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The INDEPENDENT, July 1, 2010
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
Vernonia budget balanced
The Vernonia Budget Committee did this community a
favor and deserves our thanks for wrestling the city budget
to the point of being balanced. They did not have an easy
job and they did the hard work that should have been in
place for the past two or more years, and some of the
members even agreed to serve on an ad hoc Blue Ribbon
Committee to look at the money coming in and going out
every month, to keep the finances under control so the
whole process will be easier next year. Thank you, commit-
tee members.
Police Chief takes control
After a couple of Vernonia Council meetings on court is-
sues, Police Chief Grace quietly took control, on June 21,
by handing out a memo on Municipal vs. Justice Court that
said his opinion is that the Justice Court offers a level of
service that is affordable. Another memo outlined new pro-
tocols for routing traffic citations that said as of June 17 all
code violations/infractions will be routed to the Vernonia
Justice Court. Hopefully, these memos will usher in better
a better relationship between the Vernonia police and the
court. Thanks, Chief Grace.
That 4:00 a.m. phone call
Last Monday, Vernonia residents were awakened by a
recorded phone call shortly before 4:00 a.m. After shaking
the cobwebs from sleepy brains, most of us realized that,
far from being an annoying robo-call, the 9-1-1 emergency
communications system had been activated because a
child was missing from his bed.
The call provided a description of what the child was
wearing, the area where his home was located, and infor-
mation that he may have been sleep-walking. We were
asked to check for him around our homes and yards, and
many citizens ignored the early hour to become part of the
search effort. The child was home safe about three hours
later.
The outcome of this emergency was good, not just be-
cause the child was safe, but because it illustrated the
premise that emergency situations can be handled best
when there is adequate communication with citizens. All
those involved in developing this system – Columbia 9-1-
1, law enforcement, fire districts, municipalities and county
agencies – deserve our thanks.
As for those who grumbled about being disturbed and
hung up their phones, think again. You may sometime
need emergency information about a flood or fire or wind
storm or, God forbid, a missing person in your family.
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
We just finished one of
the wettest springs on
record here in the North-
west and, yep, just like
everybody else I was get-
ting tired of it. Weather
that falls outside of aver-
age has pluses and mi-
nuses when it comes to
wildlife. We are likely to be
seeing those effects later
this year, or in years to come.
The effects on fish are most likely to be posi-
tive. It seems to make sense that creatures that
live in water would be enhanced when there is
more of it, but this year, while we had more wa-
ter we didn’t have a lot of high water, which is
good. High water events tend to be hard on
spawning beds and young fry. Juvenile fish
seek shelter from high flows and often become
trapped in isolated pockets of water when the
high flows recede. The trapped fish die when the
pockets dry up or when predators find them.
Since there were no damaging high flow events
this year, that is a point in the plus column.
We have also experienced record high river
flows this spring. Since mid-April we have been
above the daily mean for stream flow, in many in-
stances twice the mean flow. In June we have
been setting new daily high stream flow records
for the date. Truly, we are witnessing a very in-
teresting phenomenon, the likes we have never
seen before. I would guess that higher flows in
the spring will be very beneficial to out-migrating
smolts due to faster down stream transport,
deeper river depths and higher sediment loads
(east fork of Nehalem pumping in mud) which,
while higher than usual, were not harmful.
These conditions should have created the best
out-migration and the least predation, compared
to previous years. One caveat, though: Last
summer the Nehalem suffered the highest river
temperatures since temperatures have been
monitored, which surely killed a lot of fish. So
how will we know if this spring high water made
a difference? I suspect that, since Coho and
Steelhead juveniles took a beating in last year’s
heat, this year’s smolt production for Coho and
Steelhead will be down. Chinook salmon smolt
out the same year that they are born, unlike
Coho and Steelhead, so they should see a
marked benefit. So what we could see is a bad
2011 Coho run (due to a major summer kill in
2009), the Steelhead run will be lower in 2012,
but not as badly impacted as Coho, due to mixed
return timing. The Chinook run in 2013 should
show improvement over the weak runs of the
past couple of years. Of course all of these pre-
dictions are out the window if ocean conditions
turn bad.
On the wildlife side of the coin we have a
mixed bag. Birds most likely will take a real
drubbing from all this wet weather. I expect for-
est grouse, turkey and chukar populations to be
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