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 Banks Lake Pumped Storage Project has lingered since Columbia Basin Hydropower first brought it to the attention of local leaders in 2016. Lately the project, planned to generate 500 to 1,000 megawatts of hydropower by moving water in an underground tunnel between Banks Lake and Lake Roosevelt, has drawn attention from a new potential investor and developer. But questions remain, hurdles are high, and clear steps forward are a ways off for the proposed project that would involve...
Faced with a housing shortage that threatens their efforts to find and keep rural health workers, Coulee Medical Center wants to develop a tiny-home community for their medical staff. If all the pieces fall into place, the designated "critical access" hospital serving four counties and the Colville Reservation could begin purchasing 30 tiny homes this October to place on their property across SR-174. The cluster of tiny 357-square-foot homes would be developed between the grain silos and the...
After eight weeks with the position vacant, Grand Coulee now officially has an acting police chief. Grand Coulee Police Officer Levi Johnson will serve in the role for up to six months until a permanent chief is hired, the city council affirmed at their regular meeting May 21. Although the motion to appoint Johnson passed unanimously, no one from the council table made any speeches or comments surrounding the appointment. Afterwards, some council members and members of the public offered their...
People enjoy the quiet at Crescent Bay on Lake Roosevelt Saturday morning while getting in a little fishing between the base of big hill and the beach under a blue sky. This week's weather will be a little more, um, spring like. Check out our forecast on page 3. - Scott Hunter photo...
Bureau of Reclamation will begin operations May 25 of the "One River, Many Voices" laser light show and John W. Keys III Pump-Generating Plant public tours. The light show will run nightly at 10 p.m. Pacific Time through July 31. Beginning Aug. 1, the show will start at 9:30 p.m., and from Sept. 1 to 30, it will begin at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are not required to enjoy the laser light show. Public tours at the John W. Keys III Pump-Generating Plant will be available daily through Oct. 31. Tour times...
The annual Isle of Flags, with its Memorial Day ceremony, will honor nine more veterans whose families have requested a flag be flown in their honor. The annual event, which started in 1976, continues to add more flags every year to the spectacle that community volunteers will start putting up at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 25, at the Spring Canyon Cemetery. They will be flying 500 American flags. A Memorial Day Breakfast will be offered free of charge to all Saturday from 7 to 11 a.m. at the Vets Center in Electric City. Donations will be accepted....
Electric City's first-ever city-owned park may open this year on a parcel of city land behind the fire barn, capping off years of planning and discussions going back nearly a decade. The city council May 14 voted to approve the park committee's proposed plan, scaled back from some of the original proposals. The fenced, rectangular park will include a covered picnic shelter with tables and charcoal BBQ, a vault toilet, a walking path around the perimeter, irrigated lawn, a water fountain and...
It’s true; apples don’t fall far from trees. Over the years I have been fortunate to travel quite a bit. Now it’s my oldest son Paul’s time to travel. He retired a year ago and started planning a near five-month trip to Alaska. He is the Daniel Boone member of the family. His travels are outdoor treks, living in the great outdoors. He has a half dozen canoe trips on Yellowstone Lake, living along the shoreline in all kind of situations, most of the time alone. On his last trip there, he had a grizzly bear in his camp only a few feet away. When...
Grand Coulee is looking for more patrol officers, a police chief, a wastewater treatment plant operator, and a public works director. Starting Friday, the city will need a new mayor as well. Mayor Mike Eylar announced his intention to step down from the role, due to medical issues, at a special city council meeting May 14, less than five months after being sworn in. “Bills will continue to be paid, payroll will continue to be paid, decisions will continue to flow,” Eylar said at the special session. Councilmembers had just learned of his res...
A big crowd comes out for the annual Colorama Parade Saturday, after it had at one point looked like it would not happen at all. A declaration of its cancelation by the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce, due to lack of needed police, got attention and response from the Grant County Sheriff's Office and local police, who staffed it as necessary for traffic control. - Scott Hunter photo...
Leaders of two school districts Tuesday night, agreed to a “tuition” plan that’s been in dispute for months, which threatened to cost them over half a million dollars that would otherwise go to educating their students. Everyone was relieved at a joint meeting of the boards of directors of the Nespelem and Grand Coulee Dam School districts. “Thank you so much for working hard to make that agreement successful,” GCDSD Board President Rich Black said. “I know it wasn’t exactly what you had in mind. It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind.” At is...
Two short roads responsible for carrying 100% of Coulee Medical Center traffic in Grand Coulee will undergo reconstruction beginning next week and lasting into the summer. Fortuyn Road and James Saunders Street will be closed except to “local traffic only” starting Monday, May 20, according to an informational flyer delivered to Fortuyn residents last week. What that means in practice for ambulances and hospital visitors is not yet known, but the contractor is working on a plan for continued access, according to Grand Coulee Clerk Lorna Pea...
A planned fiber outage will happen in Grant County late this week for line repair and replacement, temporarily cutting off internet for fiber customers, and disrupting major wireless carriers locally as well, according to local internet providers. Coulee Internet, iFIBER, and Fordair Wireless all sent notice that internet will be down for eight hours for fiber optic line repair, sometime within the window of 10 p.m. Thursday, May 16, and Friday at noon. “This will cause fiber hubs and cell phone services (Verizon & ATT/T-mobile) to be down f...
A Grand Coulee ambulance heads the wrong way down Midway Avenue during Saturday's parade to take care of a man in distress at the Pacific Pride station. It was a heat-related issue. EMT Ben Alling, a veteran in the parade on the American Legion float, jumped off the float to help when his radio went off. When temperatures change quickly, as they did last week, suddenly exceeding 80, people have trouble adjusting. Just ask Star writer Roger Lucas. Or actually, on the opinion page, you can read...
Rich Wallen, Grant PUD’s general manager/chief executive officer, has announced his resignation from the utility. The resignation, given to Grant PUD’s Board of Commissioners on May 7, is effective on June 14, the PUD announced the next day. With Grant PUD for seven years, Wallen has served the last two and a half as the general manager of the electricity and internet utility that serves all of Grant County. “During his time as CEO, Rich oversaw profound changes at Grant PUD,” stated Grant PUD Commission President Tom Flint on the PUD’s w...
Whiskey Trail entertains on the chamber's portable stage at the Colorama fair in North Dam Park, positioned so that people in both the open eating area and the beer garden could enjoy the music. - Scott Hunter photo...
It will start at 11 a.m., just as it has for decades, but for a few hours, chamber leaders thought the upcoming annual Colorama Parade on Saturday would have to be canceled. In fact, it was called off on Monday afternoon. Until about 5 a.m. Tuesday. That's when the executive director of the chamber got an email from the Grant County Sheriff's Office, saying they would, after all, be able to send three deputies in cars to help with traffic control. Closing two intersecting state highways for an h...
Don Redfield will not be the Grand Coulee police chief after all, Mayor Mike Eylar confirmed yesterday. Details were closely guarded at press time, but the city will “re-cast the net,” Eylar said, based on the city attorney’s counsel. “For reasons I can’t go into, it was on advice from counsel that we not go in that direction,” Eylar said in a phone call yesterday. “I hate to pass the buck on this because the buck stops with me. But I don’t know what in particular I’m allowed to speak of, so I’m going to err on the side of caution.” City atto...
The town hall on regionally-significant topics spanning town and county boundaries in the Grand Coulee Dam area has been postponed indefinitely, the Regional Board of Mayors decided at their May meeting last week. It would have been the first town hall of its kind, and was to include time for the public to comment on regional issues in the presence of all four mayors and most of the council members from the four towns. But diminished staffing availability meant the most knowledgeable people wouldn’t be present for the main agenda item: the p...
Hundreds of children took part in a 45-year-old tradition Friday by running races on the grass in perfect weather on the athletic field below Lake Roosevelt Schools. The first Mini Bloomsday occurred in 1979. The idea came from a first-grade teacher at the time, Carolyn McNeil. Mrs. McNeil and Mrs. Selle had their first-graders race to Acre's Drug Store, where the owner gave each student a free ice cream cone. The next year, in 1980, second- and third-grade students joined in on the fun, and...
Multiple law enforcement agencies investigated a missing persons case beginning on Saturday, April 27. Colville tribal member Amanda Pakootas was missing and reported by police to be held against her will with a man named Joseph Parisien. She was located April 29 near East Fourth Street and Nelson in Spokane. She was reported to be safe. Parisien was taken into custody Tuesday night, April 30, according to a press release from the Colville Tribes, sent out the next day. “Amanda’s family wishes to thank the law enforcement officers who inv...
If you need something educationally amusing to do during Colorama, consider this: The Coulee Pioneer Museum in Electric City will be open on Saturday, May 11, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Current curator John Kemble says he has displays this year about local area history, including the sand pile, the Coulee Dam bridge, Mason City, the train tunnel, Engineers Town and more. The museum is at 10 Coulee Boulevard (SR-155)....
Two students at Lake Roosevelt Jr./Sr. High School were expelled on an emergency basis Thursday after an investigation of their emails revealed threats to kill five students at the school. During an authorized investigation into one student’s emails, school personnel came across a “hit list” of five students to kill, naming two of them. The responding student asked who they were and wrote that he or she would help. The two students doing the emailing were not in school on Thursday and now won’t be, following the emergency expulsion. The school...
A firefighter cranks open a hydrant valve in Coulee Dam Tuesday night shortly after a kitchen fire that spread to the attic fully engulfed it by the time firefighters arrived at the duplex at the corner of Central Drive and Spruce Street. Resident Tylor Ryan said on Facebook that everyone, including pets, got out of the duplex and were safe. He said his neighbor in the next unit, Michael Rounds, had minor burns and fire damage in his kitchen, from where the fire spread through an exhaust fan...
If you’ve received an unexpected hospital bill recently due to your insurance company denying payment, you’re not alone: Coulee Medical Center staff reported an uptick in denials by insurers when the hospital attempts to collect on claims. “They’re hanging up on our billers when they call,” Chief Financial Officer Kelly Hughes told the hospital board last month as part of her monthly financial report. It’s an issue that goes far beyond the Coulee area, and in fact appears to reflect a nationwide trend that started to become evident to hospitals...
