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Headlight Herald TILLAMOOKHEADLIGHTHERALD.COM • APRIL 10, 2013
LONGEST RUNNING BUSINESS IN TILLAMOOK COUNTY • SINCE 1888
Suspect in stabbing taken to State Hospital
PHOTO BY SAYDE MOSER
The Tillamook Air Museum is relocating to Madras, where a 64,000-square-foot facility will be built to provide space for the collection of vintage aircrafts. However, the Air Museum’s lease on the blimp hanger in Tillamook does not expire until 2016.
No solutions yet to Air Museum leaving BY JOE WRABEK jwrabek@countrymedia.net
The Port of Tillamook Bay doesn’t have a solution to the Air Museum moving to Madras, port manager Michele Bradley told the Headlight Herald. “We’ve only known for a week,” she said. “We understand that the coastal weather is not conducive to the longevity of aircraft and also understand the business decision by the Tillamook Air Museum to move Mr. Erickson's collec-
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tion of vintage aircraft to another location where other divisions of their business are located,” Bradley said. “The Port will be working with the Erickson Group through this transitional period the next few years.” The Air Museum’s lease on the blimp hangar doesn’t expire until January 2016, she noted. “We expect many conversations as we both move forward,” she said. Nor are all the aircraft housed at the Port of Tillamook Bay going to be leaving, Bradley told the Headlight Herald.
“Nine or ten” of the aircraft on site belong to the Port of Tillamook Bay, not the Erickson Group – they’re on loan to the port from a U.S. Navy museum in Pensacola, Florida. “Most people do not know the Port of Tillamook Bay started a museum in the hangar prior to what is currently known as the Air Museum,” Bradley advised. When the Erickson Group leased the blimp hangar in 1995, they absorbed the Port’s collection, she said.
See MUSEUM, Page A3
Spreading the word to end the word BY SAYDE MOSER smoser@countrymedia.net
1908 2nd St. 503-842-7535 www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com
Vol. 124, No. 15 $1.00
Marissa Zerngast, a senior at Tillamook High School has stepped up to the plate – and asked her fellow students to do the same. Every year for three years, Zerngast has issued a pledge not to use the word retarded (or the “R-Word” as she calls it). “The goal is to inform people who don’t realize when they say the R-word, it’s actually an offensive word,” she said. “So we inform them and ask them to take the pledge.” Zerngast’s mother works for the Tillamook Family Counseling Center, specifically with the intellectually disabled, and asked her daughter to be the ambassador for the cause and help spread the word to end the word. The official organization (www.r-word.org) is sponsored by the Special Olympics and offers insight and tips on how to encourage others to take the pledge. For her first year, Zerngast just had the official sign-up sheet from the website. The next year, she had stickers that students got to sign. This year, she switched it up again - actually painting a wall in the high school and letting students make hand prints on the wall and sign their name to it. The handprints are white or blue, the official colors of r-word.org. Zerngast spent an entire day last week monitoring the wall while students lined up to take the pledge. More than 200 handprints decorated the wall by the end of the day. “Last year we wanted to get half of the student body to sign up and we got about 350,” she said. “And there’s only about 400 students so we did pretty good.” She also said several teachers told her they noticed a difference in the students who took the pledge. “They’d either stop themselves or catch
PHOTO BY SAYDE MOSER
themselves saying it and correct it,” she said. “Everyone is really aware which I think is a big success.” Zerngast also made a video on Youtube about her project, which can be found by searching Tillamook High School Spread the Word 2013. While she won’t be around next year, she’s hoping someone will pick up the cause and continue to support the pledge. “I’m hoping it doesn’t completely die out,” she said. “There have been a few kids who seem interested in caring it on.”
The Nehalem dredging saga OP-ED BY CAMERON LA FOLLETTE AND RALPH THOMAS The Nehalem River is the lifeblood of the little towns of Wheeler and Nehalem. So a distressing series of missteps that led to a dredging fiasco in the river is having far-reaching consequences. The Port of Nehalem applied to the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Oregon Dept. of State Lands in November 2011 for required permits to dredge the Wheeler waterfront. This project was identified as the fourth highest county priority by the Tillamook County Commissioners because impinging mudflats means that Wheeler has continuously had to extend its docks further into the Nehalem River, thus encroaching on the navigation channel. The Wheeler project was small, only about 300 cubic yards. The Port opened discussions with the City of Wheeler and Wheeler Marina for project funding. The Port wanted both to pay for the dredging via an open-ended funding agreement. Both refused. As a result, budget talks about project funding never developed to the point of city council decision-making. The Port changed its application to DSL and the Corps in December 2011; it still included the Wheeler Marina dredging, but also dredging at Deer Island Slough opposite the City of Nehalem waterfront. Now the Port proposed to dredge 5,000 cubic yards from the river.
That’s about 500 dump truck loads of sediment. Deer Island Slough is not a navigable channel, and the Nehalem part of the project was projected to cost upwards of $350,000 and benefit mainly those with docks along the Slough. The application specified that only those willing to “participate in the cost of the project” would be dredged: Port of Nehalem, City of Nehalem and Wheeler Marina. Then the Port, through an unsigned letter in April 2012, probably by the Port’s agent Bill Campbell, quietly notified the agencies that it was dropping Wheeler from the dredging project because “the cost to continue was deemed to expensive and provided no realistic cost-benefit ratio that would endure under present operational and costsharing parameters.” Neither City of Wheeler nor Wheeler Marina were notified of this decision. The dredging proceeded in Deer Island Slough once permits were acquired. Wheeler residents and city officials alike were shocked in mid-January to see a mound of dredge spoils rearing up in the middle of the river just above Nehalem Bridge. Investigation discovered that the DSL permit allowed the Port to use “in-flow dispersal” of the dredge spoils – meaning that they would just disperse in the river current, flowing downstream to Wheeler and on into Nehalem Bay, where they would settle out. However, the dredge spoils
See DREDGE, Page A3
COURTESY PHOTO
Deer Island Slough showing the dock and boat of the Port of Nehalem, March 2013.
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“I need to be in the hospital real bad,” White told the judge from the video room in the jail. “Everyone is agreeing with you on that,” said Trevino. White was brought to the jail in the beginning of March after the Major Crimes Team was called to her house in Rockaway Beach to investigate an assault. She and her husband were both transported to the hospital with stab wounds. Detective Paul Fournier of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office told the Headlight Herald that investigators believe White began attacking her husband in his sleep with a knife before inflicting serious injuries to herself. The OSH evaluation will determine whether or not White suffers from a mental illness; whether she understands the nature of her crimes and if she will be able to participate during a trial. The next court date has been set for May 28 at 1 p.m.
Marissa Zerngast has been encouraging her classmates to take the pledge for three years.
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Per her attorney’s request, Dawn White of Rockaway Beach – the suspect in an attempted murder-suicide – is being transported to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem for an evaluation before standing trial. “It is in everyone’s best interest that she be transported Dawn White there,” said White’s attorney. White, 59, has been housed at the Tillamook jail and according to Judge Mari Trevino, Oregon State Hospital (OSH) has up to 30 days after receiving the request to finish the evaluation. “They tend to wait 30 days to do it,” Trevino warned White and her attorney. Trevino assured White they would do everything they could to get her to the hospital “sooner rather than later.”
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