40,000 a year in high
school and college scholar-
ship, and to donate money to
other community projects and
organizations.”
In addition to the skiing,
Rotary brings in singer-come-
dian Joe Stoddard for a show
from 6-9 p.m. Food and drink
is available for sale at the var-
ious Meadows outlets at the
resort.
To purchase your Rotary
pass go to:
skihood.com/schedules
and events
Regular tickets and season
passes will be in effect until 4
p.m., but after that you need a
Rotary ticket to use the lifts on
Jan. 19.
“It’s a wonderful partner-
ship with Meadows that has
evolved over the years from
when they used to give us an
obscure Monday in January
and we were responsible to
sell tickets,” said Ski Day co-
ordinator Michael Schock.
“Today, Meadows handles
all of the ticket sales for us,”
he said
“It’s open to everyone, and
we encourage the public to
come up since it’s on MLK ob-
servance, with kids out of
school. The price point is very
attractive,” Schock said.
“It’s a fundraiser where
people have a lot of fun,” Or-
tega said. “We get a lot of Ro-
tarians from out of the area
and college students who like
to come because it’s on a
three-day weekend.”
we’re disappointed,” she said.
“It really looks like they are
trying to evade the public in-
terest review. It discounts the
thousands of Oregonians that
have already weighed in on
the (water) exchange.”
Racquel Rancier, senior pol-
icy coordinator for the Oregon
Water Resources Department,
was contacted to discuss the
public interest review
process, but was unable to be
reached by press time.
When asked if her group
planned to file a for mal
protest against the cross
transfer, DeGraw said Food
and Water Watch was still re-
viewing its options.
“We don’t know exactly
what the process looks like,
but we’ll weigh in wherever
we can,” she noted and added
that “You can anticipate we’re
going to (protest) it again if
there is any kind of legal
standing we can have.”
And if that does happen,
Kepler acknowledged that a
successful protest would be
more difficult to mount due to
the different approval stan-
dards for a cross transfer than
an exchange.
“To protest a transfer you
have to show an injury to a
water right,” he explained. “At
least in the current transfer,
that’s hard to do because it’s
all taking place on our proper-
ty and there is no intervening
water right.”
Kepler also confirmed that
the cross transfer would not
be subject to a public interest
review and said “whether we
should be cutting that out or
not” was one of the aspects of
the cross transfer that ODFW
was currently examining.
And although the city of Cas-
cade Locks has filed an appli-
cation for a “permanent”
water right transfer, Kepler
added ODFW has examined
establishing an agreement
with the city that would allow
for the transfer to be undone if
necessary, as well as creating
a stipulation that would pre-
vent ODFW from having to
pay the costs of piping the
water to and from the city.
“We want to make sure that
we’re held whole, essentially,”
he said.
Kepler explained the trans-
fer would be beneficial to the
fish hatchery because it would
allow the facility to keep the
sockeye salmon it raises there
for a longer period. Currently,
when the hatchery does not
have enough water during low
flow periods, the fish have to
be shipped to other hatch-
eries, which involves extra
transportation costs for
ODFW.
However, Kepler noted that
the fish were never the prime
focus for the water swap,
which he said had been cham-
pioned by former Governor
Ted Kulongoski as a way to
boost the economy of Cascade
Locks.
“This has always been
about economic development
for Cascade Locks,” Kepler
said. “That’s the major impe-
tus for this, not ‘ODFW thinks
this is a good idea to do this.’”
STUDENTS CONCENTRATE on a challenging part of Rheinberger’s
“Abendlied” as Mark Steighner directs from the piano.
What’s next in the world of Mark Steighner?
The HRMS musical “The Girl Who Lived With the
Bears,” which Steighner said is “very loosely adapted”
from a Native American folk tale. It opens Feb. 27. Steigh-
ner wrote the script, the ninth performance locally of his
own music. These included, from 2008-13, a trilogy of full-
scale musicals.
The rest of this year will be a very busy time for Steigh-
ner. In addition to school responsibilities, there are or-
chestra and Voci performances (related item on page A3)
and a brand new summer festival being organized by the
Columbia Gorge Orchestra Association, with headliner
Storm Large playing with the orchestra on June 28.
In Fall, Voci choir and orchestra will perform the
Beethoven 9th and the opera “Amahl and the Night Visi-
tors”. Also, this summer Steighner will direct “Next to
Normal” for CAST. Auditions will be in late March.
the board.
Directors Bob Danko and
Jan Veldhuisen Virk, whose
daughters participated in
Steighner ensembles and
productions from the 1990s
onward, both praised
Steighner for his impact on
local youth.
Steighner, 58, took on Sin-
fonietta directorship in
2005, and founded Voci a
couple of years later. A
child of teachers, he gradu-
ated from University of Cal-
ifornia at Santa Barbara.
Mark and Hillary’s son,
Erik, is a music professor at
University of the Puget
Sound. He’s held every
imaginable musical leader-
ship in Hood River in the
past 34 years, with Chamber
Singers, Wind Ensemble,
Jazz Band, and the rock
band Spectrum since start-
ing with the schools in 1980.
He’s also directed church
and middle school choirs,
and written music for a
number or productions in-
cluding his trio of musicals
(staged between 2008-2013):
“Ballad of the Pirate
Queen;” “Avalon: A Steam-
p u n k Ro m a n c e ; ” a n d
“Reach4It!” — different gen-
res and settings that all
dealt with human issues of
tolerance, acceptance and
community.
Steighner’s honors in-
clude Great Teacher Hon-
o r e e f r o m H o o d R ive r
Schools in 1989, Teacher of
the Year in 1993 from Hood
River Rotary and Sprint
(now CenturyLink) and the
first Hood River Arts in Ed-
ucation Award in 2013.
N ESTLE
Continued from Page A1
tive regulatory approach,”
after which Nestlé brought it
to the attention of the city and
ODFW “as a possible way to
reduce staff time and re-
sources currently being spent
by these and other agencies
on the water exchange, owing
to the administrative chal-
lenges posed by opponents of
our company.”
According to a staff report
from the city of Cascade
Locks, the cross tranfer is pro-
jected to be quicker than the
exchange, now taking an an-
ticipated two years instead of
four. The report notes that de-
spite the changes “this
process continues to allow for
public input.”
However, Julia DeGraw,
Northwest organizer for Food
and Water Watch, says that
while the public can still com-
ment on the application, by
proposing a water exchange
instead of a water rights cross
transfer, the city and ODFW
applications no longer have to
go through something called a
public interest review, which
according to Kepler, requires
the application to pass more
“tests” before it is approved.
DeGraw criticized the cross
transfer of water rights as a
way for the city of Cascade
Locks and ODFW to circum-
vent that process.
“Our initial reaction is that