News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 1026 - 1050 of 2628
A bull-riding champion will be teaching kids the daredevil sport of bull riding in Nespelem next week. Local legend Shane Proctor — former Grand Coulee resident, Lake Roosevelt High School graduate, and the 2011 National Finals Rodeo World Champion Bull Rider — is hosting his 10th annual bull- and steer-riding school at the Nespelem Rodeo Grounds next Tuesday and Wednesday, April 2-3. The bull-riding school starts at 9 a.m. A barrel-racing school follows April 4-5. The bull-riding school is all booked up, but is free to watch. Proctor will be...
Wouldn’t it be nice to get to dump anything for free during the annual free spring clean up dump week? It won’t happen this year, but it may happen next year. March 30 to April 6 is the week when area residents can take their yard waste for free to the transfer station. The Grand Coulee City Council, mayor, and city clerk discussed allowing residents to be able to throw away anything for free, not just yard waste, during that week, at their March 19 meeting. “My thing is, we have an opportunity to utilize this to get some of these homes that we...
Wouldn’t it be nice to get to dump anything for free during the annual free spring clean up dump week? It won’t happen this year, but it may happen next year. March 30 to April 6 is the week when area residents can take their yard waste for free to the transfer station. The Grand Coulee City Council, mayor, and city clerk discussed allowing residents to be able to throw away anything for free, not just yard waste, during that week, at their March 19 meeting. “My thing is, we have an opportunity to utilize this to get some of these homes that we...
Every second of every day we make choices. Do I get up at 5 a.m. or hit snooze? Do I eat Lucky Charms for breakfast or oatmeal? Do I wear a blue shirt or a red shirt today? Every choice we make determines a direction. Some are less serious than others, but there are decisions that have much bigger consequences. Bigger still, some have life consequences that can set you down rough roads in life. The choices we make not only determine things in our lives, but others are affected as well....
Raider tennis players had their first week of play, during a week in which the last of four courts were finally cleared of the last of the snow by the Coulee Dam Volunteer Fire Department that Thursday. Two days before that, using only three of the four courts, the Lake Roosevelt girls won two out of their three games, but the boys lost all three. The Raiders hosted the Oroville Hornets in Coulee Dam March 19, when the girls' team won 5-0. "Our girls' team pretty much dominated the young...
A $13.6 million fire station being built for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation along SR-155 has faced numerous delays, and a bigger delay now with the termination of the contract between the bureau and the construction company. The contract for the project was awarded to Post Falls, Idaho-based Innovative Construction & Design Ltd. in 2016, with construction beginning in April of 2017. The building was originally scheduled to be complete in April 2018, according to a bureau press release issued in...
Those who drive around Electric City regularly may be surprised this summer to find that the Y-shaped intersection near city hall will be losing the Western Avenue branch off that intersection that currently forks into Western and Stevens Avenue. Electric City is building some sidewalks along Coulee Boulevard, which is also highway 155, as well as along Grand Avenue this summer. Included in these projects is a sidewalk that will wrap around the front of city hall and eliminate the portion of...
Electric City needs to upgrade a critical piece of infrastructure that every person in the city depends on, and for which the city will need to arrange several hundred thousand dollars in financing. Electric City’s 1960s-era sewage lift station, which pumps sewage to the wastewater treatment facility in Grand Coulee, needs to be upgraded soon. The facility at the southern end of Grand Avenue has two pumps, one that is about 60 years old and no longer works, the other just a few years old. The Electric City council discussed the issue at t...
The Keller Ferry, which connects SR-21 from the Wilbur area to the Keller area, will be out of service from April 1 to April 7 for a permanent repair to be done on a weld crack that had closed the ferry from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2. A temporary repair had been done to reopen the ferry, and when the weather warms up a permanent repair can be made, explained Ryan Overton, who works for the Eastern Region Communications of the Washington State Department of Transportation. Overton said the repair may actually take less time, but they are giving the...
Today I stood with my face pointed to the sun. Warmth of the rays covered my face and a smile crept upon my lips. A vague memory flickered in my skull. A memory that seems to have happened a long, long time ago. Yes, this is the sun and this is what spring feels like. It is finally here. I almost say those words with my tongue in my cheek, just in case a snow flurry comes down and blankets us again just to spite me. The roads are clear, I see grass in my yard again, and robins are everywhere. I...
The long-running winter has made it hard to play spring sports, meant to be played on grass and dirt, not ice and snow. "We've had volunteers helping, doing whatever they can, like snow blowing fields," said Lake Roosevelt Athletic Director Tim Rasmussen. The snow has canceled several of the first events scheduled for each of the five spring sports: tennis, golf, baseball, softball, and track & field. "We working as a league and as a district to see what we can do towards the end of the...
Darnell Sam has been appointed to the Nespelem District Position #2 on the Colville Business Council, following the expulsion of Andrea George, who had filled that position. The CBC named Sam to the council seat following a 94-53 vote by tribal members held at a March 5 Nespelem District meeting, according to a March 6 press release from the Colville Tribes. The council had expelled George Feb. 21 on ethics charges including improper influence, gross misconduct and malfeasance. George’s supporters insisted she was being expelled for calling int...
Discipline issues at Lake Roosevelt Elementary School are going down, and students are performing better in English Language Arts and math, according to the principal. Principal Lisa Lakin spoke to the Grand Coulee Dam Area School District board of directors March 11 about the elementary school, and presented a draft of an “Elementary School Improvement Plan.” Lakin discussed the need to improve students scores in English Language Arts and math, but said that scores are going up. “We have students that have already made, this year, two or th...
Out of five candidates, Kirk Marshlain has been chosen as the new Lake Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School principal. The Grand Coulee Dam School District board approved giving Superintendent Paul Turner the go-ahead to hire Marshlain at their March 11 meeting. “I think he’ll be a great addition to our team,” Turner said about Marshlain. Marshlain currently works as a special education teacher in the Wenatchee School District and has worked at a home for troubled youth, Turner said. He’s currently finishing an administrative internship in Wena...
Not only did dozens of gigantic floods shape the local landscape thousands of years ago, they raced across the solid-rock remains of hundreds of layers of lava flows that built the local bedrock millions of years earlier. So said Geologist Nick Zentner to roughly 130 people at the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center on Saturday, brought to town by the Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club. Zentner, who hosts the video series "Nick on the Rocks," spoke for over an hour in the upstairs theater in the Visitor...
I recently sat down with Senior Terry Yazzie and we talked about a variety of topics. The outcome of our talk was this: This is a young man I wish I could have gotten to know better. He has a great sense of humor, but is so grounded and sees the value in what others around him are trying to do and say to him. So here is a small snapshot of our conversation. “Hard, but fine.” That is how Terry described his senior year to this point. He added, “The work is hard; it’s not a lot of work, it’s just...
An era of Raider wrestling is ending with the coming retirement of Coach Steve Hood, whose professional and personal life was shaped by the sport he viewed as a means to help shape young lives. "It's been a great ride, a great experience," Hood told The Star recently. "A lot of really good experiences. Athletics gives you an ability to work with kids on a different level than in the classroom. It's an opportunity to help them learn so many life lessons about hard work, and dealing with adversity...
Are you interested in helping make a difference in the local cities, parks, schools, hospital, or elsewhere? There are 28 local offices up for election this fall, including positions on city councils, school boards, and various districts in the area. Those interested in running need to file their candidacy with their county elections office between May 13 and 17. Cities Electric City has four city council positions, as well as the mayor’s office, up for election this fall. Three of the four council positions are for four-year terms; the fourth...
Nearly new sidewalks that Grand Coulee had installed in 2015 are already cracking and crumbling, a situation that could require time in court to work out. Grand Coulee's city council voted at their Feb. 19 meeting to have their lawyer send a letter to Travellers Insurance, which insures Davenport-based Halme Builders, who installed the sidewalks. The 2015 project to install new sidewalks and gutters on Federal Avenue and Main Street cost $407,816.53, paid for with money from a state...
Elmer City’s council approved a resolution Feb. 21 allowing the city to apply for funding to build its own wastewater treatment facility. There was no discussion of the resolution before the vote at the council meeting. There has been bad blood between Elmer City and Coulee Dam regarding their shared sewage treatment plant and Coulee Dam’s process for building a new one that Elmer City representatives have felt left out of, feel overcharged for, and that they say violates a 50-year contract from 1975 between the two cities. “It has been well...
The Care and Share Food Bank, located at the Nazarene Church on SR-174, filled their almost-empty shelves with food from Yakima-based nonprofit Northwest Harvest last week. Carol Nordine, who manages the food bank, was present, and a number of volunteers helped unload the food onto the shelves Thursday. Nordine noted that Shawn Neider, who pastors the Zion Lutheran Church, helps her a lot with food bank efforts. Neider helped clear the parking lot of snow before the food arrived. "The food is ne...
The Natural Helpers program at Lake Roosevelt High School has been a success, staff members and students say, and they want to keep it going. The program, which used a student survey to identify 21 students to whom other students feel comfortable turning in a time of need, took those students on a multi-day retreat to K Diamond K Ranch outside of Republic last fall. There, the Natural Helpers learned how to help peers deal with issues such as depression, suicide, drugs, alcohol, and physical and emotional abuse. The program was discussed at a...
The Raiders basketball squad won two and lost two at state last week, ultimately finishing sixth out of Washington's 60 2B schools. The Raiders kicked off their string of games at the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association Hardwood Classic at Spokane Arena by winning a tight game against Liberty High School Feb. 27, 41-37. The game stayed close the entire time against the Liberty Lancers, with the score tied 13-13 at the end of the first quarter and the Raiders leading 25-22 at the...
The Lady Raiders lost their regionals playoff game Friday, ending their 2018-19 season. Lake Roosevelt lost in Tumwater against Willapa Valley, 44-35. The Lady Raiders led 10-7 at the end of the first quarter, and 16-14 at the end of the half. Willapa Valley pulled away in the second half, scoring 30 points to LR's 19, leading to their nine-point win. The Lady Raiders' final win-loss record is 13-3 in league play, 15-9 overall. Highlights of the season include defeating the top-ranked Brewster...
The Raiders lost their regional playoff game on Saturday, but will play in the first round of state today (Wednesday) for a chance to play in the next round on Thursday. The Raiders lost to the top-ranked Kittitas Coyotes 76-45 Saturday. The Raiders scored eight unanswered points to start the game, and led 18-12 at the end of the first. But the Coyotes, led by Gonzaga-bound Brock Ravet, took the lead in the second quarter and ran away with it. Ravet is Washington state's all-time leading scorer...