News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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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,...
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...
We live in a day when the caliber of our elected officials is in question. And for good reason as it becomes apparent that they continually lie to us, often when the truth would serve them better. I like a bumper sticker I saw recently that states, “The truth is out there.” There is one politician that stands apart from others: former President Jimmy Carter. While he didn’t have a distinguished one-term presidency, he is a distinguished person and continues to be so to this present day. There were a couple of things that marred his presi...
November is recognized as National Native American Heritage Month, and I believe this is an important time to remember and celebrate the contributions and history of our Native friends and neighbors in Central Washington and across the United States. With 29 federally-recognized tribes across the state, Washingtonians from every corner of the state live alongside Native Americans who contribute to our communities through entrepreneurship, military service, and sharing their rich and storied history. The Yakima Herald-Republic recently...
The air around us is polluted, and the level of pollution in our air varies constantly. The causes of the pollution fluctuate as well. The pollution consists of gases and particulate matter. Common “natural” sources are forest and range fires, volcanic activity and various gases that originate in nature. Most all of these natural sources are not constant, unlike the sources that humanity produces on a recurring and regular basis. Envision pre-historic human activity after fire became part of...
The Scheibner Brothers in Northrup Canyon also ran a pre-industrial age sawmill on Northrup Creek around the year 1900. Original Steamboat Rock pioneer William Fleet worked as a millwright, helping with the design, implementation and upkeep of the Scheibner watermill. Charles Scheibner and William Fleet, along with one other gentleman, would back up the creek at night with a dike, creating a small pond. In the morning they would run the water down a long sluice that would turn a water wheel and...
At this time of Thanksgiving, we pause to give thanks to those who enrich our lives. At the University of Washington School of Medicine in partnership with Gonzaga University, we are especially grateful for the growing community of friends, professionals and partners in Grand Coulee who help us deliver top-ranked medical education every day. Thank you to the community and physicians in Grand Coulee for warmly welcoming our medical students and enriching their education experience. You are instrumental in training the high quality physicians...
Representative democracy is based on a simple premise. It’s that ordinary citizens can judge complex public policy and political issues — or at least grasp them well enough to decide who should be dealing with them. But the significance of that premise isn’t simple at all. It means that our country’s future depends on the quality of democratic participation by its citizens. So, in an era when our democracy appears to be under great stress, what must we do to keep it healthy? Here are some steps I think we need to take. First, we have to protect...
Each Thanksgiving, I am reminded that in Central Washington, we have a lot to be thankful for. We are blessed with gorgeous national forests and public lands, powerful rivers and dams, and bountiful farm land. As we gather with our families and friends to reflect on our gratitude, let us not forget to thank the farmers and ranchers who produce food to feed the United States and the world. We are fortunate to be surrounded by a diverse agriculture industry, with over 300 unique commodities being grown in Washington state. Many of our state’s p...
This week I am profiling another outstanding senior at Lake Roosevelt High School. I have watched her grow up right before our eyes. She has had many ups and downs in her educational career here within the walls of the Coulee, but she is putting the pieces together and is ready to take on whatever is next. Here is a little bit of my talk with Rosa Carter. “It’s going alright,” is how Rosa answered my first question about her senior year, and then the normally quiet young lady opened up the f...
One of my favorite family photographs shows Billy Curlew, then close to 63, holding the team. My uncle Clair is sitting on the rail, my aunt Eleanor standing right foreground, and my grandfather Sam Seaton standing behind. It was taken about 1925 (based on the apparent ages of Clair, born in September 1915, and Eleanor, about two years older). Billy Curlew was born in 1862 while his band was on a root-digging trip to the present Ephrata - Soap Lake area, at a summer village site called En Tach...
No matter who the experts are, the city administration and the city council who hire them must keep their eyes wide open. Problems in city infrastructure can take a long time to develop and be noticed, but two things are certain: they will develop, and you will pay, sooner or later. So, while the tendency in local governments is to let the experts do their thing, the people we elect to oversee them have a tough job to do in overriding that tendency and holding accountable those who know more than they do. The selection in Electric City of a...
The students of Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers were recently given a second chance. Earlier this year, the future of these programs was threatened when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed closing nine of the 25 Civilian Conservation Center (CCC) programs and transferring the operations of the remaining Centers to the Department of Labor (DOL). This transfer to the DOL would have been contrary to the very mission of the Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers, which aims to train the next generation of America’s w...
The grounding of the 737MAX is testing Boeing’s resiliency. It has turned the company upside down in just six months. Boeing executives and engineers have been under duress since the two fatal crashes killing 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia, and that is likely to extend well into 2020. What started as a continuation of a most successful 2018 for Boeing has turned into prolonged migraine. Hopefully, the world’s most successful aerospace company will weather the storm and quickly con...
In August 1934, the Silas Mason Company, headquartered in New York City, began building a new "all electric" town next to the Columbia River in eastern Washington State. The town, called Mason City, was named after Silas Boxley Mason II, who was the Chairman of the MWAK consortium that won the contract to build the Grand Coulee Dam. Silas was married to Suzanne Dallam Burnett, an accomplished thoroughbred racehorse trainer and owner. Suzanne owned Lexington Kentucky's Duntreath Farms and 1933...
First of all, thanks to everyone who has supported me the past years as Electric City Council member. Congratulations to the Electric City Council and mayor elect. I wish them the best in their journey the next few years. I only hope that the community will support them in this journey at public meetings and at monthly council meetings. Birdie Hensley...
Earlier this week the nation took pause to honor our veterans. The debt we owe to veterans goes well beyond Nov. 11. I didn’t come from a military family; however, my father and three of my brothers were in the military: my father in World War I, and my brothers in World War ll. I am sorry now that I know so little of their service times and experiences. They, like so many, didn’t talk a lot about their experiences, it brought back unpleasant memories. My father didn’t serve overseas, but my three brothers did, in the thick of it. My brothers,...
Just before Veterans Day, the last known survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor died at age 98. With the passing of George Hursey of Massachusetts, it closed that chapter of World War II — the world’s most deadly conflict in which over 60 million people perished. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941, “the date which will live in infamy.” During the surprise attack, 350 Japanese aircraft descended on Pearl Harbor and nearby Hawaiian military installations in two waves. Mor...
When this paper comes out there will be 35 shopping days until Christmas, and eight days till Thanksgiving. (Pause to let that sink in) OK, breathe. In the past at our house, we would be making lists consisting of ammo, kitchen tools and automotive tools. We could even dig a little deeper on the depth chart of possible gifts and say stuff like, Kanye West album, a recliner or a new pair of boots. But things have changed this year. We recently bought a luxury kitchen. No, not for our home. Well,...
If someone asked you if you would commit to a job that could send you to anywhere in the world, even some of its worst places, for years, and that you had to obey orders of your supervisors at all times or there could be serious repercussions, and that the pay wasn’t great, and that it would be entirely possible that you could be in serious danger, even killed, would you jump at the chance? You might, if, like the men and women depicted in our special section honoring veterans this week, you found that the job also allowed you to serve the n...
I wanted to thank the students and parents who allowed me to be a part of your lives for the last three years as the GCDJH eighth-grade girls basketball coach. It has truly been a pleasure to put that time into our youth by either working on their basketball skills or just being there as a leader. I’m seeing more and more that guidance and leadership is something that our youth need, not only as encouragement but as stability. Being told over and over that you’re not good enough is just as bad as being told over and over that you’re the best an...
When I talk to farmers in Central Washington and across the country, having access to a stable and legal workforce is often their number one concern. Each year, it becomes harder to hire domestic workers, and farm owners have become increasingly dependent on the H-2A agricultural guestworker program to grow and harvest their goods for market. This has amounted to a critical labor shortage for our agriculture industry – one of the most important sectors of our nation’s economy. Since I was elected to Congress, making reforms to our nat...
Scientists have been coring glacial ice fields for some time now. One objective is to analyze the small atmospheric gas bubbles that got trapped as the ice formed. These gas bubbles contain atmospheric gases from our ancient past. Much of the research is done to address climate change. The Antarctic has proven to be the place where past climate clues can be found and by past, I mean long, long ago. Up until recently, the oldest complete Antarctica ice core data took the research back some...
