News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 6171 - 6195 of 6918
Two general contractors, both from Spokane, were the only firms to submit bids on the K-12 new school facility here. Bids were opened at 4 p.m. Tuesday by Cameron Golightly, architect with Design West of Pullman. Walker Construction’s base bid was $22,942,000. The second bidder was Graham Construction, which submitted a bid of $23,185,000. Both construction firms submitted a host of alternate bids, 11 in all. Golightly said that his architectural firm, along with other officials, will study the bids and alternative bids to determine who will ge...
You will soon be able to slaughter chickens in Electric City, legally, as a result of action taken by the city council Tuesday night. It takes five days for the ordinance amendment to take effect. The action amends the city’s “chicken” ordinance that passed last month and stated that you couldn’t legally slaughter chickens within the city limits. So residents who already have chickens, or move forward on having up to six hens, can, if they so desire, slaughter a chicken for Sunday dinner. The chicken ordinance stirred up a few folks in the cit...
The Regional Board of Mayors quickly reversed themselves Monday and went back to monthly meetings when it was pointed out that they had acted illegally the month before. In February, the mayors had voted to change their meetings from once a month to once every two months. This week they voted to return to monthly meetings until they get the change right. Coulee Dam Town Clerk Carol Visker pointed out that before the mayors can change their meeting dates, they must go to their councils for approval and then amend their agreement on meetings. So...
A “stakeholder” group met Tuesday to try to put the finishing touches on the script for the all- new laser light show. The schedule for the inaugural show now has slipped to mid-summer, Bureau of Reclamation Public Affairs Officer Lynne Brougher said Monday. She stated that most of the programming for the laser portion of the show can’t be done until the final script is settled. Originally it had been hoped that the showing of the new laser show could start during the Memorial Day holiday at the end of May. And area promoters had hoped that...
A payroll clerk at Coulee Medical Center ran into a problem when the bank associated with the hospital’s payroll account would not let her into the account. The bank, according to a written Grand Coulee Police report, told the payroll clerk that the account had been entered illegally and $4,980 had been removed. The money went to an account at another bank and routing numbers and the person with the account had given his name. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the incident and the payroll bank stated that it would make the f...
The 56-foot center section of the new Keller ferry will arrive in Grand Coulee sometime Wednesday or early Thursday morning this week, workers at the Crescent Bay assembly site said Tuesday. The 20,000-pound section of the all-aluminum boat was placed on a truck trailer late last week for the long and arduous trip from the Foss Maritime boat yard in Rainier, Ore., to the newly constructed assembly location. Foss workers have been assembling a cocoon-like building where the three pieces of the...
A suggestion to finance a rebuild of Coulee Dam’s wastewater treatment plant over a period longer than it will last should raise concerns. It’s certainly something that could be done for the sake of lowering rates, but would you finance a new car over, say, 10 years, even if the car salesman told you it would last you only five? Perhaps all the moving parts of the plant will be new after the rebuild, but even concrete ages. And the concrete in the old sewer plant would be 90 years old by the time Coulee Dam citizens got done paying the 40-...
In the Wednesday, March 6, article about Coulee Dam's charges for Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) expenses it read, “The remainder of what Elmer City charges its customers is administrative fees.” The words “administrative fees” should be exchanged for “maintenance and operation expenses.” Elmer City pays for labor, supplies, equipment repair and/or replacement and electrical power costs to collect and transport waste to Coulee Dam. And when the sewer treatment expenses are $12,000 over what we had expected, it is sometimes difficult....
The mayor of Coulee Dam has again defined his allegiance — that being with and for the engineer (Gray & Osborne). The townsfolk petitioned the mayor and council to roll back the ever increasing sewer rates and review other project alternatives and other options. The reply? A “public” meeting (with one day advanced notice) wherein the engineer was allowed to ramble, excuse, blame, demean, cajole … the “public” meeting was so tightly controlled that virtually no time was permitted for substantive questions and responses. Some folks just walked...
Gray & Osborne engineers outlined ways for Coulee Dam and Elmer City to get their monthly sewer rates down in a letter to Coulee Dam Mayor Quincy Snow that was distributed after the last city council meeting. Coulee Dam residents currently pay $59 a month for sewer service and Elmer City pays $35 a month. Both towns will need to up their rates to pay a $4.92 million loan for the wastewater treatment plant. Engineer Jeff Stevens, in his letter, outlined a plan in which the town of Coulee Dam would change its current funding source from the...
The explosion at Grand Coulee Dam this morning was not a transformer or a generator, but a line and equipment connecting the two. Conflicitng reports this morning suggested that one or the other had exploded, but in the smoke-filled building it was hard to tell initially just what had happened. Exactly what happened is still unkown, but a "bus," basically a large pipe that goes through the wall of the right powerhouse is destroyed. An engineer who had been inside the damage is much worse inside...
In this community, whose economy is based overwhelmingly on a federal payroll and outsourced contracts, not a lot is yet certain about how the latest fiscal political drama emanating from the other Washington will play out. “Sequestration” became the law of the land on March 1. An act passed by Congress in 2011 was designed to give time for Democrats and Republicans to agree on a path toward reducing the nation’s deficit spending. It imposes across-the-board budget cuts on everybody’s favorite federal programs. At the time, it was assumed...
A rehash of Coulee Dam’s wastewater treatment plant project dominated the town’s regular council meeting last Wednesday night. Gray & Osborne engineers Jeff Stevens and John Wilson took the council and about 15 people who attended the meeting down memory lane, explaining the time frame and processes used to get the project where it is today. Just where it is, is a question that’s not easily answered. Gray & Osborne has been called off the design phase for three months while the town attempts to go through a “value engineering” process to help d...
Gray & Osborne engineers outlined ways for Coulee Dam and Elmer City to get their monthly sewer rates down in a letter to Coulee Dam mayor Quincy Snow that was distributed after last Wednesday’s city council meeting. Coulee Dam residents currently pay $59 a month for sewer service and Elmer City pays $35 a month. Both towns will need to up their rates to pay a $4.92 million wastewater treatment plant loan. Engineer Jeff Stevens, in his letter, outlined a plan where the town of Coulee Dam would change its current funding source from the Departme...
The local airport’s runways will be kept open in winter with a new snowplow. Port District 7 commissioners learned Thursday that they will get a new replacement truck with snow plow equipment, plus a building to house it. A $265,000 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration will pay for 90 percent of the cost of both projects. An additional 2.5 percent of the cost could come from the Washington State Department of Transportation’s airport division, and the port district will pick up the final 7.5 percent. Lisa Corcoran of the port’s engin...
Jerry Birdwell will resign as a Port District 7 commissioner effective April 1, he advised Chairman Orville Scharbach on Thursday. Birdwell stated Friday that he had a number of things going on that will require that he leave the board. He was named to the commission, which oversees the operation of the local airport and the golf course, last July after the resignation of Larry Maier. The board has been functioning with only two members since Stan Conklin, the third member, has been down south for the winter. Scharbach said the port plans to...
Sensing a sticky wicket, Electric City Mayor Jerry Sands took the issue of joining the chamber of commerce off the city council’s agenda last Tuesday night and it will appear on the agenda again,March 12. The $100 joining fee got an immediate response from Councilmember Bob Rupe, who stated that the city had given the chamber a lot of money and they could take the membership fee out of that. Sands explained that the money given earlier was from its hotel/motel tax funds and was for promoting this area. He said the $100 fee was entirely d...
Electric City’s Bob Rupe has asked that the city’s drug and alcohol policy be reviewed by attorneys so it includes the use of marijuana and other controlled substances. He wrote in a recommendation to the council that language be included in the city ordinance and in employee handbooks that makes the use of drugs, alcohol, and controlled substances a dismissal offense. “The purpose of these rules is to balance the personal rights of an individual and the right of Electric City … and help employees understand what conduct is expected and necessa...
The Electric City Council has decided to cut its meetings from two a month to one. Mayor Jerry Sands said the city had caught up on updating its ordinances and got the arsenic treatment plant up and running, so the amount of business for the council in the city has diminished. The council has regularly met on the second and fourth Tuesday nights each month for decades, but now will meet only on the second Tuesday night of the month. The council also decided to change its meeting hour from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. Electric City now joins Coulee Dam in...
With the announcement least week of an upcoming vacancy on Port District 7’s commission, someone wishing to make a difference for the community got another opportunity. Port districts across the state vary in the services they offer, but can be a huge boon to economic development efforts for the communities they serve. “Economic development” may sound to some like a boring topic. Think about creating jobs instead. That’s what port districts in Quincy and Moses Lake have been doing after decades of planning and building. They’ve managed t...
The main reason the trees were cut down is because they were rotten, and every time the wind blew large limbs were coming down and getting dangerous to anyone or anything there. I was told by BOR they did a core sample and found all the trees had rotten cores. In fact, one tree there had a large bull snake wintering in it. When they started cutting it down, he came out in the cold and got ran over. It was getting dangerous enough that the fish-feeding crew had to take caution when the wind was blowing. The other problem as the people living...
Thank you to the following who read to our classes to celebrate Dr. Seuss's Read Across America. Your generosity of time and fun stories that you shared with our students made their day! Together we can all make a difference in our children's learning experience. With much appreciation to the following: Janice Archer, Frank Ayers, Joette Barry, Kathy Baty, Joyce Behrens, Linda Black, Fern Blaylock, Dodie Boyd, James Caddy, Diane Canady, Nancy Carlson, Karmen Cecil, Solveig Chaffee, Dennis Chambers, Judy Chambers, Joann Davidson,Keith Erickson,...
In November 1982, our state’s unemployment rate peaked at 12.2 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. Interest on a fixed rate home loan was 13.4 percent, and an 11.5-percent inflation rate burned through our checkbooks. The economy was a mess. The impacts of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 hadn’t fully kicked in yet, and Gov. John Spellman (R) and the Legislature had repeatedly increased taxes and cut programs to balance the state’s budget. It was a bleak t...
A total of 18 girls each gained a title at the Feb. 16 Queen of Hearts pageant held at the Village Cinema. Organizer Heather Downs said it was standing room only at the theater, the use of which was donated for the event. Downs said the top overall title of “Coulee Sweetheart,” chosen by a secret judge, went to Melissa Merriman, of Electric City. Winners of each division were: Tiny Miss: Queen - Jaci Clark; Princess - Addison Marseilles; Jr. Princesses - Kimmie Thomason, Khloe Kelly. Petite Miss...
The Chief Joseph Hatchery is scheduled for completion in May and should be rearing chinook salmon in July. The $49 million facility near Chief Joseph Dam will, by 2015, raise 2.9 million salmon a year to help replace the fisheries lost after the construction of Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams, which halted the upstream migrations of salmon. It will employ 11 people once it’s operational. Currently 66 people are working at the site. The project includes two acclimation ponds at Riverside and O...