News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Lake Roosevelt students in sixth grade and up have the opportunity to go to the eastern United States and see cultural and historical sites in New York City and Washington D.C. The trip, taking place after school is out for the summer in June of 2022, isn’t technically a school function, but the school board on Monday voted to show their support for the trip, and to allow for advertising within the school for it. The trip would allow students to “explore the rich culture and heritage of our great nation,” a description provided to the schoo...
After years of shepherding Coulee Dam’s wastewater treatment plant project along, the town council tonight (Wednesday) will consider authorizing the mayor to sign a letter to the contractor. Exactly what’s in the letter is not yet known, following a two-hour executive (closed) session of the council on Monday, which was an extension of its regular meeting last Wednesday. That meeting was “adjourned” again Monday to continue Wednesday “to take formal action regarding the Wastewater Treatment Plant Project,” a note in an emailed invitation...
During the past 18 months, the pandemic has had significant impact on our lives. However, small businesses have the greatest impact on our livelihoods. Whether self-employed or the employer to dozens, small businesses are the engine that keep our economy and our communities running. They are the providers of goods and services; and, also the providers of incomes and sustenance. Being a small business owner is difficult even in the best of economic times, so to say small business ownership has been a challenge the past year and a half is an...
Myanmar (Burma) has its own way of storing gold. The Shwedagon Pagoda is one of the premier Buddhist temples in the world and dates back some 2,500 years. Here in the U.S. we think of things 200-300 years old as really old. Not there, nor in most of the world. This huge monument wears thousands of tons of gold, like a coat in cold weather. As if this isn’t rich enough, it has thousands of diamonds on its top, including one of over 70 carats. I like to think of myself as a contributor to the country’s wealth. While there, I patiently wat...
This September 11 remembrance fell at a time when America is bitterly divided. It is also a time when we are more acutely worried about where and when terrorists will strike next. Our hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan — the place where terrorists orchestrated the 9/11 carnage in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville killing nearly 3,000 fellow Americans — was fresh in our minds. We needed words of reassurance again. We needed to be reminded of the way our country came together after 9/11 — an epilog — and a hopeful path forward—a prolog....
The Lady Raiders soccer team lost their season opener 2-1 to Bridgeport on Saturday in Grand Coulee. Senior Sadie Trotter, one of the team's captains, made LR's goal in the second half from a penalty kick resulting from a handball offense from Bridgeport. With the score tied at 1-1, a mistake from LR led to Bridgeport's go-ahead goal for the 2-1 final score. "Bridgeport is one of the top four teams in the league, so the girls played really well," Head Coach Micah Esmond said. "The goals we conce...
The Lake Roosevelt Raiders cross country team ran five kilometers at Wapato Point in Manson on Saturday. “I really enjoyed Manson’s cross country course,” Head Coach Matthew Timentwa said. “It’s right there on Lake Chelan so it’s got a beautiful view while running, which is not something you can say for every course. It’s also a pretty good opening course as far as terrain goes. It has a good mixture of flats and hills with some grass thrown in there as well.” “I was proud of all of my runners that got to participate because all of them did a...
The Lady Raiders volleyball team defeated Almira-Coulee-Hartline 3-1 in Coulee City Sept. 9. Lake Roosevelt played the first two sets “with absolute fire,” Head Coach Meagan Caudell said. The first set was won 25-9. “Audrey Hansen’s serves carried us through that set,” Caudell said. LR won the second set 25-19. The Lady Raiders lost the third set 25-21, then won the fourth 25-21. Player highlights include the work of Hansen, who had 10 kills for the evening. Aehsley Piturachsatit had 12 assists, and Shyanne Marchand had eight. Carly Neddo, wh...
We could all use a morale boost these days, and a little bit of kindness can go a long way. Rachelle Haven, executive director of the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce, has started a project called Coulee Kind that encourages people to perform “random acts of kindness.” “I started [Coulee Kind] because I had been hearing from business owners that they were struggling with morale within the community, whether it be employees, themselves, or customers,” Haven told The Star. “I know a lot of people are home right now due to the delta var...
Harvest Fest has been cancelled due to a surge in COVID-19 cases. The board of directors of the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce called a special meeting Sept. 1 to make the decision on the seasonal festival, originally planned for Sept. 18-19, Chamber Executive Director Rachelle Haven said. “The decision was not made lightly,” she said. “While we know that everyone wants to get back to business as usual and in person events again, we felt, with the surge of COVID cases in the community, it would not be responsible of us to host an ev...
When you drive across it on highway 2, you may not think of Moses Coulee as anyone's home, but once it was a place where people lived in villages, grew gardens and gathered what they needed to live. Previously undocumented rock feature sites in the Moses Coulee region, significant to local tribes, can now be recorded with help from National Park Service dollars. The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation are one of 12 recipients of Tribal Heritage Grant money. Congress appropriated...
"Music is part of human nature," according to new Lake Roosevelt Music Teacher Gabriel James, who moved to Coulee Dam recently for the gig. James, who grew up in Spokane, received his undergraduate degree in jazz performance from Whitworth University, then a master's degree in teaching in June of this year. Saxophone is his main instrument, and he also plays flute and clarinet. While in high school, James played in the Spokane Area Wind Ensemble, and Spokane Area Jazz Ensemble, both of which...
Remember way back at the beginning of the pandemic, about a zillion years ago, when all we knew is that it could be bad for a while, but then schools actually closed? That’s when we knew this was going to be inconvenient as hell and hoped it would not last too long. Back then, there was some limited discussion about whether it was possible to come up with a vaccine, or whether that was even the right approach. The majority of scientists, and just as importantly politicians, decided the new coronavirus was probably lethal enough that taking t... Full story
I’ve seen a mountain of big attractions. But little things do matter, and sometimes they are embedded in your memory. A few years ago, I took on a consulting job in Kodiak, Alaska. The owner wanted to clean up some of her business practices so she could sell her newspaper. I made several trips there and twice my wife accompanied me. On one trip, I had the weekend free and decided to fly to Anchorage and see a healthcare practitioner who lived just up the block from us in Bothell. She showed us around and we made a drive to Denali National P...
The Raider varsity football team won their season opener Friday, defeating the Chewelah Cougars 12-7 in Chewelah. “We knew that Chewelah was a tough opponent,” Raider Head Coach Tim Rasmussen told The Star on Monday. “It was a very good battle, a great defensive game from both schools.” “When it comes down to it, we made more plays than they did,” Rasmussen continued. “I was impressed with our team. We were fighting together and not letting things, like the adversity on the field, affect us.” After a 0-0 tie at the end of the first half, Rai...
The Lady Raider volleyball team warmed up for the regular season in a tournament in Davenport on Saturday, where the Lady Raiders defeated Springdale and Davenport but lost to Odessa and Reardan. “We had more logistic things like rotation to work on, otherwise the girls did great,” Head Coach Meagan Caudell said. “We just beat ourselves when it came to those logistic things, but it was a good learning experience!” “My impression [from the tournament] is that our girls have grit,” she said. “They bring their A game to every single game, and onc...
Firefighters converged with speed and coordination on a hillside blaze just above Banks Avenue in Grand Coulee Sunday night, saving several residences just below the city water tanks. Dispatched to the wildfire at 100 Banks Avenue at 8:40 p.m., Grand Coulee Volunteer Fire Dept. called for mutual aid from departments at Electric City, Coulee Dam Elmer City and Lincoln County. Before long, 38 firefighters, two EMTs, two Grand Coulee Police officers and 14 fire engines had responded. Three...
A 1,000%-plus surge in demand for covid testing, brought on by burgeoning cases nearby and across the country, is forcing the local hospital to adapt its operations. Before the more-contagious Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus led to outbreaks of COVID-19 at various regional outdoor events, Coulee Medical Center had been testing one or two patients a day for the virus. Now they’re testing 30-40, Ramona Hicks, CMCs chief executive officer, said Friday, and a local surge of covid is testing CMC’s capacity to handle them. The hospital original... Full story
The idea of lowering the speed limit from 45 to 30 miles per hour on SR-155 between Electric City and Grand Coulee is a vastly unpopular idea, a Star survey reveals, with 88% of people being against it. However, it may be necessary to lower the limit if a pathway project is to be built at all. Last week, The Star reported on the possibility of the speed limit being lowered by the Washington State Department of Transportation after a pedestrian pathway is built connecting Coulee Playland to Banks Lake Park between the highway and Banks Lake, on...
You may notice some greenery missing from the drive along SR-155 near the north end of Grand Coulee in the future. About 30 pine trees near Grand Coulee’s wastewater treatment facility on the north side of the road will be removed due to issues caused by the trees for the facility. The trees pose a risk of damage to the facility if they or their limbs fall onto equipment. Already, tree debris such as needles and cones have fallen into the facility and clogged up pipes and the like. According to Assistant Treatment Plant Operator Travis Irwin i...
A little-noticed initiative by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, and six other senators would boost local jobs, accelerate sales, and improve economies. The Local Journalism Sustainability Act, S. 2434, is designed to help local news media support their newsgathering missions. One provision goes far beyond offering aid to community newspapers, local news websites and other news-gatherers. It would help small businesses to dig out of the economic doldrums by supporting their advertising costs in local news outlets, which in turn will help...
Our daughter Kim is in the thick of Louisiana storms again. Five years ago, their home in Denham Springs was flooded, with up to four feet of water in the lower floor. They had experienced 30 inches of rain in a couple day’s time. That’s about three years of rain around here. She and her husband, Bruce, had to strip wallboard and insulation from the lower floor and replace the floor, appliances and furniture. It was a three-month long project. Kim and Bruce live on the river, and with that amount of rain the river overflowed its banks and the...
As Washington state and the rest of the world continues to process through the COVID pandemic, governors throughout our nation — Republicans and Democrats — have utilized their offices and authorities in a variety of ways. In Washington state, the Emergency Powers Act (RCW 43.06.220) authorizes the governor to declare emergencies and issue orders in response to those declared emergencies. The original version of this law was enacted in 1969, at a time when likely no one would have anticipated any emergency lasting multiple years. On Feb...
It is not surprising that COVID-19 which ravaged the world was disastrous for our country’s economy. Millions died from COVID complications; offices, stores and factories closed, and people were forced to quarantine at home. The good news this Labor Day is vaccines are working and readily available. As a result, our job market has dramatically improved. People are eating out, shopping and traveling. Our economy is healing. Vaccines were developed and deployed at “warp speed” under President Donald Trump. Having Americans inoculated as quick...
The speed limit between Electric City and Grand Coulee, currently at 45 miles per hour, could drop to 30 with the construction of a new pedestrian/bike pathway. The Star would like to know whether you want the speed limit lowered. With pedestrians regularly traveling the stretch of road, a pathway is seen as a way to give them a safe place to walk or ride their bikes. In 2018, the project was accepted for a $672,410 grant from the Washington State Department of Transportation with a 5%, $35,390 match from Electric City. The original ped... Full story