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About The Columbia press. (Astoria, Or.) 1949-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 2018)
January 26, 2018 T he C olumbia P ress Eighth Street Dam maintenance leads to letters seeking board recall options. “I have heard verbal com- The Columbia Press ments from directors of the A Warrenton resident who Skipanon Water Control contends the Skipanon Water District who claim that they Control District can’t legally have the right to do anything abandon its flood-control du- they decide for this river re- ties has sent a letter to prop- gardless of what their charter erty owners within the dis- or Oregon State Law (says),” trict asking whether they’re Widdicombe told commis- interested in recalling board sioners. “It appears to me members. that the district board Scott Widdicombe is making decisions said he reacted to that do not follow their what he sees as mis- own charter.” conduct by board He gave city com- members at the ex- missioners copies of pense of Warrenton’s ORS 553, the state’s residents. law on creation of wa- It all boils down ter control districts, to the Eighth Street Widdicombe which states “water Dam and its 60-year control districts may history, which has be created … for the gotten particularly purpose of acquiring, messy since the water purchasing, construct- control district chose ing, improving, oper- to keep the tide gates ating and maintaining open in 2012 and re- drainage, irrigation move them perma- and flood and surface nently in 2015. water control works in “Ultimately, there’s order to prevent dam- going to be a reso- Scheller age and destruction of lution on the Eighth life and property by Street Dam and it doesn’t floods.” have to take years to happen,” It also states that water con- Widdicombe said. trol districts can have a sec- ondary purpose of improving t he letters Earlier this month, he sent fish life and water quality, letters to 297 property own- but that can’t be their prima- ers within the district. Each ry purpose. Property owners within the property owner pays an op- Skipanon Water Control Dis- eration and maintenance fee trict’s boundaries, when they of $30 per parcel, which pro- petitioned the court to form vides the district with about in 1960, said they sought to $11,500 a year in revenue. “undertake the construction The money is no longer be- ing spent on flood control and or purchase of drainage, is, instead, going to promote flood or surface water con- fish passage, Widdicombe trol” to benefit their proper- ties, according to court re- contends. Widdicombe told the City cords. Today, city leaders seek a Commission Tuesday night grant to fund a study of flood that he has heard back from potential since the gates many residents in the dis- have been removed. Mayor trict and will be organizing a Henry Balensifer brought meeting with them to discuss B y C indy y ingst up the study during a medi- ation meeting last year with members of the water control district, who emphatically re- jected participating in it. “To the best of my knowl- edge, Mr. Widdicombe is not a constituent or resident of our district,” said Tessa Scheller, who has served on the board continuously since 1993, having been elected six times. Board members maintain seven miles of river and three structures on a daily basis, she said, removing large and small woody debris blocking dams and culverts, monitor- ing water levels, taking pho- tos. The Eighth Street Dam has been examined numerous times by engineers and feder- al employees who have deter- mined it to be ineffective for flood control and an imped- iment to downstream flows, Scheller said. But some of those studies have been called into ques- tion because they were done to determine fish flows in- stead of flooding, an argu- ment Scheller rejects. “The dam was dangerous and obsolete. It degraded water quality and destroyed a his- toric salmon run.” She called Widdicombe’s claims “alarmist and inaccu- rate” and said she and other board members planned to attend Wednesday night’s County Commission meeting to assure them they have no intention of removing other flood structures. “His biggest lie … is that we’re going to drain Culla- by Lake,” a Clatsop County asset, Scheller said. “We’ve spent thousands of dollars repairing the dam at Cullaby Lake. There are 140 homes there.” 5
