ASTORIA, Ore. — Columbia Memorial Hospital will look to the state to help close a funding gap for the expansion and renovation project at its Astoria campus. In an update to the Astoria City Council on Monday, Erik Thorsen, Columbia Memorial’s chief executive, said he has spoken with state lawmakers and plans to ask the…
Katie Frankowicz
ASTORIA, Ore. — The question of whether to allow vacation rentals at the historic Gilbaugh Building in downtown Astoria is back before the city. In December 2023, a hearings officer upheld a city staff decision to let Bob and Cindy Magie use the fourplex on Exchange Street for vacation rentals. Housing advocates appealed to the…
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…
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Cause of Ilwaco fire still unknown
ILWACO, Wash. — The cause of a massive fire that destroyed a seafood landing facility and thousands of commercial crab pots in Ilwaco on Monday is still unknown. Investigators from Pierce County and from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were expected to be on scene Wednesday to conduct a routine investigation….
ILWACO, Wash. — A massive fire broke out at a crab-landing facility in Pacific County on Monday, inflicting significant damage on the facility and destroying fishing gear ahead of Washington’s commercial Dungeness crab season. Ilwaco residents were warned to stay indoors and keep windows and doors shut because of hazardous smoke from the fire. This…
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Winter weather slows North Coast
NORTH COAST, Ore. —With winter storm warnings and advisories in effect across much of the state, county officials on Oregon’s North Coast are urging people to stay home. Clatsop County officials say the hazardous and icy conditions that arrived Saturday morning have made it difficult to apply treatments to roads and sidewalks. Local roads and…
JEWELL, Ore. — The water is safe to drink again in a rural neighborhood that has been living under a boil water notice for more than a year. State and county officials announced Friday evening that samples from the Evergreen Acres water system have come back clean of coliform bacteria, or E. coli. The system…
JEWELL, Ore. — A rural neighborhood on Oregon’s North Coast that has been living under a boil water notice for more than a year did not have any water at all for several days this week. Residents said Tony Cavin, who operates the Evergreen Acres water system that provides drinking water to around 100 people,…
JEWELL, Ore. — For more than a year, residents of a rural neighborhood east of Seaside have been living under a boil water notice. The water that pours from their faucets can be yellowish, sometimes slightly brown, even foamy. Laundry washed in the water smells bad even when bleach is used. One family started breaking…
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Beacon RV owners face penalties
ILWACO, Wash. — A Washington state judge has ordered that the owners of an RV park in Pacific County violated the customer protection act when they tried to illegally evict tenants last year. On Thursday, Judge Katherine Svoboda issued an order granting partial summary judgement in the lawsuit filed by the Washington Attorney General’s Office…
CANNON BEACH, Ore. — The puffins are early risers, but so is Tim Halloran. For the past 12 years, he has spent most summer mornings — and many sunsets — with his binoculars aimed at a tufted puffin colony on Cannon Beach’s Haystack Rock. Minute by minute, over a series of two hour shifts, Halloran…
ROCKAWAY BEACH, Ore. — The fatal shooting of a Rockaway Beach man by officers in September was justified according to findings released this week. In a lengthy statement, Tillamook County District Attorney Aubrey Olson detailed her review of the Clatsop County Major Crimes Team investigation into the incident, described the events leading up to the…