News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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The Bureau of Reclamation says that, weather pending, Highway 155 will be chip sealed from just south of Pole Park to just below the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center. Chip sealing, a common maintenance procedure, will take place from Monday, May 15 until Friday, May 19 with delays of up to 10 minutes.... Full story
This architectural rendering depicts what the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's new fire station off Highway 155 will look like in the evening about a year from now as construction is completed. Crews started working last month, closing off the end of B Street in Grand Coulee, which will still be used as a detour route during the Colorama Parade on Saturday. Reclamation awarded the $13.6 million construction contract to Innovative Construction & Design Ltd., a small business based in Post Falls,... Full story
We certainly aren’t seeing the amount of rainfall that the Olympic Peninsula receives with an annual average of 140 inches a year. Yet, we have been wet here in our region of the state. With all that rain and melt-off, things do happen — flooding, mudslides, roads washed out and crop planting delays. The folks at the National Weather Service office in Spokane stated this: “A combination of abundant late winter snow, heavy rain from several wet Pacific storms, and near-seasonal tempe... Full story
Thirty new campsites at Steamboat Rock State Park will still have to wait to become a reality, with no set date for construction to resume. Currently the area for the new campsites is just a big, empty lot of sand, just as it was left in the fall of 2016. The $2.5-million-dollar project was delayed last fall because of the expiration then of the 2010 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the State Parks, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Washington State Department of Archaeology Historic Preservation (DAHP), and the Colville Confederated Tribes.... Full story
Things are getting serious about allowing ATV travel in city streets in Grand Coulee. And a new twist was added at Grand Coulee’s council meeting a week ago. An idea surfaced to allow all-terrain vehicles to travel between Grand Coulee and Electric City. Part of the idea would be to slow traffic from 45 mph down to 35 mph, the speed that ATVs can travel. It all started several weeks ago when Grand Coulee resident Bill Moore attended the council meeting and brought up the idea of ATV travel in the city. Moore and several others appeared at t... Full story
Patricia 'Patsy' Mae Pace (Dickerson), 79, softly departed on Monday, April 17, 2017, at her Helena, Montana home in the comfort of her son Gregory. Caring for her the weeks up to her passing was her daughter-in-law, Kathleen, and granddaughters: Miranda and Rachel. When Miranda was little she started calling her grandmother Mocha. We have no idea where the nickname came from, but she was always Mocha to her Montana family. Patsy was born July 15, 1937, in Polson, Montana, to Dorothy and Frank... Full story
The Bureau of Reclamation is asking for comments from interested parties on a planned overhaul of 18 generators in the left and right powherhouses of Grand Coulee Dam. The generators have been in service for some 70 years and need repair, the bureau has said. Doing the work would keep them making electricity for another 30 years. In a draft environmental analysis, the bureau lays out its preferred of three alternatives: Do the upgrades on two generators at a time and complete the work between 2018 and 2029. Another alternative would extend the... Full story
Firefighters cut holes in the side and roof of a house at 111 Washington Place in Electric City Thursday, but saved it from burning down. A bathroom light-ceiling fan combination unit caused the fire. Firefighters from Electric City, Grand Coulee and the Bureau of Reclamation were on scene at the mid-morning fire. Grant County lists Amelia Stanger as the owner. - Scott Hunter photo... Full story
Grand Coulee Police 4/11 - Dispatch advised police that that a man smelling of alcohol had been reported as leaving a local business and getting into his car. Police looked for the vehicle but it was out of the area by the time the officer arrived. - Police advised two men that they could neither enter the area by the Bureau of Reclamation administration office nor by the small waterfall. The two were banned from BOR property. The two said they understood. - The manager of property on Third Street in Electric City told police that someone was... Full story
Fire destroyed a home at 323 Roosevelt Drive in Grand Coulee late Saturday evening. A family of four were away at the time of the fire; however, two dogs died in the blaze. The Jesus Llamas family rented the mobile home that was owned by the Loretta Bingham family. Firefighters from Grand Coulee and Electric City volunteer fire departments and the Bureau of Reclamation responded. Grand Coulee Volunteer Fire Chief Rick Paris stated that fire and smoke was coming from the mobile home when... Full story
As some 203,000 cubic feet of water per second flows downstream of Grand Coulee Dam Sunday evening, about 58,000 cfs comes down the spillway through seven outlet tubes while the Bureau of Reclamation coordinates river flow for flood control. The current forecast calls for Lake Roosevelt to be lowered to 1,222.7 feet above sea level to accommodate expected high snow melt runoff, which has not actually started down the river yet. - Scott Hunter photo... Full story
Rain! We’ve had a decent amount of it in the past year. I measured a total of 15.21 inches of precipitation at my home weather station in 2016. Rain is just one of many forms of precipitation. It’s part of the water cycle, more properly the Hydrologic Cycle. Precipitation is water that is released from clouds in the form of rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow, or hail. It’s the main connection in the hydrologic cycle that provides for the delivery of atmospheric water to this little planet we live on, Earth. Most precipitation around the plane... Full story
Grand Coulee Police 3/12 - A dispute over a niece smoking pot at a Weil Place residence brought police. It was decided that the niece and uncle would leave the house for the night. - A woman told police that she received a counterfeit $20 bill when getting change from Safeway. Police took the fake bill as evidence. 3/13 - Dispatch advised police that someone had been seen dropping off a bag in a field near East Grand Avenue in Electric City. Police looked but couldn’t find the reported bag. - A woman called police to tell the officer that s... Full story
An Electric City man has received one of two scholarships offered by the state to study structural firefighting. Joshua Reeding, who recently moved to the area from Victorville, California, won an 11-week training scholarship recently, and will be going to the North Bend Fire Center for instruction. The training runs from April 7 through June 25. "It is a great honor for Joshua and for our volunteer fire department," fire Chief Mark Payne told the Electric City Council last week. Reeding was a v... Full story
A contractor will be on site next week to start work on a new fire station for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which means two portions of local roads will be closed for that project. Innovative Construction & Design Ltd., a small business based in Post Falls, Idaho, was awarded the $13.6 million construction job last September. The company is scheduled to be on site Monday, March 13, Public Affairs Officer Lynne Brougher said Monday. The portion of B Street from Division Street to Industrial... Full story
It’s not easy to get used to driving 10 miles per hour slower on a short stretch of highway you’ve been traveling daily for decades. That’s a problem many folks face trying, straining, braking to navigate the multi-lane stretch of highway 155 by the Bureau of Reclamation’s Grand Coulee Project, which the bureau slowed from 40 to 30 mph because it’s building a new fire station across from Pole Park. Even if traveling more slowly in front of a fire station is warranted, slowing the entire stretch seems a bit much. Admittedly, that complaint sound... Full story
John Berry, a Bureau of Reclamation engineer, observes tensiometer readings of the cable pull during puller machine tests used for maneuvering the floating caisson, maintaining contact with shore stations by short-wave radio. These tests were made by the Pacific Bridge Company, a contractor, as part of repairs made to the spillway bucket section of Grand Coulee Dam. - March 9, 1949 photo... Full story
A telephone service outage for CenturyLink customers in the Grand Coulee Dam area lasted for several days following a power outage centered in in Ephrata. A spokesperson for CenturyLink said that there had been several phone outages in eastern Washington following an electrical transformer fire in Ephrata Wednesday night. Ephrata and Omak also suffered telephone outages, noted Kerry Zimmer, eastern Washington marketing and communications manager for CenturyLink. Coulee Dam's problem seemed to... Full story
Clean clothes, dirty money A Nespelem couple washing clothes at a laundromat on E Grand Avenue Feb. 5, ended up with clean clothes and a counterfeit $20 bill. The couple told police that they were approached by a tall slender, white male with brown hair and carrying a mandolin. The man asked if they could exchange a crisp $20 bill for one that was all folded up, because the crumbled bill would not work in the change machine. The Nespelem man said he had only $16, but they exchanged money and the man left on foot. A few days later it was... Full story
Parts of Electric City’s proposed trail system received the most “push back” of any of the features of the city’s Pathway and Revitalization plan. In workshops and before the council, local residents expressed their opposition to a planned Ice Age Floods Trail, particularly one that goes through a residential area on Lakeview. Other segments of the trail system won unanimous approval by an Electric City resident advisory group that voted in unison on most of the trail ideas, but only 50 percent on a shoreline park off Sunny Drive. Two of the... Full story
The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce held its annual Installation Banquet last Thursday night at the Melody Restaurant in Coulee Dam. The chamber annually makes an award to its "Achiever of the Year" and "Business of the Year" and names any changes to its board of directors at its annual members meeting. Named "Achiever of the Year" was Gerald Sands. Sands served as mayor of Electric City for a four-year term and part of a second term, and currently serves as a commissioner of Grant Cou... Full story
Our conversations seem to be revolving around the weather. It’s understandable, it’s been cold and wet; lots of snow on the ground, and some of our friends have been south or to Mexico and are bragging. We also have a general tendency to not like cold. There are some exceptions; I’m one, I prefer cool weather, not hot. The curse of a lot of folks this time of year is the snow. It builds up, creates a mess that requires removal and/or piling, and can be a pain, literally, to walk and drive on. Snow, an interesting word. I did a little research a... Full story
Residents of Elmer City could develop a healthier lifestyle as a result of a $250,000 grant the town received last week for a plan that calls for a trail along the Lower River Road that will link some town streets to the Down River Trail. Elmer City’s “Complete Streets” project likely will be done in 2018, Public Works Director Jimmer Tillman said last week. The work plan, shared with the town council last Thursday, calls for links from the town to the Bureau of Reclamation’s Down River Trail system along the Columbia River. One of the key elem... Full story
The phone service outage in the Grand Coulee Dam area still has no end in sight. Crews will be working through the night on the cable damage. From a power outage and from excessive water. Here's the latest full press release from the company: A CenturyLink customers in Coulee Dam and surrounding areas out of service SPOKANE, WA. – CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) Due to an earlier power failure and extensive water damage, cables in downtown Coulee Dam are out of service impacting approximately 1,000 voice customers in Coulee Dam and the surroundin...
The O'Donnell brothers, Colin and "Spud," emerge from the waters of the Columbia River, below the downstream face of Grand Coulee Dam. These professional divers were engaged by the Bureau of Reclamation to assist in the river channel improvement operations. – Feb. 20, 1945 photo... Full story