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DAIRY
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ASTORIA!
DAIRY PRINCESS PASSES CROWN, PAGE A2
FIRST WIN OVER ASTORIA SINCE 1998, PAGE A9
Headlight Herald TILLAMOOKHEADLIGHTHERALD.COM •APRIL 17, 2013
Rockaway Beach addresses water problem
LONGEST RUNNING BUSINESS IN TILLAMOOK COUNTY • SINCE 1888
Rough road ahead
Video available online at tillamookheadlightherald.com
BY SAYDE MOSER
PHOTO BY MARTIN HANSEN
OCSR crew poses for photo at the end of the line.
smoser@countrymedia.net
Chances are not many people know what trihalomethanes are - unless of course you live in Rockaway Beach then you might be familiar with the word. And more importantly, you probably know it’s not something you want in your drinking water. Trihalomethanes (TTHMs) are the disinfection byproducts when chlorine is used to treat organics in water. TTHMs are monitored by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and due to the reoccurrence of high TTHM levels in the City of Rockaway’s drinking water last month, the OHA is requiring the city to take some kind of action to reduce the problem. According to Public Works Director Luke Shepard, various attempts have been made over the past several years to bring the city’s water supply into compliance with OHA standards, but it has become clear that without significant infrastructure changes to the water treatment plant itself, these problems will only continue. And that’s just the beginning of the problems with the water treatment plant, according to Shepard. “The plant suffers from persistent performance and production related issues,” he told the city council in a letter. “These performance issues have caused significant increases in operating and personnel
PHOTO BY MARY FAITH BELL
Road failure along the Upper Nestucca River Road where road is splitting apart. The roads department measured the crevice at up to two feet deep before they filled and patched it.
Bond seeks support for a failing roads system BY SAYDE MOSER smoser@countrymedia.net
“If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.” That could be the theme of the Tillamook County Sustainable Roads Committee, or if you’re the president of the committee, Jon Carnahan, it’s a sign of just how bad the transportation system really is in Tillamook County. “Tillamook County has the worst roads in the state of Oregon,” Carnahan said, adding that the county commissioners first identified a need to fix the roads in 1996. Since then, four different measures to generate the resources to fix the roads have all failed to gain support of the voters – but they’re not giving up. Why? Well, according to Carnahan,
it’s more than just roads. “What we’re really talking about is a transportation system,” he said. “Besides 269 miles of paved roads, we also have 100 bridges, 3,300 culverts and more than 5,000 traffic signs so the system is more than just roads.” It’s this system, Carnahan emphasized, that supports the economy both from a tourism perspective and a commercial one – and represents a public investment by taxpayers of $670 million. “It’s the biggest investment in Tillamook County,” Liane Welch, Director of Public Works for Tillamook County told The Headlight Herald.
See ROADS, Page A3
Flood insurance premiums on the rise BY JOE WRABEK jwrabek@countrymedia.net
See WATER, Page A3
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Flooding is “the most prevalent natural disaster in Oregon,” Christine Shirley told Tillamook County Commissioners last week. “It happens every year.” Shirley is the national flood insurance program coordinator for the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development and gave a presentation to the commissioners and interested audience members on April 10, after changes in the Federal government’s program – including higher premium rates for most flood insurance purchasers – had been announced in March, with few details. Ninety percent of all disasters in the U.S. include floods, Shirley said. The National Flood Insurance Program, created in 1968, offered flood insurance in exchange for floodplain management by local governments – restricting
FILE PHOTO
how and where buildings could be built in flood zones. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, subsidized flood insurance rates for buildings built before 1974, or whenever Flood Insurance Rate Maps came out. (Most of those maps in Tillamook County date from the 1970s.)
“The idea was over time, buildings would be mitigated and subsidies would disappear,” Shirley said, “but it hasn’t happened.” FEMA nonetheless ran in the black, she said, until Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.
See FLOOD, Page A7
Scenic Railroad makes ‘test run’ to end of the line BY JOE WRABEK jwrabek@countrymedia.net
The Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad ran its first passenger train in four and a half years from Garibaldi to the mouth of the Salmonberry Canyon on the Nehalem River late last month. It was a test run, OCSR’s financial officer J.J. Thompson told the Headlight Herald. “We were going to see if we could make it from Batterson to Salmonberry and back on a tank of water.” OCSR’s two steam engines are oil-fired – they burn recycled motor oil – but use copious amounts of water, Thompson said. The mile-long siding at Batterson, partway up the Nehalem River where trains used to change engines, is the only place where an extra tank car of water can be parked. The excursion also measured how long the trip would take, Thompson explained, and was an opportunity to shoot photos and video of a train on the track for future promotional footage. “The last time a steam engine passed through Salmonberry was 1953 – 60 years ago,” Thompson said. A total of 55 people made the trip, most of them OCSR volunteers and their families and friends. A family with young children that had been ogling the train when it stopped at Wheeler were invited to join the tour. Thompson conducted the trip, riding the caboose at the end of the train and manually checking road crossings for traffic. Salmonberry – the last crossing of Foss Road before the railroad enters the Salmonberry Canyon – is currently the end of the line for the railroad; the tracks and roadbed were destroyed in 2007’s winter storm just short of the road crossing. The road has since been repaired, but not the railroad. Between Wheeler and
Salmonberry, the railroad is open; slides along the route, and alder and blackberry thickets that had grown up in the tracks were cleared by volunteer crews, Thompson said. “We plan to schedule excursions to Salmonberry next year,” he said. “We did not know that we would get it open so soon and were thus cautious in our scheduling.” At the end of the line, a gaggle of OCSR engineers and other support staff posed for pictures with the engine on the trestle just south of the damaged tracks. A couple of campers from the nearby state park had their photos taken with the train as well. OCSR plans to re-open the line as far as Enright, which is in the Salmonberry Canyon five miles beyond the Foss Road crossing at Salmonberry. OCSR’s operating agreement with the Port of Tillamook Bay gives OCSR control of the railroad from the Port of Tillamook Bay all the way to Enright. “We plan to have the track open to Enright by 2015,” Thompson said. With respect to the idea of making the Salmonberry Canyon exclusively a trail and not repairing the railroad line, “At this time the Salmonberry Coalition has acknowledged our agreement with the Port of Tillamook Bay to operate the railroad between Enright (located in the Salmonberry Canyon) and the Port of Tillamook Bay Industrial Park,” Thompson said, “and is investigating making this section rails and trails.” OCSR began operations in 2003 as a part of the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad and then became a separate nonprofit (with tax-exempt status) in 2005. Their first excursion of the 2013 season is a “Mother’s Day Brunch” train Sunday, May 12. Regular weekend trips begin Memorial Day weekend, and daily trips June 22.
Netarts Fire Hall grand opening BY JOE WRABEK jwrabek@countrymedia.net
Netarts’ newly-remodeled (and seismically-upgraded) Fire Hall had its grand opening Saturday, April 13. It’s not a new fire hall (though it looks it); the Netarts Fire Hall has been in the same location for decades. Rendering it earthquake-resistant is new; so is the work that made the building more usable and efficient. The “new” building has a big meeting room that doubles as a firefighters’ training room, and an upstairs for storage of extra turnouts, documents, and an exercise room. Those facilities are in the oldest part of the fire hall, where the firefighting apparatus used to be kept; today,
the apparatus is in an adjacent concrete-block addition. A state grant paid for the seismic upgrade, which tied the older part of the building into the concrete-block addition. The remodeling was paid for out of the fire district’s own reserve funds, Fire Chief Tim Carpenter told the Headlight Herald. The ribbon-cutting was delayed for half an hour while some of the firefighters responded to a medical call. In the interim, attendees got to enjoy coffee and punch, cookies baked in the fire hall’s kitchen, and a cake emblazoned with the Netarts-Oceanside Fire District’s logo. A flat-screen TV displayed a slide show of photos from the remodeling, and a
big table displayed historical documents and photos. Firefighters gave tours of the facility and demonstrated equipment for kids. The ribbons – “Fire Line – Do Not Cross” tape, across the outside stairs and handicapped entrance to the meeting/training room – were cut simultaneously by Carpenter and Scott Campbell, president of the NetartsOceanside Fire District’s board. Netarts and Oceanside originally had separate fire departments, Netarts’ founded in 1945 and Oceanside’s in 1946; the two merged in 1999. “It turned out most of the Oceanside firefighters were living in Netarts,” Carpenter said. “They couldn’t afford to buy in Oceanside.”
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Firefighters demonstrated emergency equipment for kids attending the grand opening.
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