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The INDEPENDENT, April 3, 2008
The
INDEPENDENT
Published on the first and third Thursdays of each month by
The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St., Vernonia, OR 97064.
Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410.
Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net
Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net
Mentor Noni Andersen
Opinion
No columns from the City
Here’s the update on the library and Did You Know…
columns from the City of Vernonia. Vernonia’s Voice
gets their police column via email directly from Chief of
Police Workman (as we always did before we angered
Interim City Administrator Aldie Howard). We received
the police blotter, which is public record, but we did not
received the Did You Know…column. In fact, Howard
recently handed us a bill for the time it takes the Chief
and the librarian to write the columns, the total was
$52.30 (hmmm…do you think the Voice received a
bill?). What Howard doesn’t seem to understand is that
we provide the space for these columns (free of
charge) to facilitate communications between the city
and the citizens.
Now the important stuff
Enough about the petty actions of petty bureaucrats.
What’s troubling us this issue is the cost of war versus
the cost of infrastructure. The amount of money spent
so far (as of 8:00 p.m. April 2) was $507,883,300,000.
That’s $507 billion. According to http://www.nationalpri
orities.org/costofwar_home another way to look at that
$507 billion is as $341.4 million per day.
So, Vernonia needs new schools for $50 million, and
a new sewer system out of the flood plain for $10 mil-
lion. Let’s throw in another $50 million so each of the
approximately 350 household affected by the flood can
have $142,857 to build a new house out of the flood
plain. That adds up to $110 million. The war would only
have to stop for about eight hours or one third of a day
and Vernonia could be re-built, safe from future floods.
Then there’s the human cost. Vernonia lost no lives
in the flood, but 4,012 Americans have lost their lives in
the Iraq war as of March 31. Another 29,496 have been
wounded. 1,196,514 Iraqis have lost their lives since
the war began.
Wouldn’t it be nice if our government thought invest-
ing in infrastructure, healthcare, and education in this
country was more important than investing in death
and destruction in Iraq?
On to this issues “Something Great”. It’s great to see
DEQ and EPA show up to help with the cleanup of haz-
ardous materials that wandered around during the
flood. See information on page 1 if you know where
any containers of unknown substances came to rest.
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
Well, I sit here writing
this article with a blanket
of snow on the ground.
Interesting bit of weather
we have had this year. I
know for a fact that I have
had my pickup in 4-wheel
drive far more times this
year than any year since I
started working at the
Wauna Mill back in ‘90. I took a look at the
Snowtel site for South Saddle Mountain (further
south than Saddle Mt.) and, at 3100 feet in ele-
vation, there is 82 inches of snow, with an equiv-
alent of 28.6 inches of water. That is flat amaz-
ing.
With all the water we have flowing down our
rivers or sitting on the ground waiting to flow
down the rivers, one would think that this would
be good news for fish. The answer is yes and
no, the flood of ’07 likely destroyed most of the
Chinook run and some of the early Coho runs.
Fish eggs are delicate things that are not robust
enough to resist being crushed by moving gravel
and, yes, the gravel beds moved a lot. For the
fish that survived, the news is probably better,
because there is new habitat that has now
formed in the rivers. There is probably less com-
petition for food, but there may also be less food
to begin with. I remember that the local Cut-
throat trout fishery was tremendous in the fishing
season following the ‘96 flood. There were plen-
ty of large fat trout. Winter Steelhead should be
in better shape since most of them came in after
the flood, their offspring will have little competi-
tion for food when they emerge from the gravels.
Andy Bryant, senior hydrologist for the Nation-
al Weather Service out of Portland, has made a
power point presentation about the ‘07 flood to
help people understand what happened as far as
the weather was concerned. I heard many peo-
ple comment that the Nehalem River was far
worse than in ‘96, but people living on Rock
Creek stated the opposite. In Andy’s presenta-
tion there is a slide of the estimated rainfall
amounts during the ‘07 flood event which is over-
laid on a land map. The rainfall map was creat-
ed from rainfall measurements taken by radar
sweeps over our area, then compiling all of the
measurements to create a total. This rainfall
map makes clear what happened and why there
was a difference between the two drainages.
The most rain fell in the Nehalem drainage, while
a lesser amount fell in the Rock Creek drainage.
The most significant rainfall was in the headwa-
ters of the Nehalem River, down the Nehalem
Valley from Timber, skirting off to the South and
East of Vernonia and then heading more North.
All the eastern tributaries of the Nehalem took
the full brunt of the storm – Beaver Creek, Peb-
ble Creek, Oak Ranch Creek and maybe Fish-
hawk Creek. Speaking of Fishhawk Creek, did
you know that there was a time during the flood
when there was concern that the dam was going
Please see page 20