Updated 3/2/25, 3 p.m. The long term impacts of recent staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are still unknown, but fishery managers on the West Coast called the situation troubling. On Thursday, NOAA laid off more than 800 workers as the Trump administration continues its push to reduce the federal workforce. West…
Katie Frankowicz
ASTORIA, Ore. — Elias Hess wanted to stir things up. On Saturday, more than 700 people attended a town hall event with U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and Sen. Jeff Merkley at Clatsop Community College, but only a few of them got the chance to ask the lawmakers a question. People asked how the Democrats planned…
ASTORIA, Ore. — Astoria leaders have agreed to cover a major city fee for a nonprofit looking to move into a former church downtown. Jenny Pool Radway, executive director of Consejo Hispano, said the decision is a huge relief. Consejo Hispano serves Latinx communities on Oregon’s North Coast and is on track to close on…
ASTORIA, Ore. — It’s a good day when you can flush the toilet without a second thought. An upcoming Astoria Public Works project hopes to keep it that way on a citywide scale. At a recent meeting, the Astoria City Council signed off on a number of items related to upcoming major maintenance work on…
ASTORIA, Ore. — Candidates vying for a seat on the Port of Astoria Commission this May agree on at least one thing so far: Something needs to be done about the East Mooring Basin. These days, its docks see more foot traffic from sea lions than from fishermen. Last year, the port removed a deteriorating…
ASTORIA, Ore. — After 20 years of serving Latinx communities on Oregon’s North Coast, Consejo Hispano is poised to close on a former church in Astoria next month, a move that would give them a permanent home downtown and enough space to expand operations and services. There’s just one unexpected — and expensive — snag….
ASTORIA, Ore. — Tuition is going up for students at Clatsop Community College. The college board recently voted on a $3 per credit increase that will go into effect this summer. College President Jarrod Hogue told the board the main reason for the increase is to keep pace with rising operational costs. He described the…
CLATSOP COUNTY, Ore. — Local firefighters who helped battle wildfires in Southern California are now back home. Fire chiefs on Oregon’s North Coast say the roughly 17-day deployment provided critical support in the effort to beat back fires that have decimated parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It was also a chance for the…
CLATSOP COUNTY, Ore. — A portion of Commercial Street in Astoria continues to be closed between Fourth and Fifth streets due to a shallow landslide. At a meeting Monday night, Public Works Director Jeff Harrington told the Astoria City Council that city staff are continuing to monitor the area. No structures appear to be in…
CLATSKANIE, Ore — State environmental regulators approved a key permit for a controversial refinery project near Clatskanie this month. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality had previously denied water quality permit applications submitted by Houston-based NXT Clean Fuels, also referred to as NEXT, in 2021 and 2022 “due to insufficient information to evaluate the permit…
ASTORIA, Ore. — Moving day is coming sooner than expected for the North Coast Food Web. In a social media post Friday, the Astoria nonprofit announced that its lease on space in a building in downtown Astoria is being terminated early. The lease was set to expire on Sept. 20. Now, it will end on…
ASTORIA, Ore. — When it sells, a weary-looking, three-bedroom house on Bond Street could help bring more housing to Astoria. The nonprofit Friends of the Unsheltered purchased the house in 2020 to provide low-cost, temporary housing to people emerging from homelessness and trying to rebuild their lives. Nelle Moffett and Rick Bowers, the couple behind…
OREGON COAST — A new report spells out exactly how much Oregon’s kelp forests have dwindled over the past decade or so — and the picture is bleak. According to a status report released by the Oregon Kelp Alliance in November, nearly 900 acres of bull kelp forest has essentially disappeared off the Oregon Coast…
ASTORIA, Ore. — Around 70 people, most of them women, marched through downtown Astoria on Saturday, joining communities across the country in demonstrating for abortion access and other women’s rights issues ahead of Election Night. They walked from the Clatsop County Courthouse to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. By the time they reached their destination…
Gary Longo was looking for what he thought would be small genetic differences across a single species of small, ocean-dwelling fish: Pacific sardine. But as he examined the early data, he suddenly got a sinking feeling. He was looking at what appeared to be two completely different species. Pacific sardines are small but ecologically important…
COLUMBIA, Co. — In the small of Clatskanie, east of Astoria, there is only one candidate and four open positions for the City Council going into the November election. The one name on the ballot is incumbent City Councilor Jeff Horness. He is running unopposed to retain his seat — a seat he is all but…
An Astoria brewery faces a fine of more than $138,000 after the state said they polluted state waters. The fine comes after the partial collapse of Buoy Beer Co.’s building on the Astoria waterfront in June 2022 and December 2023. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality said that — in both cases — building materials,…
TILLAMOOK — The rodeo queen and her court have made some calculations. In their hands are 2-pound blocks of medium cheddar cheese, Tillamook County Creamery Association brand. Between horse races at the Tillamook County Fair in August, they carry the cheese from their seats in the arena to the paddock where jockeys and horses gather…
ASTORIA, Ore. — They can grow to the size of a golf cart and weigh as much as 2,000 pounds. They have been on the earth with the dinosaurs. They’ve weathered meteors and ice ages. They’ve adapted again and again. Leatherback turtles are the largest living turtles in the world but try spotting them in…
OREGON COAST — The month of July saw at least four fatal car crashes on highways in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook Counties. Three of those crashes happened in just one week near the end of July. During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Oregon saw a spike in serious crashes. Preliminary data from the Oregon…
CATHLAMET, Wash. — The town of Cathlamet and the Wahkiakum County Public Utility District are contemplating consolidating the town’s sewer and water systems under the PUD, a proposal that has left people with questions and concerns about the rates they would pay — and what the loss of revenue could mean for Cathlamet. At a…
CANNON BEACH, Ore. — When Tabea Goossen’s friend said she might have seen a sea otter at Ecola Point in early June, Goossen laughed and said, “Oh, no. It was a seal.” She knows — everyone who cares about these kinds of things knows — there are no sea otters in Oregon. Hunted to near…
The baby sea star looked like a strange gray flower, tucked in the dark purple “y” of an adult sea star’s arms A crowd of people crouched in the sand near the rocks for a closer look. They were volunteers with a sea star monitoring project in Oswald West State Park on the North Coast….
ASTORIA, Ore. — It’s official: Peace First Early Learning Center in Astoria, one of Clatsop County’s larger child care centers, will close this summer. The early learning center, which operates out of buildings owned by Peace First Lutheran Church, looked for alternative locations after the church decided it would list the property for sale —…
The fate of one of Clatsop County’s larger child care centers is in question. Peace First Early Learning Center serves more than three dozen children — ages 12 months to 12 years old — out of buildings in downtown Astoria owned by Peace First Lutheran Church. Now, the church plans to put the property on…
Here’s how Dean Fleck heard the news. The general manager for the Newport branch of Englund Marine and Industrial Supply was in his office when a skipper who does business with Bornstein Seafood showed up in a panic and asked, “Have you heard?” “And I said, ‘Well, no, what am I hearing?’ So that’s when…
CATHLAMET, Wash. — Tensions between Cathlamet leaders bubbled up again last week as a majority of town councilors expressed frustration with Mayor David Olson through a signed “censure” letter. The letter, written by Councilor Robert Stowe and provided to the mayor at the March 18 council meeting, does not carry legal weight or entail direct…
ROSBURG, WASH. — At Ron Thielen’s house near the end of Oneida Road in Wahkiakum County, Washington, an engineered rainwater collection system is his source of water. He is not alone. There are no water facilities along this stretch of State Route 4 from the Wahkiakum County-Pacific County line to the Deep River Bridge just…
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Crabbers rebound from Ilwaco fire
ILWACO, Wash. — On Monday, commercial crabbers in Oregon and Washington state started dropping baited circular steel crab pots into the ocean. On Thursday, they will start hauling them back up — hopefully full of Dungeness crab. It’s a critical and fast-paced time. The bulk of the crab caught in the lucrative fishery is typically…
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Landslide closes road, impacts homes
ASTORIA, Ore. — A shallow, slow-moving landslide impacted seven houses in Astoria’s Uppertown neighborhood over the weekend. As of Sunday evening, five houses have been “red tagged,” meaning they are unsafe to occupy at this time, according to Jeff Harrington, public works director for Astoria. City Manager Scott Spence says the area moving near 27th…