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Headlight Herald No more smokestack?
TILLAMOOKHEADLIGHTHERALD.COM • MARCH 27, 2013
LONGEST RUNNING BUSINESS IN TILLAMOOK COUNTY • SINCE 1888
BY JOE WRABEK
jwrabek@countrymedia.net
The future of Garibaldi’s iconic smokestack was debated by the Garibaldi City Council Monday night, March 18, and demolition was proposed. Built in 1927, the smokestack – one of the tallest manmade structures on the Oregon coast – was the landmark of the Hammond Lumber Company, for a time the largest lumber mill on the coast. The stack, built of thick reinforced concrete, replaced two metal smokestacks, and was reportedly built tall deliberately, to improve air quality in the town. It’s weathered 86 years of often inclement weather, but it’s started to disintegrate and has become a safety hazard, realtor Rob Trost advised the city council. Trost is general manager of Old Mill Investment LLC and one of the owners of the former mill property on Garibaldi’s waterfront, where the smokestack is located. A wide area around the structure is currently fenced off with barbed wire, to keep the public away from potential falling debris. The cost to have the smokestack demolished
State Bar complaint against DA
by a private company is prohibitive, Trost suggested. City manager John O’Leary agreed. “The estimated demolition cost is close to half a million dollars,” O’Leary told the council. However, the National Guard could do it, O’Leary suggested, as part of their “Innovative Readiness Training Program”; they could absorb personnel and equipment costs, and treat it as a training exercise. “I think demolition is the most final solution,” O’Leary told the council. “I’m not sure making it safe is an option.” The Guard would only be willing to do the work, though, if the property were owned by a public entity. Trost, who attended the meeting, offered to donate the stack and surrounding land to the city. “We’re not talking about a large piece,” Trost cautioned. “We could have a remnant of the stack there,” he suggested. In his letter to the city, Trost said Old Mill would absorb the city’s costs in the demolition effort, “so the public is not underwriting our development activities but enabling us to employ resources not normally available to private entities.”
BY SAYDE MOSER smoser@countrymedia.net
A complaint against Tillamook District Attorney William Porter has been forwarded to disciplinary council for consideration. The complaint was issued by William Porter Sherry Petty, whose brother Ronald Lunsford is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence on manslaughter charges for killing Chris Brusman in January 2010. Petty filed the complaint alleging that Porter didn’t disclose all the evidence to the prosecution. The undisclosed evidence was several emails back and forth between the victim’s wife and Porter discussing the issue of whether the victim was paying Lunsford rent for parking his trailer on the property, and whether Lunsford entered the trailer the night that he killed Brusman without being invited in. For the unlawful entry Lunsford was charged with burglary and the state was able to seek aggravated murder charges. Porter said in a letter addressed to the Oregon State Bar, dated Nov. 13, 2012, that it was the victim’s widow’s response to a question posed by the defense counsel that uncovered new evidence, “previously unknown to either side… Regarding defendant’s knowledge of the verbal rental agreement.” Porter also stated this verbal agreement doesn’t show up anywhere in the emails.
See SMOKESTACK, Page A3
PHOTO COURTESY OF PORT OF GARIBALDI
PHOTO BY MARY FAITH BELL
1927 photo shows the “new” smokestack, which reportedly replaced two older metal ones. The smokestack was built the year the Hammond Lumber Co. bought the mill from The Whitney Company.
U.S. Supreme Court rules in runoff lawsuit
Correction Correction: South County Food Bank recipients sign a form stating that their income falls within U.S.D.A. guidelines which are published on the website. Proof of income is not required.
BY JOE WRABEK jwrabek@countrymedia.net
The six-year-old lawsuit over whether runoff from logging roads is “industrial pollution” requiring a Federal discharge permit has been settled – in Tillamook County’s favor – by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court issued its opinion Wednesday, March 20, reversing a 2010 decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC), which had sued the Oregon Department of Forestry, Tillamook County and several
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other entities back in 2006. The NEDC, based at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, claimed that runoff from the Trask River Road and Sam Downs Road, both in the Tillamook State Forest, increased turbidity in the South Fork Trask and Little South Fork Kilchis Rivers, respectively. Tillamook County was a party to the lawsuit because the roads were located in Tillamook County. “If that ruling had stood, it could have radically changed the rules governing runoff from forest roads,” noted Dan Postrel, public affairs director for the Oregon Department of Forestry.
“Forest landowners would have been forced into as Federal permitting process for rainwater running off such roads.” Four timber companies, two forestry associations, and Tillamook County appealed in November 2011 to the Supreme Court to overturn the Court of Appeals decision. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Dec. 2, 2012. The Supreme Court’s opinion was authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who noted that the Federal Environmental Protection Agency claimed it intended to exempt the transportation of logs under its “Silvicultural Rule,” and specifical-
ly did so in a revised rule promulgated just three days before the Supreme Court heard the case in December.
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Japanese tsunami debris could have cultural significance
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BY JOE WRABEK jwrabek@countrymedia.net
Oceanside received its first tsunami debris Thursday, March 2, including a piece that could be one of the most culturally significant pieces to arrive on this coast. Several pieces of structural wood, a couple of them large, washed ashore Thursday just below the Oceanside post office. “The biggest one came in overnight,” Oceanside resident Gordon Rood told the Headlight Herald, “it was on the beach Friday morning.” The wood, all hand-shaped, was presumed to be part of a structure damaged in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that happened March 11, 2011. The largest piece, an estimated 16 feet long and shaped from a single piece of wood, had been brightly painted red, though it is now partially covered with marine organisms. Its shape resembles the top, horizontal part, the “kasagi,” of a type of free-standing arch
PHOTO BY GORDON ROOD
Carved wooden beams washed ashore at Oceanside Friday are thought to be parts of a Japanese temple damaged in the March 11, 2011 tsunami.
found in Japan called a “torii”. A torii is a Japanese temple gate used to mark the entrance of a sacred site. Another Oceanside resident, John Engstrom, called the Headlight Herald office Friday to advise he had stopped some Oregon State Parks employees from cutting up the large pieces, and had urged them to call their superiors. The debris
was later hauled off intact. The “torii” is being stored in a secured state park maintenance yard, waiting on word from the Consular Office of Japan in Portland for advice on next steps, state parks’ Chris Havel advised. By Saturday morning, only one structural beam – the smallest – remained on the beach.
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