News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Grant Coulee turned down the idea of turning over a stretch of B Street to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation near where USBR’s new fire station is being built. The idea came up in May at the city’s council meeting with possible benefits including not having to maintain the road and putting the dollar savings towards other streets. B Street is currently closed from where it intersects Division Street to SR-155 because of construction on the USBR fire station being built along SR-155. The street is also used as an alternative route through and aro...
Lake Roosevelt Schools' SHARP Kids program, which includes academic as well as hands-on activities, will continue for another five years after receiving a grant that will fund the program with approximately $270,000 a year via the 21st Century grant. "Through the efforts of a substantial number of people in our school and community, and outside of our community (including grant writer Joyce Garrett out of Wenatchee), we were awarded the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant," said Nancy...
It's not easy swimming to the ocean and back. The Grand Coulee Library hosted a presentation titled "Swimming with the Salmon: The Epic Survival Game" June 17, in which children learned "about the life cycle of salmon, as well as efforts river partners throughout the region take to help salmon overcome the obstacles they encounter on their epic journey," according to a press release from Grant PUD which presented the program. "Everyone will get a better appreciation of salmon and their...
As every young man already knows, poop is a regular subject matter in conversation. All chats with friends eventually turn to the poop subject. It happens with daddies too. Insert clever pun here: “That’s a crappy conversation,” or “That’s a lot of crap.” There, we got that out of the way, now we can get serious about the subject. In nature, all living things poop. Plain and simple. Pretty much anything that eats, must get rid of it somehow. That’s the way we were all designed from the whale to...
Working with lavender is some of the most pleasant smelling work a person can do. Mary Jo Monteith, who lives on 38 acres out along SR-174 in the general area of Spring Canyon, grows about 1,400 lavender plants on her property that looks like a big patch of purple from the highway. She's grown lavender there for a dozen years or so, originally to just help suppress the weeds, and has made soap and sold a few lavender plants over the years. This year, a new and different opportunity arrived....
Citizens in Electric City could find their future July 4 plans for explosives thwarted if the city council adopts a new law banning fireworks. The Electric City council discussed adopting such an ordinance at their July 9 council meeting. Councilmember Rich McGuire brought the idea up, citing Coulee Dam’s similar code banning fireworks in that city. Councilmember Lonna Bussert described fireworks debris being left behind in the triangle-shaped parking area outside city hall. A man in the audience added that the fireworks went on for over t...
On Friday, a very special lady will celebrate her ??th birthday. I am smart enough to not put the actual digits in the paper for everyone to see. That would lead to me never having another birthday myself. As we come to the big day, I dream of what I would do for her if money were no object. So here is what I would do for my lovely bride if the keys to the treasure room were ours. Easy enough to start with the basics: new car, dream home and trips, but those would be boring. So let’s assume s...
There's nothing like a relaxing day of golf. Or a week. My uncle John Fox, who works in North Dakota and lives in Baja, Mexico, golfed five rounds of 18 holes, or 90 holes total, at the Banks Lake Golf Course while on vacation in the area recently. I golfed 18 holes with him on June 21 and had a great time, and he was very patient with my, let's say, "sub-par" (over-par?) golf skills. Uncle Johnny, as I know him, was so taken by the course that he wrote down some of his thoughts and...
I like to take pictures. A lot of you know that, and I don’t get out as much as I like to. I especially like to take pictures of birds, second, only recently, to taking pictures of my granddaughter. Karrie and I have been traveling a lot back and forth to different places depending on where our creator calls us and during these trips we are always looking for a photo opportunity from our feathered or furry friends. I also am addicted to bird cams on YouTube. I have been watching the nesting proc...
The Banks Lake Golf Course is in the process of being sold by the port district to Rattlesnake Ridge. At Grant County Port District 7's June 27 meeting, commissioners passed a resolution authorizing commissioners to go through with the sale, then signed a purchase and sale agreement on the terms of selling the golf course and some surrounding land for $1.8 million. Scott Garrits, president, and Dennis Lohrman, secretary/treasurer of Rattlesnake Ridge were present at the meeting. Garrits is also...
The Grand Coulee Volunteer Fire Department this week stressed the importance of fire safety on the Fourth of July and reiterated that fireworks won’t be allowed at North Dam this year, but a federal agency doesn’t consider the ban temporary. “Fireworks will not be legal to use anywhere in the city limits of Grand Coulee in July 2019 per ordinance 1036,” a press release states. “When the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Land Management declared fireworks banned on their property, including the North Dam Area, because of extreme d...
From small town Washington to Music City, Lila Rose is an outlaw in song only, and performing on the Fourth of July at the Festival of America at the Grand Coulee Dam. Lila Rose Bowden is the daughter of Coulee Dam Police Chief Paul Bowden and Coulee Dam City Clerk Stefani Bowden. She performs under the name Lila Rose. "I'm sure this confuses some people around here that have known me my whole life," she said, "but I like to keep my last name out of my music so that someday when I get married, a...
Locals can expect new options for television, internet, and phone services soon with a new service provider investing in area infrastructure. Spectrum, the brand name that Charter Communications uses to sell cable television, internet, and phone services, is almost done with upgrades to their system here in the Coulee area that will make those offerings possible. Charter/Spectrum expects to set up "pop-up shops" to answer questions and take orders at Coulee Dam City Hall in August, said Senior...
The action at Geezer Beach might be viewed as a deliberate provocation. Tyranny should be opposed at any level. The incremental erosion of personal freedom extends to every citizen. The apparent disregard for public opinion by the bureau creates an adversarial climate. Consider the childlike argument put forth in recent press releases. It begs the question, how many adults occupy positions at the bureau? At some level of authority someone should be able to effect a compromise or rescind the decision. At the very least, somebody should attempt...
Sometimes you just must get in the car and go. Well, if I’m honest, we had business to tend to in Vancouver, Washington, but Karrie had not been since she was a kid and I had never been. As we traveled down the road, we soon were seeing country we had never seen, and it was beautiful and breathtaking, especially along the Oregon and Washington border as we traveled along the Columbia River. A thought popped through my head once that this water had once seen the Grand Coulee Dam and was now h...
Them Dam Writers, a local group that has existed in one form or another for decades, has been putting their stories on the internet, helping preserve both-well known and lesser-known local history, and sharing photos both old and new. The group was started in 1985 and helped focus the efforts of locals who had been helping record local history for decades before that, eventually publishing a book titled "Coulee Collection" in 1998. Most recently, Jay Kemble has helped revive the group, bring it...
Citing a dry landscape, federal officials this week put a halt to what has become something of a tradition in recent years at North Dam, where local families have set off fireworks on Independence Day. The Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Reclamation issued a fire restrictions order on public lands where BLM fights wildfires, which includes North Dam, according to a June 19 press release from BLM. A release from Reclamation Monday afternoon clarified that that includes the top of North Dam. “Dry, fire-prone vegetative conditions i...
A buffer zone between the residential neighborhoods of Electric City and Osborne Bay, where the discharge of firearms will not be allowed, was made official at the June 11 Electric City city council meeting. The 500-foot-wide, 7,281-foot-long buffer zone, required the cooperation of various entities to establish: the Bureau of Reclamation, the state’s departments of Natural Resources and Fish and Wildlife, Sunbanks Lake Resort, and the city of Electric City. The zone is being established to create a safety zone for residents who don’t live far...
The Ice Age Park in Electric City may be done as soon as the late summer of 2020. The city council June 11 approved to have SPVV Landscape Architects, who designed the master plan for the park in 2018, move forward with specific designs for the park. The city applied for grant money from the Washington State Recreation & Conservation Office and is ranked 15th out of 91 applicants to get a grant in the amount of $257,649, which the city must match, for a total project cost of $515,298. Jena Jauchius of SPVV said the park will be Electric...
Do fear tactics work as a discipline technique in schools? Not according to a slideshow that the Grand Coulee Dam School District board presented at their meeting in the Raider Hub at Lake Roosevelt High School. Between 30 and 40 people attended the June 10 board meeting for a workshop on discipline within the school system. A video slideshow with a recorded narrative from ChangeLab Solutions focused on things like “Why School Discipline Practices Matter,” and delved into the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, on stu...
Did you listen to Smokey the Bear? He wasn’t just talking to children; he was talking to you there, mister, flicking your cigarette ashes out of the car, lighting fireworks to enjoy their exploding lights and sounds, mowing the lawn because it needs mowing. I think many Americans have a bit of fire-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the fires in recent years. Has anyone else been on evacuation notice recently? Has anyone else had a vacation marred by smoke? Decided not to go out on the boat because you couldn’t breath? Felt like lockin...
The stated reasons for banning vehicles from geezer beach seem devoid of logic and common sense. The implication is that geezers and geezeretts are hopeless, bumbling, incompetents who need to be protected from themselves. Geezers typically didn’t require government supervision to acquire longevity. They don’t need or want some faceless bureaucrat to be their defacto mommy. Most elderly citizens are well-defined individuals who have successfully navigated through obstacles and adversity for many decades. They have demonstrated sel...
This is a different kind of summer for Karrie and me. We have a summer job. It consists of a little 4-month-old that I call granddaughter. But there is more, much more. We start our mornings with cuddles, followed by a bottle and kids’ songs in the background. Of course, the old time favorite “This little light of mine” is on the playlist. After eating time is play time and lots of laughs and giggles. But that song stays in your head all day. And that song got me thinking. This song is talking a...
The Electric City council voted unanimously to not allow short-term rentals anywhere in the city. Short-term rentals are instances in which a home owner who doesn’t live in a residence rents that residence out to someone for less than 30 days. Residents Mark Jenson, Jim Bailey, and Nancy Brown attended the June 11 council meeting to speak against short-term rentals. “I don’t believe they are compatible with residential zones,” Jenson said. Brown said that the primary concerns with short-term rentals were “commercializing and destroyin...
A fire burned a patch of land near the canal near North Dam on Saturday night. A fireworks show put on by the Northwest Pyrotechnics Association went awry when a fire erupted and burned between two and three acres. The permitted event had fire personnel standing by for such an occurrence, with four trucks on standby. A press release from Grand Coulee Volunteer Fire Department Chief Rick Paris said that the fire started at 10:30 p.m. and that Grand Coulee and Electric City Volunteer Fire Departments were called in to assist Bureau of...