NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Parks grapple with attack, increased visitors
Oregon state parks
logged a record
number of overnight
visitors in 2018
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
EO Media Group
ASTORIA — An Idaho man
found guilty of brutally attacking a
transgender woman near Newport
last year has been banned from all
state parks in Lincoln County.
This type of exclusion is rela-
tively rare, and the attack by Fred
Constanza that left Lauren Jack-
son, a newcomer to Oregon, with
a broken jaw and a fractured skull
was a particularly violent outlier.
But officials say they have noticed
a slight uptick in more mun-
dane issues and increased tension
between visitors that often corre-
spond with increasingly crowded
parks.
Oregon state parks logged a
record number of overnight vis-
itors in 2018, with the bulk of
the visitors headed to the Ore-
gon Coast. At the top of the list?
Fort Stevens State Park in Clatsop
County, with over 200,000 over-
night stays that year.
Visitor rates for 2019 have not
been finalized, but Chris Havel,
associate director at the Oregon
Department of Parks and Recre-
ation, expects them to be on par
or slightly less than what officials
saw in 2018. The 2018 numbers
EO Media Group Photo/Katie Frankowicz
Fort Stevens State Park sees around 1.2 million visitors a year.
were buoyed in part by the solar
eclipse, which drew thousands
eager to watch the event to recre-
ational sites.
Last year, the parks department
issued approximately 35 exclu-
sions statewide out of 50 million
total visits, according to the state.
More than one-third of the
exclusions originated in a single
park — Valley of the Rogue —
which also serves as a freeway rest
area and, as a result, is also one of
the state’s busiest parks with 1.9
million day visitors in a year.
Fort Stevens State Park sees
around 1.2 million and had a hand-
ful of exclusions last year — none
of them for anything as serious as
the attack by Costanza at Agate
Critics decry proposed cuts in
Hanford nuclear cleanup plan
Forecast for Pendleton Area
TODAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
Mostly cloudy
Spotty showers in
the afternoon
Breezy in the a.m.;
partly sunny
Showers of rain
and snow
Strong winds
subsiding
50° 31°
53° 36°
By NICHOLAS K.
GERANIOS
Associated Press
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
48° 37°
46° 32°
49° 39°
HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
54° 30°
53° 37°
53° 39°
52° 34°
51° 41°
OREGON FORECAST
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
PENDLETON
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Seattle
Olympia
48/39
41/30
53/28
Longview
Kennewick Walla Walla
49/34
Lewiston
49/37
53/31
Astoria
48/37
Pullman
Yakima 48/30
49/36
48/32
Portland
Hermiston
52/36
The Dalles 54/30
Salem
Corvallis
52/33
Yesterday
Normals
Records
La Grande
43/29
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
52/33
48/28
43/29
Ontario
50/28
Caldwell
Burns
58°
28°
47°
29°
68° (1977) -16° (1929)
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
Albany
51/34
0.00"
0.07"
0.38"
0.31"
2.47"
1.66"
WINDS (in mph)
48/28
43/21
0.00"
1.43"
0.49"
3.45"
3.32"
1.87"
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Pendleton 40/25
51/34
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
HERMISTON
Enterprise
50/31
55/32
57°
30°
45°
29°
66° (1924) -8° (1929)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
49/36
Aberdeen
40/28
46/31
Tacoma
Yesterday
Normals
Records
Spokane
Wenatchee
49/40
Today
Boardman
Pendleton
Medford
54/30
Thu.
WSW 4-8
W 4-8
SW 6-12
WSW 6-12
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
49/19
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2020
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
7:03 a.m.
5:17 p.m.
9:53 p.m.
9:16 a.m.
Last
New
First
Full
Feb 15
Feb 23
Mar 2
Mar 9
NATIONAL EXTREMES
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 89° in Naples, Fla. Low -24° in West Yellowstone, Mont.
Beach State Recreation Site.
Most issues in state parks are
handled with a verbal warning,
officials say. If tempers flare or a
visitor does not follow the rules,
rangers are supposed to try to
address the issue or de-escalate a
situation in other ways before tak-
ing the final step of banning some-
one from a park. A person may be
banned for up to a year.
“It’s not done lightly,” said
Justin Parker, Fort Stevens unit
manager.
“But we’re climbing that ladder
more often now … at a rate that is
commensurate with growing visi-
tor rates,” Havel noted.
In Clatsop County, primarily
because of increased visitation to
state lands and the potential for
conflict, the parks department has
established agreements with local
law enforcement, paying overtime
costs so deputies with the sher-
iff’s office and troopers with Ore-
gon State Police can conduct extra
patrols on the beach.
Parker hopes to increase the
hours this summer, contingent on
funding.
“I think, overall, we do have
the resources we need, but we
are more and more looking to our
partners … for the higher-level
enforcement contacts,” Parker
said.
Locally, he has seen a rise in
can and bottle thefts at parks.
When something more seri-
ous — such as the attack on Jack-
son — occurs, state park offi-
cials look at staffing levels within
individual park units. Employees
may be shifted elsewhere to aid
busier sites. Most of the staff are
seasonal, working for four to six
months.
“But the season is getting lon-
ger and our park staff trend has not
yet caught up to that,” Havel said.
“It’s been a challenge and it’s going
to continue to be a challenge.”
SPOKANE, Wash. —
Advocates for cleaning up
a former nuclear weapons
production site in Washing-
ton state are outraged that
the Trump administration
is proposing a $700 million
budget cut next year.
The proposal released
Monday by President Don-
ald Trump called for cutting
the annual Hanford cleanup
budget from about $2.5 bil-
lion to about $1.8 billion.
Critics say that large a
cut is almost certain to delay
the cleanup, which is on a
legally enforced schedule.
“This budget proposal
would gut the cleanup and
goes in the wrong direc-
tion,” said Tom Carpen-
ter, director of Hanford
Challenge, a Seattle-based
watchdog group.
The Hanford Nuclear
Reservation, located near
Richland, Washington, was
created by the Manhattan
Project during World War II
as the nation raced to create
nuclear weapons. Hanford
produced the plutonium for
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
the atomic bomb dropped on
Nagasaki, Japan, that effec-
tively ended World War II.
Richland is 200 miles south-
east of Seattle.
During the Cold War,
Hanford produced about
two-thirds of the plutonium
for the nation’s nuclear arse-
nal, resulting in the nation’s
largest collection of highly
toxic radioactive waste.
Cleaning up that waste
has been the main mis-
sion at the site since 1989,
and experts say decades of
work remains. The Gen-
eral Accountability Office
has estimated it would cost
about $3 billion a year to
adhere to a legal agreement
between the state and fed-
eral governments that sets
deadlines for the cleanup.
Trump and previous
presidents have routinely
proposed cutting the Han-
ford budget, which have
been opposed by the state’s
congressional delegation.
“Unfortunately, the fed-
eral government doesn’t get
its cleanup obligation out
there,” Carpenter said.
He noted the Trump
budget proposes a 25%
increase to make additional
nuclear weapons.
“They are taking away
from cleanup to restart the
nuclear arms race,” Carpen-
ter said.
Republican Rep. Dan
Newhouse, who represents
the Hanford region, said the
federal government has an
obligation to clean up the
radioactive waste at places
like Hanford.
“I will continue to work
with the administration and
with our senators to restore
funding levels and get the
job done,” Newhouse said.
Earlier this month, Han-
ford officials announced
that the sprawling Pluto-
nium Finishing Plant had
been largely cleaned up. But
that still left some 56 million
gallons of radioactive and
hazardous waste stored in
177 underground tanks that
must be dealt with.
The Plutonium Finish-
ing Plant, which operated
from 1949 to 1989 and com-
prised some 90 buildings,
produced hockey-puck sized
buttons of plutonium that
were shipped off-site to be
installed in nuclear weap-
ons. It took 20 years to clean
and demolish that plant.
BRIEFLY
Dairy containers removed
from Oregon bottle bill
system for now
SALEM — The Oregon Liquor Control
Commission is temporarily removing cer-
tain dairy and plant-based containers from
the Bottle Bill system until a workable solu-
tion can be worked out for handling these
products.
The OLCC held a special meeting Jan.
30, when it rescinded a month-old expansion
rule adding certain dairy product containers
to those covered by the Bottle Bill. Specifi-
cally, the rule covered containers for drinks
like flavored milk, lactose-free milk, butter-
milk, kefir and drinkable yogurt. Willamette
Week first reported the agency’s reversal.
According to an OLCC news release,
temporarily removing these containers will
give the industry time to come up with meth-
ods of accepting these empties.
Oregon Beverage Recycling Coopera-
tive’s Jules Bailey said the problems with
returned dairy-based beverage containers
involve health and safety concerns.
“Especially when you’re dealing with
pasty substances like yogurt and those sorts
of things, when they go into those reverse
vending machines they can get in the gears,
they can get all over the insides and the guts
of it (and) create spoilage,” Bailey said.
— Associated Press
Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.
-10s
-0s
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showers t-storms
10s
rain
20s
flurries
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ice
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cold front
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