News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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The local Rotary Club will be back this month with another mass-document shredding event like those it has been organizing every other year. The event planned for last year had to be canceled due to the pandemic, but the club will organize the drive-through event at a new location this month — North Dam Park. The event provides a big truck equipped to securely shred documents no longer needed. It will be offered free April 17 from noon to 4 p.m., thanks to sponsorships of North Cascades Bank and Coulee Dam Federal Credit Union. Health and s...
The vaccine showed up, the numbers are going down, and places are beginning to open back up. While the hope of a return to normalcy may be peeking out, I want to remind ourselves that some of the worst repercussions of this pandemic are beginning to emerge. This past week, a tragedy, a suicide, occurred with a high school student right in our area's backyard. While we all wish it was an anomaly, the truth is that the pain is right here in our house. Life can be difficult no matter who you are,...
Last month we addressed the general state of air quality monitoring across the nation and more specifically here in the state of Washington and locally. To summarize, the agencies that are charged with the matters of informing their public of air quality issues are lacking. Regrettably, their bureaucratic hands are somewhat inhibited due to funding shortfalls amid other things. Regarding awareness of local air quality, up until the past few years, we simply didn't know what was happening with...
Anthropologist to speak online Robert Moïse will be the guest speaker at the Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club’s Zoom meeting Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 5:15 p.m. and the public is invited. Moïse, a consulting anthropologist, has worked a lot in Africa, and he’s been tapped to share his insights, derived from a career of helping big organizations trying to do good in small communities. You can join the meeting from your phone or computer. If you don’t have a Zoom app, just search in google for “join zoom meeting” and follow the prompts. In the Zoom ap...
When Robert Moïse was sent home from work last March as the federal government responded to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic, he had a long way to go to his east Coulee Dam home. He was in Africa at the time. Moïse, a consulting anthropologist, has spent a lot of time there, and he's been tapped to share his insights, derived from a career of helping big organizations trying to do good in small communities, in an upcoming Rotary meeting open to the public via Zoom. Moïse will be the guest sp...
Update 9/16 11:55 a.m. The state Dept. of Ecology has extended the Air Quality Alert until noon Friday, although locally the air seems a lot less chewy (not a technical term) than it was before Tuesday. And it is only unhealthy currently, as opposed to outright hazardous. Good news: The Natonal Weather Service has co-opted the data from PurpleAir.com, which uses cheaper, but plentiful, air monitors. They've put up a useful new fire and smoke map at https://fire.airnow.gov/?la... Full story
A local doctor traveled this summer to Taiwan, a country noted as having had one of the best responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the world, one with a strategy that differs greatly from that of the United States or even the state of Washington. The island country 100 miles off the coast of the People's Republic of China that has had 488 cases of the disease among its population of 23.6 million, even though its population is approximately 115 times as dense in its cities as Grant County, which... Full story
When we think of bravery, we have a tendency to think big. Actually, acts of bravery are all around us, some more apparent than others. While in Vietnam a number of years ago I met a medical doctor who was captured by the Viet Cong and held captive four years. It wasn’t unusual at the time for people to turn up missing. The doctor was held in a jungle field hospital where he worked on soldiers who were wounded or people who came down with jungle diseases. He was somewhat philosophical about it all. He reasoned that he was trained for this k...
Lake Roosevelt High School's class of 2020 made it through their final year, graduating Saturday night despite a year that seemed to conspire against them. With the last quarter-plus of the year disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the class that captured at least $191,000 in scholarships, according to the school's information, was denied many of the traditional gatherings of their last year, including spring sports. They adjusted to distance learning, isolation and a graduation ceremony in the a...
A charitable-giving organization that manages millions and has grown 380 times its initial size in 24 years is reaching out to smaller communities, including this one, wanting to make a bigger impact. Not that it hasn’t given to local causes in the past. Just recently, the Ephrata-based Columbia Basin Foundation has given the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce $1,000 for local business support, and it’s donating another $1,000 to the Care and Share Food Bank, both under the foundation’s “ReCOVIDery,” initiative to help during the COVID... Full story
The Coulee Dam Service Station at the southeast corner of what is now Roosevelt Way and River Drive had been a Standard Oil station; but after my parents, Henry and Margaret (Seaton) Taschereau bought it at the end of 1942, it became Texaco. They sold it and moved to Coulee City in 1953. Just up and across the street, where the Coulee House Inn & Suites is now located, was a Ford garage, and just east of that was a theater owned by Oliver Hartman, who had moved to the area about 1936, when his...
Lura Anne Sanderson Hartman left this world to be with the Lord on Thursday, March 5, 2020. Anne was born September 9, 1929, in Hollywood, California, to Marjorie Vere (Freeburger) Sanderson and George Clifford Sanderson. She and her identical twin sister, Leila Jean were in numerous movies until age seven as studios often used twins to avoid overworking child actors. The twins were especially close to their Aunt Dora and Uncle Jim Howson who often picked the girls up in their motor home for exc... Full story
Attention geology nerds! There's some cool stuff happening regarding local geology including a podcast available now and a presentation coming in March. Geologist Bruce Bjornstad will be coming to the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center auditorium on March 28 to show some of his drone footage from the area from the past few years. Similar videos on Youtube show birds-eye views of places in the Grand Coulee region, including the Dry Falls, the Great Blade, the Potholes area, and much more, as well as...
It's been a year filled with news. The Star carried more than 1,200 stories in 2019. Here's a look back at some of them that range from city council dramas to national music awards. Jan. 16 - Bob Poch named mayor in Coulee Dam Coulee Dam has a new mayor. Bob Poch was elected by the city council last week to take the place of Larry Price, who resigned Dec. 6, 2018. - New operator will re-open Grand Theatre - The Coulee will see an increase in arts and culture with the return of the Grand Theatre... Full story
Could Dam Federal Credit Union President Colleen Manly reacts as Merle Kennedy unwraps his blind auction winnings at the Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club's annual Christmas party at the credit union December 4th. Members buy the items, then bid on them not knowing what they are. The auction raised about $2,100 that the club will put to community projects and to larger Rotary projects around the globe, such as the eradication of polio from the planet. In the background, member Roy Hamilton serves as...
A dozen local teachers, including 10 in the Nespelem School District recently received grants from the North Central Education Foundation. The grants were awarded at the 2019 Teacher Classroom Grant Award reception held at Confluence Technology Center in Wenatchee. Each teacher applied for a Teacher Grant based on the needs of his or her classrooms and each received $300, the maximum amount awarded to purchase items for the classrooms. The teachers who received awards are: Kim Iverson, for classroom Body Core Seating; Madisyn Byam, for a...
Reniff Herndon will fix what's wrong on the track and field facility the local high school team uses to practice, hopefully this year, for his eagle scout project. Herndon will address recent changes handed down from the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association that changed standards for the long jump and shot put pits, placing those at the former middle school in Grand Coulee out of compliance. If he can't get it done before the end of 2019, he'll get the corrections made before the...
Rotary club members Paul Turner, left, and James Heuvel help out at the Grant County Household Hazardous Waste Collection event Friday at the Delano Transfer Station. - Scott Hunter photo...
It's smoky outside, not as smoky as last year, but health experts advise being mindful of the amount of smoke in the air and how it affects you. Here are some tools to help with that. On the Air Quality Index on purpleair.com, which uses a color-coded gradient that measures air pollution on a scale from 0-500, the Grand Coulee Dam area ranged from 139-153 as of 11:30 a.m. on August 6. AQIs of less than 100 are generally considered to be healthy. The Environmental Protection Agency's Particulate...
The man who leads the state's legal bureaucracy, basically the state's own law firm, told an audience in Grand Coulee last week that the smaller part of their work gets the most headlines, but costs taxpayers nothing. That's because that part of the Attorney General's Office that takes others to court - actually sues other agencies or private companies - is in essence a state-owned law firm that operates off the settlements or judgments from those suits. But the vast majority of their work is...
One of the least threatening places you can go is a beach in late afternoon where a couple of old anglers are quietly staring at the water, waiting for a line to move. If anybody understands the unwritten rule, the need for common courtesy, the paramount importance of everyone doing his or her part to maintain the norm, it’s people who like to sit quietly and fish. That could have something to do with why no instances of unsafe or uncivil behavior come to mind, over the last several decades, at the place that has come to be known as Geezer B...
Washington state’s top legal officer will speak at local Rotary club’s June 12 meeting. Attorney General Bob Ferguson will be speaking about the work of the Office of the Attorney General and taking questions from those in attendance. The Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club’s meeting at The Siam Palace starts at noon next Wednesday, and the public is welcome to attend. Although not a Rotarian himself, Ferguson has the goal of visiting every Rotary Club in the state, with the local club being the 151st out of roughly 180 in the state, according to a st...
Coming into Electric City from the south, there is a big sign that says, “Welcome to Grand Coulee Dam Area.” It was put up decades ago by the local Rotary Club. Another one just like it welcomes travelers coming into the area on the highway to Wilbur. It says the exact same thing. One doesn’t say, “Welcome to Electric City,” and the other doesn’t say, “Welcome to Grand Coulee.” That choice reflected the deep-seated desire of community leaders at the time to unite the community to strengthen it. It was almost an ethic at the time that recog...
What is your obligation or commitment to your community? Another Colorama weekend is done and this was a particularly challenging one for those of us at the Chamber of Commerce. In 1994, 38 years into the 63-year history of Colorama, the carnival moved from Coulee Dam onto “carnival flats” in North Dam Park, and the vendor and food fair moved into the picnic area in the same park. Permits to use this land are secured each year from the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), and, in recent years, from the Coulee Area Park and Recreation District (CA... Full story
The local Rotary club will offer a spaghetti dinner this Saturday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Lake Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School cafeteria. The club’s annual fundraiser will support club efforts, including raising money to replace the now non-existent stage curtain at the Lake Roosevelt gym. The curtain, expected to cost about $15,000, is used at special events and performances, including during the annual graduation ceremony. The Grand Coulee Dam Rotary is celebrating its 70th year, and earlier this year listed 40-some local p...
