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The INDEPENDENT, August 6, 2009
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
Printed on recycled paper with vegetable based dyes
Opinion
Jamboree a time of giving
Jamboree is upon us, starting August 7 and running
through Sunday, August 9. Banks BBQ is just around
the corner, August 14-16. These community celebra-
tions could not come about without the volunteer efforts
of many people in the communities. Someone makes
sure there are garbage cans, porta-potties, picnic ta-
bles. People volunteer to pick up the garbage, man in-
formation booths, help organize parades, and all the
other necessary behind-the-scenes selfless tasks that
go into making these weekends flow. Their efforts
make it so the rest of us in the community, along with
our friends and relatives who visit for the occasion, can
enjoy the events that make for the good times. Thank
you to all these volunteers.
These community celebrations also provide the op-
portunity for community organizations to raise at least
some of the funds that go back into the community to
make it a better place. Here are some, but undoubted-
ly not all, of the ways to help support the community
while enjoying the activities, in Vernonia;
• Buy something (a brick, a book, a sticker) from the
Jamboree information booth. That table is staffed by
volunteers of Vernonia Pride whose agenda is down-
town beautification.
• Eat a Lions Club BBQ Beef or Pulled Pork sand-
wich to help their good works.
• Buy a book from the Friends of the Library book
sale and support the library.
• Enter an event at the Pet Party and your entry fee
or donation goes to buy pet food for the local food
bank.
• Eat at the pancake breakfast at the Senior Center
to help feed the hungry. Your money there goes to Ver-
nonia Cares Food Bank.
• Get a Booster burger, etc. by the grandstands be-
hind the high school. The Boosters do great works to
help the town’s children and the schools.
• Have kids ages 13-20? Send them to the Teen
Dance and help fund the Zach Rumbolz Memorial
Scholarship.
In Banks;
• Eat at the “All You Can Eat Breakfast” and support
the Lions Club.
• Enjoy all the events that fund Sunset Park so it’s
available for community activities free or at reduced
rates during the rest of the year.
Most of all, enjoy the celebrations. Be safe and
please don’t drink and drive.
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
Hopefully by the time
you read this, the heat
wave will be over with.
While the heat wave may
be over, the effects will be
with us for a while, some
permanently. Did you no-
tice how a lot of people
flocked to the rivers? Yep,
it was a fine place to cool
off for us humans and for many animals too. If
you were a fish, well it wasn’t so cool. Fish are
used to the water being cold. Fish breathe
through their gills so they must be able to absorb
oxygen in the water that passes over the gills.
The trouble with warm water is that it doesn’t
have the ability to hold as much oxygen as cold
water, and when the water reaches around 75
degrees, the fish suffocate.
I happened to be off work on the days leading
up to the triple digit temperatures. Using a DEQ
certified electronic measuring device, I took
readings from our local streams. I sampled at the
confluence of Rock Creek and the Nehalem Riv-
er, one mile downstream of the confluence at the
the green steel bridge, and a few random sam-
ples around the area. On July 26th the Nehalem
at the confluence of Rock Creek reached 76.6
degrees at 7:00 p.m. On July 27th, the same lo-
cation reached 79.6 degrees at 7:00 p.m. Just a
few feet upstream of the confluence, Rock Creek
was 73.0 degrees, and at the green bridge – only
one mile downstream – the river was an incredi-
ble 80.4 degrees. Two days later the tempera-
tures were even higher. Rock Creek at the con-
fluence with the Nehalem was 77.0 degrees, the
Nehalem at the same place was 82.1 degrees
and at the green bridge the temperature was
84.1, absolutely terrible.
I have done a lot of temperature sampling
over the years, most of it with data loggers that
monitored the rivers every hour for days on end,
and never have I seen such high stream temper-
atures. So what does this mean to us humans?
Well, most likely any salmonids (Steelhead,
Coho, Chinook) in the stream areas that reached
lethal temperatures are now feeding the crayfish.
If you take a walk along the Nehalem River in the
Vernonia area, it becomes apparent that the
stream is shallow and wide, with few holes,
which are vital for these fish during an event like
this; down deep the water can remain cooler.
Since there is a lack of deep holes, the
salmonids caught in these stream reaches sim-
ply cannot move far enough, fast enough, to
avoid getting caught in the hot water.
So why are the Nehalem and the lower reach-
es of Rock Creek so warm? It is the legacy of our
forefathers who raised crops in the fields they
cleared along the streams. Removing all the
conifers from the stream banks and allowing only
a thin strip of alders, maples and other shrubs to
survive, the rivers are exposed directly to sun-
light and heat up excessively. The good news is
Please see page 16