C.D. Council hears complaint about alarming army training

A loud US Army training exercise on a hillside above town drew a different kind of fire at Coulee Dam’s city council meeting July 28, a small-caliber complaint compared to the big guns that alarmed citizens late at night July 22.

Bob Hendrickson told the council he was disappointed that people had not been given any notice that a training was about to happen that might sound like a terrorist attack against Grand Coulee Dam.

He said that he and many other people he talked to had worried about that as they listened to automatic weapons and watched the flames from big guns on the hillside over the dam’s Third Powerhouse, beginning about 10:30 p.m. and continuing past midnight.

“So, I’m just disappointed that somehow we didn’t know, as a community, because a lot of people were really, really frightened,” Hendrickson said. “I just don’t think that’s right.”

Mayor Bob Poch said it would be difficult for him to justify alerting people when the town had been asked not to do so.

“What do you do when they say we are using this as an exercise for a security reason? he asked. “It is pretty darn hard for me to justify going out and broadcasting it to the whole wide world.”

Poch compared the exercise to a fire drill at school and said gunfire, such as that often heard above town at the Bureau of Reclamation’s shooting range, is “just part of living here.”

Police Chief Paul Bowden said an email notification on the exercise had claimed there would “be minimal disturbance to the community.”

“Well, they didn’t tell us what they were bringing,” Bowden said. “Now, I’m not, you know, a scientist or anything, but rolling with a 50-caliber on a dune buggy is not going to be a minimal disturbance.”

Hendrickson said he was glad for security training at the dam. But he rebuffed a suggestion that the exercise needed to be kept secret and said it actually was not a secret. Security personnel at the dam knew about it eight weeks earlier, he said, citing a source he didn’t name within the Bureau of Reclamation. He questioned whether it even could be kept secret since doing so might risk an unintended engagement between federal security forces and the US Army.

Chief Bowden said if he was asked for permission to do such a training now, he’d say no.

Hendrickson had a list of people he said had signed a letter on the matter.

Councilmember Dale Rey told Hendrickson the federal authorities likely wouldn’t a take town complaint seriously and suggested he send it to members of Congress, who would.