News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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A person can be defined by the little things he remembers and his favorite places. My parents liked to take drives, and on one of them they would stop at a roadside springs to get a drink of ice cold water. They had a collapsible tin cup that was kept in the glove box for such an occasion, along with a camera that folded up. The adventure of those trips probably accounts for developing the same habit. One such place was Grizzly Camp, a few miles up from Potlatch, Princeton and Harvard in Idaho. It was a mountain location and a popular picnic...
Anyone that follows any sport at all knows how special it is when your team finally makes it to the championship game. It does not matter if it is in Little League sports, high school, college or professional, it is a cherished moment when your team colors take the field in the biggest moment of their career. That happened to me this past weekend. I had waited 46 years for this moment, and it was surreal. I cannot pinpoint the time I first became a Kansas City Chiefs fan, but I do know I have...
The Washington State Legislature once again is attempting to make government records more obscure, this time by trying to shield public employee birthdates from disclosure with the introduction of HB 1888. Rep. Zack Hudgins, of the 11th Legislative District and Javier Valdez from the 46th Legislative district, both Democrats, are the sponsors. While proponents say they are most concerned with privacy rights and identity theft, this bill is really about a fight between public employee unions and the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank...
By proclamation of the governor, January is School Board Recognition Month. It’s a great time to recognize our elected community members who selflessly give their time and energy in support of high-quality public schooling for our youth. School board members in Nespelem School District are entrusted by this community with responsibility to develop the school district’s educational program and set the course for the school district. All of this is done within the context or racial, ethnic and religious diversity and with a commitment to edu...
This is a view of track laying along the upper Grand Coulee in the late months of 1934. Note iconic Pinnacle Rock in the distance. The contractor who built the line, David H. Ryan, had already completed some earth-moving contracts at the dam and had his equipment at the ready when he won the job of building the tracks from Coulee City to the dam site. Mr. Ryan was known to do things on the cheap. He used mule power when he could, and only had a few machines to build the line. The picture is take...
Here’s a basic truth about people who make decisions about public policy: they rarely have all the facts they want. Yet policy has to get made anyway. No one is confronted more often with this conundrum than the President of the United States, though members of Congress can come close. The challenge is that purported facts are dynamic — they keep changing. Additional facts come to light. Others are found to be wrong. Some are clearly reliable, others more dubious. And regardless, they come at high-level policy makers quickly, relentlessly, fro...
In 1869, the Daily Cleveland Herald quoted lawyer John Godfrey Saxe as saying, “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” That saying, or variants of it, have been repeated so often that it has become accepted knowledge. The fact is, though, the more we know about the origin and development of laws, the better off we are. Bad laws get created in back rooms, through undisclosed emails, riding on golf carts and over drinks at the country club bar. Good laws are created in the open and under the...
My earliest and most vivid memories take me back to when I was 6 years old. That was the year I started the first grade, and also when I started to get store-bought haircuts. My father, who could do most anything, cut my hair until he took construction jobs away from home. It was about midway through the Great Depression, and jobs were opening up. I went to Ray Sheets’ barber shop on Main Street in Palouse. Sheets was a favorite of all the kids because he always had treats for us. And he had some other things going for him. His teeth were cappe...
Every year, as I look back at the lists of the famous people who passed away, there are always a few that shock me. I had not heard, or I just plain missed, that one, and I am flooded with memories of how we knew each other. In the sporting arena, on the big screen or on the radio, sometimes famous people become our friends, even though we never meet. Here are some that I will miss who died in 2019. Beth Chapman. A lot of you just said who? She was the beloved and fierce wife of Dog the Bounty...
The annual Trees of Sharing project began Nov. 1 and culminated with the delivery of wrapped Christmas gifts to 115 children in 48 families Saturday, Dec. 14. Thank you to every person who enthusiastically supported this project by purchasing gifts for children in the Coulee area who might now have otherwise received a gift this Christmas. Trees of Sharing extends special appreciation to Coulee Dam Federal Credit Union, Coulee Family Medicine, Harvest Foods, North Cascades Bank, and Safeway Pharmacy for help with collecting children’s names a...
You don’t know how important your freedoms are until you start to lose them. That’s what is behind the protests going on in Hong Kong. In April the government in Mainland China passed an extradition bill that would allow officials to take persons suspected of crimes to court under Chinese government rules. The former British colony has been operating under “one China, two systems,” allowing a great deal more freedom than residents of Mainland China are allowed. When Britain turned over the Hong Kong colony to China in 1997, it was with the und...
Cement for the building of Grand Coulee Dam was hauled in by the boxcar full. Thousands of loads were needed for the project. When it was done, the North Dam was built, along with Dry Falls Dam, and what we know as Banks Lake was filled with water. This inundated most of the old railroad grade. When time came to build the Third Powerhouse, how was all this cement going to get to the dam? By rail, most of the way. Now cement was no longer hauled in boxcars. Now there were dedicated cars where cem...
As we launch into 2020 and the ensuing decade, Boeing faces very strong head winds which are major concerns for those of us living in the Pacific Northwest. Things are vastly different now. In my first column of 2019, I wrote that Boeing was poised to have its best year ever. It had strong tail winds propelling it. It would build upon a very successful 2018. Its 737 Max was selling like hot cakes to hungry airlines, and plans were in the works to expand production at the Renton assembly plant....
Don Brunell, who wrote a column on this page, doesn’t know the local Portch family, but he might as well have used them as an example in his column on local business owners who do good for their communities. Like his parents before him, Loepp Furniture and Appliance owner Kevin Portch doesn’t miss much in the way of opportunities to make life a little better in his hometown, and it’s an ethic his employees embrace, as well. Which led to the story on the front page about rescuing frozen turkeys to maximize the good to come from another local...
At Christmas, millions watch the 1946 movie classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” While it is labeled “fantasy drama,” the show gives us a glimpse of reality and reminds us of the importance of caring local business owners. The setting is mythical Bedford Falls, New York, on Christmas Eve. George Bailey, a family man with a wife and four children, was dogged by a greedy banker, Henry Potter, who wanted to shut Bailey Building and Loan Association down. (George inherited the struggling business...
It was so long ago that carbon paper was at the center of the controversy around my first big scoop. As a junior in a high school journalism class, I’d turned in a story about a very popular teacher who would be resigning at the end of the year, a tip I got by ferreting through a wastepaper basket outside the admin office and coming up with a sheet of crumpled carbon paper that contained the details. The story wasn’t published because the publisher, which was the school, felt it would be inappropriate and too disruptive, or some such reasoning....
In 1964, the United States and Canada ratified the Columbia River Treaty to increase coordination between our countries on power generation and flood control issues, along with critical support of irrigation, navigation, and ecosystem habitat needs. While the treaty has provided a useful framework for these needs, there are severe distortions that have greatly — and unfairly — burdened Americans living in the greater Northwest region. With a 60-year term, the earliest the treaty could have been terminated was 2024. In anticipation of the end...
Sometimes this time of year can be hard to swallow. No not because of the “Coulee Crud” that seems to hang in the air and embed in everyone’s throat. It is because we see more and more commercialism of the holidays and less and less about the beginnings and the spirit behind it all. For example, last year at this time a huge debate was going on. You know, the debate about the classic Christmas tune “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and how some thought it was sexist and needed to be grounded from all ho...
Bridges shouldn’t have to sink to be replaced. However, at times that’s what it takes. Too often, new projects succumb to years of fighting among interest groups and endless political bickering. In 2013, opposition killed the Columbia Crossings project, which was formed to construct a replacement I-5 bridge across the Columbia River connecting Vancouver and Portland. We all want more roads and bridges as long as they are in the other persons’ neighborhood and someone else pays. But that attitude is not realistic as our population expands and m...
By the time the Scheibner Brothers set up their sawmill, William Fleet had been on the land for a while. Born in New York in 1836, at the age of 19 William sailed around the Horn and started a career in the far west as a millwright and pack train manager. For the next twenty-five plus years William Fleet traveled between New Mexico, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and finally into Washington state with Dan Paul. While Paul settled around the Coulee City area, Fleet continued up into the...
Looking back is much easier than looking forward, but it’s not like no one is trying. Two opinion pieces on this page point to turning points in two different areas of society that will converge at some point to change the future, hopefully for the better. Rep. Dan Newhouse points out the need for STEM-educated people to fill burgeoning demand for workers in science, technology, engineering and math careers and the bill he supports to increase such education in rural areas. And Don Brunell, a career-long observer of economic trends in Washingto...
Science, technology, engineering, and math – more commonly known as STEM – have become some of the most highly demanded careers in our nation’s economy. Schools across the country and in Central Washington have emphasized education programs to help prepare students for future careers in fields from chemistry and earth sciences to computer engineering and physics. Quality STEM education programs are essential to train the next generation of American minds. Central Washington’s students are bright, and many of them are interested in pursuin...
In the coming decade, investors are betting that hydrogen will become a prominent fuel that can eliminate CO2 discharges from the vehicles it energizes. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the transportation sector has dominated the growth in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions since 1990, accounting for 69 percent of the total increase. It is important that hydrogen technology advances rapidly because cars, trucks and buses are a growing contributor to greenhouse gas...
Talks of an airport to serve the Grand Coulee Dam project began soon after work on the "Low Dam" began in July 1933. The airport would be located at Mason City near the sand pile with the runway extending north-south along what is now Central Drive and Camas Streets. Work on the airport began in January 1934 with the completed gravel runway being 3,500 feet long by 400 feet wide. The first plane to land was from the Washington National Guard, landing on March 3, 1934. Following runway upgrades,... Full story
This looks like somebody’s off-the-wall dream. We are in an earthquake zone, and I, for one, don’t want any 30-foot water tunnels under me. Also, the tunnels shown are only from North Dam to the Grand Coulee city limits, which is the simple part. Where are the details thru Grand Coulee? Or on the Lake Roosevelt side? Not much room there for a two-machine powerplant, unless you put it in Poop Lagoon. The Banks Lake discharge works shown look like they’ll discharge directly in to Coulee Playland. Anyone who’s boated on Banks Lake knows about t...