New Group: Refugee Center Gives CSI a 'Bad Rap'

Tuesday

• June 30, 2015

www.magicvalley.com •

$1.00

Hailey Woman Creates Puzzles for People with Memory Loss • B4

Robbery Suspect and Missing Teen Arrested TIMES-NEWS ‌G OODING • The man wanted for robberies in Gooding, Oregon and California was arrested in California Monday.‌ Anthony G. Parsons, 25, and Frankie H. Collins, 17, were arrested Monday at about 12 p.m. near Box Canyon Dam in Mt. Shasta, Calif. The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said the two were arrested without incident.

Parsons has a warrant

Parsons

Collins

from Butte County but the Butte County Prosecutor’s Office said that no plans to extradite Parsons will be made until after he is processed in California. No timetable has been set for

when he will be extradited.

Parsons was wanted for the June 15 robbery of the Maverik gas station at 1899 Highway 26 in Gooding.

Parsons and Collins were both wanted for the June 22 robbery of an AM/PM store in Stayton, Ore., outside of Salem, and for the robbery of the Lake Shastina Mini Mart near Mt. Shasta, Calif. Friday.

Police said that Parsons walked into the mini mart armed with a rifle equipped

.270 rifle and a .22 pistol came into an AM/PM store in Stayton, Ore., outside of Salem. Police said that the two guns were believed to be stolen.

On June 15, a robber came into the Maverik gas station at 1899 Highway 26 at about 11:40 p.m. and held the clerk at gunpoint before leaving with an undisclosed amount of money, police said. The man was wearing a black, zip-up hoodie, turned backward to cover

with a scope and that Collins was armed with a knife. The two tied up the employee and took off with an undisclosed amount of money police said.

The stores security footage captured a maroon 2001 Dodge pickup with a maroon camper shell and an Idaho license plate numbered 4L910. The truck was reported stolen in Lincoln County.

On June 22 two suspects armed with a bolt action

Bed Bath & Beyond Now Open, Noodles & Company to Start Hiring TETONA DUNLAP

his face, with blue jeans, white shoes and what appeared to be a turquoise shirt under the hoodie, police said.

Parsons is also wanted on suspicion of the sexual exploitation of a minor.

Police ask anyone who was in the area at the time of the Gooding robbery or who has information that could help police to call SIRCOMM at 208-324-1911 or the Gooding Police Department at 208-934-8436.

Trip Craig Remembered for Passion NATHAN BROWN

tdunlap@magicvalley.com‌

nbrown@magicvalley.com‌

‌ WIN FALLS • T Bed Bath & Beyond is the latest store to open at the Canyon Park West shopping center in Twin Falls.‌ The 20,000-square-feet retail store opened June 23 and joins Dick’s Sporting Goods, which opened March 27. Bed Bath & Beyond sells domestic merchandise and home furnishings for bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and dining rooms.

Anna Foster and Bonnie McMullen shopped at the store Monday afternoon. The Jerome neighbors said they travel to Twin Falls to shop together at least twice a week.

Bed Bath & Beyond now gives them another reason to make a trip to Twin Falls.

“I was happy to see Bed Bath & Beyond. We needed something like that here,” Foster said. “I’ll be here regularly. They were very nice and have good employees with good customer service.”

There are about 1,000 Bed Bath & Beyond stores in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada. The Twin Falls store is located at 1933 Fillmore Street and is open Monday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Norma Odiaga of Jerome was walking back to her vehicle Monday to retrieve a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon she forgot. Odiaga found the under-bed storage containers she was looking for, but said she did not like the stores along the canyon rim.

“I would have liked to see a park or at least set it back quite a ways,” Odiaga said.

“I’m not pleased to have this on our rim.”

‌ WIN FALLS • A former city T councilman is being remembered by some of his colleagues as an independent thinker with a sense of humor.‌ Trip Craig, 50, died Friday at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center after a long illness. A Twin Falls native who graduated from Twin Falls High Craig School in 1983 and Boise State University in 1989, Craig was a legislative intern and a field representative for former U.S. Sen Larry Craig before he was elected to the Council in 1999, beating incumbent Art Frantz.

“That surprised a lot of people,” said now-state Rep. Lance Clow, who was on the Council at the time. “It shows that hard work can pay off.”

At the time, recalls Clow, Craig was the youngest person ever elected to the Council, a distinction he held until the then-27-year-old Rebecca Mills Sojka was elected in 2011. He served three terms, until he lost the 2011 election to Shawn Barigar, and Clow was on the Council the entire time.

Clow remembers Craig as being passionate about downtown Twin Falls, and about his work as the Council’s liaison to the city Parks and Recreation Department.

“I think we just worked well together,” said Clow. “He was supportive of me when I was mayor, and we became good friends.”

Craig even sponsored Clow when he joined the Masons. Their one rivalry, Clow said, was over baseball — Clow is a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, while Craig rooted for the Oakland Athletics.

“When I would go to L.A., I’d always keep thinking of Trip and buying him a Dodgers’ hat,” said Clow.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Please see OPEN, A4

Patrons walk into Bed Bath and Beyond at Canyon West Monday in Twin Falls.

Please see CRAIG, A5

New Group: Refugee Center Gives CSI a ‘Bad Rap’ JULIE WOOTTON jwootton@magicvalley.com‌

‌ WIN FALLS • T A group has formed calling for the College of Southern Idaho to shut down its Refugee Center program.‌ The Committee to End the CSI Refugee Center — which has 101 members in a closed Facebook group — is led by Buhl resident Rick Martin, a conservative activist.

“Our main goal is to bring about an informed electorate through programs of education and

action,” he told the TimesNews Monday.

It follows months of controversy since an April announcement that 300 refugees — possibly, from Syria — could be resettled here over the next year.

Some community members have speculated about an influx of radical Muslims.

The Refugee Center has resettled about 5,000 people since the early 1980s.

During May and June CSI board meetings, Martin asked for a future agenda item to consider phasing out the Refugee Center program

I‌ f You Do One Thing: Rupert’s Fourth of July celebration includes entertainment at 6 p.m. at the Rupert Square and fireworks at 10 p.m. Free.

within six months, saying it’s a burden for taxpayers and a public affairs issue for CSI. “This program is giving the college a bad rap,” he said. “Let someone else take it over.”

CSI’s board of trustees have been gracious in allowing for public comments, but haven’t answered many questions, Martin said.

Martin’s group submitted a public information request earlier this month to obtain a document about the Refugee Center program. It’s called the R&P

High

99° 67°Low

Mostly Sunny. B3

Abstract, which is prepared for the federal government each year.

College officials issued a response Friday saying the document is exempt from disclosure, CSI spokesman Doug Maughan said.

The document constitutes trade secrets, according to the written response, which cites Idaho Code 9-340D(1).

That section covers information that “derives independent economic value” not readily accessible Please see CENTER, A4

Comics A7 Markets A2

TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Hawng Lum Tangbau, ESL instructor for the CSI Refugee Center, teaches students in May to communicate effectively.

Crossword B9 Dear Abby B7

Jumble B10 Obituaries A5

Opinion A8 Sudoku B7

A4 • Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Idaho Aquifer Decline could Hinder Radioactive Monitoring KEITH RIDLER Associated Press‌

‌ OISE • A continued drop B in underground water levels could make it more difficult to monitor the movement of radioactive contamination in an aquifer below an eastern Idaho nuclear facility, scientists say.‌ Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey in a 36-page report released Monday said the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer level has dropped below two wells and about a dozen others are in danger due to ongoing drought.

“We’re starting to have some concern that some of them could go dry,” said Geological Survey scientist Roy Bartholomay.

Practices in past decades at the 890-square-mile U.S. Department of Energy facility that opened in 1949 and is now called the Idaho National Laboratory included pumping radioactive waste underground.

Workers in the Cold War era also put radioactive waste in ponds that seeped into the ground.

The Department of Energy in an emailed response to inquiries by The Associated Press said the agency in 1972 discontinued pumping radioactive waste underground from the Test Area North and Test Reactor Area, and in 1984 at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center. The agency said it has also discontinued putting

radioactive waste in ponds.

The agency said it completed publicly-reviewed evaluations and, with the agreement of the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, had taken appropriate actions to protect human health and the environment.

“These published evaluations determined that no active treatment is required to remove radioactive contamination from the aquifer,” the agency said in the email sent by spokesman Tim Jackson to the AP. “Natural attenuation and institutional controls were determined to be protective for the radionuclides in the aquifer.”

The U.S. Geological Survey monitors 177 wells, most

within the boundaries of the federal site but some on the down-gradient side. Water in the aquifer flows from the northeast to the southwest.

The down-gradient wells can tell scientists “when and where the contamination plume starts to move off the INL and into another part of the aquifer,” said Geological Survey spokesman Tim Merrick.

Bartholomay said scientists track tritium, strontium-90, cesium-137, plutonium-238 and other radioactive elements. A study that looked at well monitoring information from 1981 to 2012 found that tritium and strontium-90 were decreasing or showing no trends.

Bartholomay said

radioactivity appears to be staying in some places and overall the aquifer is improving. It’s also believed some of the radioactivity has traveled much deeper in the aquifer.

It takes from 50 to 700 years for water to travel through the aquifer and emerge in springs near Twin Falls. The Geological Survey monitored water in the area until budget cuts in the 2000s, Bartholomay said, and never observed any radioactivity above normal background levels.

He said any radioactivity emanating from the INL would be too diluted to be of

danger by the time it reached the Twin Falls area.

The aquifer, the report notes, has dropped some 20 feet in northern portions.

One well in about the center of the aquifer and that Bartholomay said offers an overall picture of the aquifer hit an all-time low in October at 594 feet below the surface. That’s down about 12 feet in 20 years.

“We have natural cycles of wet and dry periods,” he said. “Unfortunately, in the last 14 years we haven’t really seen that wet period again.”

And in the last three years there’s been drought.

Solutions to All Your Landscape Needs

Open Continued from A1

Patti Stumpf, who lives in Twin Falls, said she likes having Bed Bath & Beyond closer to home.

“I shopped at them a lot in Boise,” Stumpf said.

“Dick’s hits a specific market that was not here before, women’s golf and soccer. I think we have enough restaurants.”

Other Canyon Park West stores are planning to open later this summer and fall.

Project administrator Tina Luper said in an email Monday that Petco is set to open July 27.

Noodles & Company is tentatively set to open in October. Noodles & Company is a fast-casual restaurant headquartered in Broomfield, Colo., that offers international and American noodle dishes, as well as soups, salads, pasta and sandwiches.

Center Continued from A1

by other people and information that’s “subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.”

T h e “ t ra d e se c re t” exemption is ludicrous, Martin said.

His group is planning four meetings for July. And they plan to go door-todoor in neighborhoods.

The committee isn’t opposed to refugees, Martin said. “They’re human beings and we need to treat them with respect and dignity.”

He said he encourages everyone to get to know refugees, such as inviting them over to a barbecue.

But with CSI’s Refugee Center, “things are going on that the public needs to know about,” Martin said.

The CSI board is proud and fully supportive of the Refugee Center, trustee Bob Keegan told a crowd during a June meeting.

Board chairman Karl Kleinkopf told the

The restaurant will feature free wireless Internet and a phone app to place orders online.

Erin Murphy, senior manager of communications for Noodles & Company, said the company plans to hold a grand opening and a hiring fair. The company usually hires between 25 to 35 employees including manager, general manager and the manager team. She encouraged interested people to go to noodles.com/ jobs.

“We typically don’t begin that process until we are closer to the opening date,” Murphy said.

Murphy said the restaurant offers noodle and pasta dishes from around the world.

“Everything from indulgent to healthy from spicy to Wisconsin Mac & Cheese,” she said.

Other stores at Canyon Park West that will open soon are Petco, Ross Dress

for Less, Mattress Firm, Men’s Wearhouse and makeup store Ulta. A pad site west of the Twin Falls Visitor Center was being targeted as a restaurant in April.

Signs for Petco and Ulta hang over building entrances, but construction was still going on inside Ulta Monday. Construction appears finished inside Petco, but shelving and merchandise has not been added yet.

A spokeswoman for Ulta told the Times-News in April that the company is tentatively set to open its Twin Falls store July 17. Phone calls to Ulta and other company headquarters to confirm dates were not returned Monday.

Ulta, Mattress Firm and Petco filed building permit applications Sept. 30 with the Planning and Zoning Department. Ulta has its sights on a 10,000-squarefoot store with a valuation of $528,100. The

Times-News on Monday he doesn’t anticipate pursuing a future agenda item about the Refugee Center, but won’t rule it out.

The board spent about 30 minutes hearing a presentation about the center in April, he said, and there weren’t any public comments.

Board members have done their due diligence by putting an item on the April agenda, Kleinkopf said. “I think that’s where we’re going to leave it for a while.”

The board has other important topics to consider, he added.

But it’s important to allow community members to continue to voice opinions, Kleinkopf said.

“We get a lot of comments both ways.”

Martin has been in the political spotlight before and was linked with several cases of fictitious sample ballots. In 2012, Martin distributed altered sample ballots. His name was listed, but not his opponent — incumbent Terry Kramer for Republican Castleford Precinct Committeeman.

In March, he distributed a flier — which was labeled as a sample ballot — saying that voting “yes” for a Buhl school bond would harm the poor and elderly.

And in May, he passed out a similar flier shortly before an election urging voters to oppose a proposed Buhl recreation district.

In recent months, other community groups have cropped up related to CSI’s Refugee Center.

Twin Falls accountant Deborah Silver formed a group to support CSI’s Refugee Center. Members plan to volunteer for the center, and educate the community about refugees and the resettlement process.

Brockman Family Chiropractic

Dr. Marjorie A. Brockman R.N., B.S.N., D.C.

“A Positive Approach To Wellness” 445 Idaho St., Gooding • 934-5000

Chicago-based retailer of salon products and services has a Pocatello store. Mattress Firm’s application calls for 4,030 square feet valued at $375,000. It is a bedding specialty retailer and will be next to Idaho Central Credit Union.

Petco’s application calls for a 12,234-square-foot store worth an estimated $646,000. Petco sells pet products and services.

The 180,000-square-foot Canyon Park West project is approximately 70 to 75 percent leased.

Weekly Tree and Shrub Specials!

to !

Up off 2 1/

T rees , s hrubs , P erennials , a nnuals , s od , r ock , b ark , s TaTuary , F ounTains & h ome d écor

21150 Hwy 30, Filer, Idaho • (208) 326-2100 East of Twin Falls County Fair Grounds

Hours: Mon. - Fri. 8 aM to 6 pM • sat. 9 aM to 5 pM • sun. 10 aM to 5 pM

TIMED ONLINE AUCTION Starts closing on July 9th @ 6:30 PM Public Previews: Sat., June 26, 10-2, Mon., July 6, 10-2

Semi Tractors, Western Elite Hay Trains, Equipment Trailers, Telehandlers, Forklift, Tractors, Loader Backhoe, Farm Implements, Duramax Diesel Pickup, Fifth Wheel Travel Trailer, Snowmobiles & Trailer, Four Wheelers, Shop Equipment & Tools

POTTER FARMS, LLC Mark Potter, Owner (208) 731-6668 2354 S 1400 E, Gooding, Idaho

For bidding details, pictures & terms go to:

Randy Musser, Auction Manager (208) 733-8700

ATTENTION

ALL CPAP USERS your lifestyle.

Introducing our new lightweight Pico nasaltypes! mask Over 40 different varieties of mask and state of the art Airsense 10 CPAP machines

We are proud to be your

locally-owned CPAP supplier!

526 Shoup Ave W Suite B • Twin Falls, Idaho

Phone: 208-735-2252 • Fax: 208-735-3917

The draft Idaho Transportation Investment Program (ITIP) lists proposed projects for the next five years, and includes programmed improvements to highways, bicycle routes, pedestrian projects, safety projects, bridges and public transportation. The draft ITIP can be viewed at: www.itd.idaho.gov/itip/draft.htm.

The Idaho Transportation Department has created a new, interactive map that allows residents to learn about projects that are planned in their areas. To view the map and learn about specific projects, please visit: www.itd.idaho.gov/itip/draft.htm, and click on the graphic of the Idaho map.

Comments are being taken from July 1 through July 30. They can be e-mailed to: comments@itd.idaho.gov. They also can be mailed to: ITD – ITIP Comment, Attn: Adam Rush, P.O. Box 7129, Boise, ID 83707-1129 For CDs and paper copies, call Adam Rush at (208) 334-8119 or e-mail comments@itd.idaho.gov.