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The
The INDEPENDENT, April 4, 2012
INDEPENDENT
Published on the first and third Wednesdays of each month
by The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St.,
Vernonia, OR 97064. Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410.
Deadline is noon the Friday before each issue.
Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net
Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net
Printed on recycled paper with vegetable based dyes
Opinion
Profile of a volunteer
Delores “DeDe” Webb has been volunteering in Ver-
nonia continuously since she started going to Vernon-
ia High School in 1948. She “belonged to about every
organization and club there was” and was voted May
Queen in 1952, in addition to serving as a class officer.
She joined Girls League, Girls Athletic, was in a couple
of operettas and class plays and helped with the year-
book, along with working on the school paper, The
Timberline. She married Don Webb in 1953 and went
right back to volunteering, serving as the
secretary/treasurer of the Jamboree committee for a
couple of years. She says she was always involved
with PTA and was their treasurer for a long time, then
served as President. She sold Savings Stamps (when
you bought $18.75 worth of stamps you got a bond).
Then, she volunteered at the Vernonia Police Dept. for
three years (when Phil Jacobus was chief) and also
cleaned the office and the city hall bathroom (yes, as a
volunteer).
Sometime before 1996 she joined Vernonia Pride,
an organization formed to beautify downtown Vernon-
ia (she was still treasurer when it disbanded in 2011).
She helped at St. Mary’s Catholic Church after the
flood of 1996 and ran the flood clothes closet at the
Grange. She served two terms on the Library Board
and was treasurer for the Fire Volunteers for 11 years.
When the Scout Cabin was being rebuilt in the
1990s, she took donuts and coffee down to those who
were doing the reconstruction (including husband Don)
and made their lunches for a year and a half. She said
about that project, “It was a miracle it got done. I don’t
know if you could do it now,” because it was all done
by volunteers. After it was completed, they needed a
treasurer so DeDe stepped up, then started helping
clean it. She’s still involved with the Scout Cabin.
She joined the city Parks Committee over 16 years
ago (before the ‘96 flood) and just resigned this week.
She thought it was time and that “some young blood
might have more to offer.” She said, “I always enjoyed
being involved. We’ve had a good life here and raised
our kids here so I wanted to give back to the commu-
nity. You need volunteers if you are going to get things
done in a small town,” she continued.
Thanks, DeDe, for all your years helping this town.
She’s a great example of what can still be done by
volunteers.
Are you volunteering?
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
I am one of the
members of the Vernon-
ia Public Works Commit-
tee and, as many of you
know, there are new wa-
ter rates that will be im-
plemented this summer,
so I thought it would be
interesting to you, the
readers, to see a portion
of the adventure the PWC took in hashing out
these new rates.
This article will focus only on the conservation
aspect as it applied to the discussions about wa-
ter usage, since this is an outdoors column. It
wasn’t too long in our discussions around the
water rates before the topic of water conserva-
tion came onto the table. Sure, conserving water
is a good thing. Then the proposals of what
some of the rate structures should look like
made their way onto the table. Conservation did-
n’t look so good in this light. Why was that?
False assumptions.
Years ago, Maggie Peyton and I championed
the current water curtailment ordinance, as it
worked through the city council. The premise of
our argument was that during times of drought, it
was inappropriate to use water for non-neces-
sary purposes while our aquatic resources suf-
fered. Vernonia’s impact upon Rock Creek dur-
ing these droughts can be up to 7% of the daily
flow. The curtailment measure is incremental
and adjusts curtailment to the stream flow. Jeff
Burch, who is responsible for operations at the
water plant, has stated that the public responds
well to the curtailment measures and that they
have noticed a large decrease in customer us-
age during the few times we have been under
curtailment. At no time has the City of Vernonia
been in danger of running out of water due to
low stream conditions, please understand this,
since it seems to be a far and wide misconcep-
tion.
The first assumption some PWC members
made, was that Vernonia water usage had an
undesirable effect on the local aquatic environ-
ment. I replied, “Okay, but we have a water cur-
tailment ordinance [that is applied] when we
have an impact upon the river.” That didn’t total-
ly satisfy some of the members, so I conducted
further research.
The Rock Creek and Nehalem River basins
are fairly close in the area of watershed, when
measured at the mouth of Rock Creek and at the
Nehalem water gauge at Clear Creek, but any-
body who has spent time on these two systems
knows that summertime flows on Rock Creek
are considerably higher than on the Nehalem.
This has to do with geological differences in the
two basins.
Using the Nehalem River data as my source
(discounting the higher flows in Rock Creek dur-
ing the summer), I found the following: The Ne-
halem River at the Clear Creek gauge has
recorded an annual daily mean of 245.36 cubic
feet per second of water per day over the last
nine years (USGS data). Ok, we know how
Please see page 3