News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Grand Coulee volunteer firefighters responded to 526 Wetzel Street for a fireworks-related blaze reported at 8:41 p.m. They were on scene by 8:46. Douglas County Fire Disrtrict 3 also responded. It was one of several fires that burned in region over the last several days. The fire was put out quickly and all crews left by 9:09 p.m., a department Facebook post said. Police at the scene said it was believed to have been started by people under the age of 18 and that no infraction would be issued s...
Triple-digit temperatures over several days can pose a challenge for almost anyone. For those living in homes with inadequate AC, and for people living outdoors, it can be deadly. “More people die from extreme heat than extreme cold,” said Molly Morris, team lead at Grand Coulee’s STAR Hub, a division of Rural Resources Community Action. “We are not strangers to this type of heat, but when it first occurs each year we have to reach back to our early training on how to cope.” With the current h...
Searchers on Tuesday recovered the body of a young man missing in Banks Lake since Thursday. From Tacoma, Daniel Ciobanu, 28, and his wife had been riding a paddleboard near Coulee City when a breeze came up and they fell into the water in a spot "filled with very thick aquatic vegetation," according to a Grant County Sheriff's Office Facebook post. "The woman made it to shore, but the man went under and didn't resurface. First responders were called right away." That was about 8:30 a.m. They se...
Later this month the Olympic Games will begin. We have been treated the last few weeks with the preliminary track and field events and swimming events. It is the beginning of the end for a lot of very skilled athletes who after years of effort will fail to make it onto the United States team. The preliminary trials for track and field events are being held at the University of Oregon in Eugene, no stranger to these events. While living in Boise some years ago on South Orchard our closest neighbor had a 17-year-old boy who ran the mile for...
The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce's Festival of America drew good crowds all day July 4 and filled the park below the Visitor Center at Grand Coulee Dam for the STCU-sponsored fireworks off the dam that night. Chamber Executive Director Nancy Zimmerman-Boord said more musical acts got people from all over interested in the festival as a music venue, and the addition of a beer garden kept people in the park. She said the plan will be considered and refined for next year. The second...
Seven years ago, Coulee Medical Center was in trouble. Financial challenges going back to 2012 combined with an administration publicly described by staff as "incompetent and hostile" had led to layoffs, unpaid bills, and high-profile provider resignations at the public hospital. In summer of 2017, the CEO hired to turn things around had resigned - after just one year on the job. To alarmed community members at the time, the hospital itself appeared to be in critical condition. It was then that...
The senior center lost approximately $70,000 this year to a contractor with a documented history of scamming clients in Washington, and it looks like the money is gone for good. The board president of the local 501(c)3 nonprofit organization reportedly wrote the check based on an unrealistic, unclear and over-valued contract with no specified end-date - an expense that, according to the senior center's own bylaws, should have gone before both the full board and the general membership for approva...
The Grand Coulee volunteer firefighters would like to remind everyone to be careful during the upcoming July 4th holiday and to be careful all summer during outside activities. Local firefighters are not alone in their concern. Agencies responsible for fighting fires statewide are issuing pleas for safety and advising people take in public displays instead of lighting off their own fireworks. "In 2023, fire incidents from fireworks resulted in more than $12 million of property damage in...
I’ve tried a number of times to milk cows. No luck. Rather, no milk. I was making my first trip down to southern Idaho to court my wife. It was a 550-mile overnight drive from Potlatch, Idaho, where I worked, to Buhl, Idaho, where my future wife Dorothy lived on a farm. I left at 5 p.m. and arrived at milking time. I was born on a farm and lived my first six years out in the country. Just one cow, and my dad did the milking. Anyhow, I was directed out to the barn where Dorothy and her brother Bob were in the process of milking 27 cows. I w...
Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu won’t let anything stop their abhorrent killing of innocent civilians. Putin justifies massacring Ukrainians by gross disinformation. Netanyahu justifies annihilating Palestinians by Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack which, of course, deserved strong response. Any chance of stopping the two will probably have to happen internally. Internal resistance to Adolf Hitler’s atrocities was exemplified by world-renown German Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who felt God’s calling to help assassinate Hitler. Author...
Oohs and aahs and lots of applause were audible at the end of last year's fireworks show put on by Rocketman Pyros, L.L.C. So the chamber of commerce brought them back again. The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce's main sponsor of the fireworks, STCU, merged in 2021 with the Coulee Dam Federal Credit Union and has been a reliable community partner ever since, helping the community to put on many events. It's hard to imagine a better, more iconic venue for the patriotic show than the top...
The Visitor Center Park in front of Grand Coulee Dam is a sprawling lawn just below an award-winning visitor information center that you can walk to learn more than you thought possible about the mile-wide concrete behemoth in front of you, but that might not mean much to your kids. That’s why the Festival of America organizers for the sponsoring Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce will have games and activities, including cool water features, literally, to keep kids entertained and not overheated. So, you might want your kids to go p...
A pillar of rock in front of Lake Roosevelt Schools memorializes the evolution of the community, now displaying plaques to recognize two more schools that went before. A dedication ceremony in front of Lake Roosevelt Schools June 22 unveiled plaques to memorialize the contributions and achievements of Mason City and Nespelem High Schools, which would later be consolidated into Coulee Dam High School. The first plaque on the basalt column, added in 2017, remembers the Grand Coulee Tigers, whose...
Grand Coulee officially has a new mayor. The council quickly voted Tuesday to install Ruth Dalton who, as the city's mayor pro tempore, had already assumed the duties of the office since Mike Eylar resigned in May. She was also the only candidate to apply. "I have lived and loved this community for the last 38 years and now I bring a special community interest to the table," Dalton wrote in the letter of interest she submitted earlier this month. She referenced a "varied career with experience...
It used to be that if you wanted to get the government’s help all you had to do was call U.S. Senators Warren Magnuson or Scoop Jackson. I did on numerous occasions, and they came through. A lawyer friend in Bothell had sponsored a Chinese couple and the man’s wife developed problems with her immigration status. She was born in Mainland China and fell under a different quota status. When my lawyer friend learned that I was going to be in Hong Kong, he asked me to check at the U.S. Consulate there and see what I could learn about her cur...
It was June 27, 1844, when a young man (aged 38) was running for president of the United States. His name was Joseph Smith, Jr. Many historians falsely attribute his slaying to his stance on plural marriage (polygamy). While that was a part of it, it was by no means the real causation. This was some 16 years before Abraham Lincoln’s platform. Smith had his own plan for buying the freedom of slaves. He advocated religious freedom, sound money in gold or silver, and the proper education of schoolchildren. Brigham Young and other apostles of t...
Between late nights attending Appropriations Committee markups, working to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from purchasing American land, and voting to fully fund our veterans’ programs, the past few months in Washington, D.C. have been quite busy. That is why, when the legislative calendar permitted me to get back to Central Washington last week, I was especially looking forward to coming home. While home, I visited with residents, local groups, and businesses and discussed some of the great things going on as well as some of the unique c...
GRAND COULEE, Wash. – The Bureau of Reclamation is prohibiting fireworks on North Dam for the Independence Day holiday. Reclamation is taking precautionary measures to decrease the potential for wildland fire and is reminding the public that use of fireworks is prohibited on Reclamation lands and waterbodies. Reclamation will allow the permitted fireworks display at Grand Coulee Dam to occur for the festivities. There is a low risk of fireworks reaching the surrounding lands from the top of the dam, so the show can proceed. The fireworks s...
Proponents of a future 50- to 80-bed senior living facility in Grand Coulee learned last week that their request for $5 million in federal funds for construction costs will not make it into the 2025 Congressional budget. But local partners continue to finesse the $17 million project, with an eye toward the state's legislative session opening next January and to future requests to the federal government for additional funds. "We know the funding strategy is a multi-year, multi-source strategy,"...
Cell phones and how to handle them are a point of major discussion among school superintendents in Okanogan County, Rod Broadnax, superintendent at Grand Coulee Dam School District, told the school board June 10. “That has been a big, big topic,” he said. The local school board already banned cell phone use during school two years ago, but enforcement has been slipping later in the year. English teacher Steve Files presented his research on some options to address the situation. Files said he’s been following the issue for years. “At least i...
Coulee Dam tripled its budget for street projects Monday, accepting contracts with the state Transportation Improvement Board for funds to chip seal most streets in town this summer and upgrading sidewalk ramps for compliance with federal rules on access for wheelchair users next year. The city council amended the 2024 Street Fund budget from $531,526 to $1,595,526. The chip seal work, in which crushed gravel is layered smoothly on a prepared street, then oiled and rolled, will happen this summer, City Clerk Stefani Bowden said. The work on...
Coulee Medical Center’s request for $3 million made it into next year’s Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration appropriations bill, released by the U.S. House Appropriations Committee last week. The housing project, called “Relief for Rural Health Workforce,” had won the support of Rep. Dan Newhouse of the 4th Congressional District. “Providing critical care in this large service area takes a unique toll on the health care providers and medical professionals that often have multi-hour commutes, necessitating a designate...
Despite threatening skies that occasionally burst into rain, lightning and wind gusts to topple a shade canopy, around 150 kids and their family members came out for Koulee Kids Fest, the car show, or both last weekend. For Kids Fest, families visit participating local storefront businesses, where kids do free activities and get their event "passports" stamped, to be entered in a drawing. Based on numbers from the chamber of commerce, most families chose to focus on businesses in central Grand...
Two stories in The Star this week revolve around a problem central to not only the Grand Coulee Dam area, but to the nation as a whole: housing shortages. More than any other problem, a lack of good housing is the biggest impediment the local area faces to economic development. Two proposals — Coulee Medical Center’s tiny homes project and the Center Senior Living initiative — would address different aspects of this similar problem. All the largest employers in the area deal with a lack of housing when recruiting workers to come here. The B...
Here is the rest of the story on those stupid traffic lights. Up to eight years ago, The Star newspaper ran an article stating that the city was going to purchase traffic control lighting for the city limits on SR-174, and they did. At that time, I remember having a conversation with the then mayor. I said there was no way I would ever get the lights and really figured they would go to the hospital. The only response was, oh no they won’t. Now eight years later, with the snap of a finger, they pop up on Main Street. If the mayor had the p...
