DIGGING OUT AGAIN
THE GAMES BEGIN
Storm leaves many without power, A7
Qualifying starts in Sochi, B3
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2014
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State cancels timber sales
H -OK Saving for a lack of rainy days pays off
Decision is part of an agreement to protect the marbled murrelet ■
BY CHELSEA DAVIS The World
BY TIM NOVOTNY The World
COQUILLE — Christopher Michael Gannon sat somberly scribbling notes to his defense attorney as the 16-year-old victim waded through page after page of printed Facebook posts from 2012. The posts, presented as evidence on day one of the trial Tuesday afternoon, were the centerpiece of the prosecution’s case against Gannon for felony sex abuse and online sexual corruption of a child. On Wednesday, he was found guilty of both charges. Gannon, 32, of Myrtle Point was arrested in September 2012, following a two month investigation into his relationship with the then 14-year-old. The trial was originally scheduled for November 2013, but had to be rescheduled when the defendant failed to show up as ordered. After opening statements Tuesday morning, Deputy District Attorney Sarah Lundstedt called the teenage girl, who The World is not naming in order to protect her
INSIDE
SEE GUILTY | A8
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BY TIM NOVOTNY The World
“It would have to not rain
COOS BAY — As California deals with a drought year of historic proportions, the Coos Bay-North Bend Water Board says its customers are in good shape. So far. “It’s certainly at the stage of the game where we are looking at it,” said water board general manager Rob Schab. “The intensity is starting to build a little bit.” The reason it is starting to build is that our own rainfall levels have been well below normal since the start of the rain year. Schab says that while the 2013 calendar year was very good, thanks in part to more than 18 inches of rain last March, the rain year is down. Since the start of the rain year Oct. 1, the area has just received about one-third the amount of rain that it usually gets. “We’re certainly looking at things, planning (what) we’ll implement, if need be,” he said. “Right now we don’t see we would have a problem making it to next rain season next fall, but there is never any guarantee. We don’t know how much precipitation we’ll get this spring and we have to plan accordingly.” Schab says the main reason we are not in worse shape right now is that the community and the water board planned ahead, decades ago. In 1993, he says, the planning began to expand the storage capacity. Thanks to an investment of more than $20 million from the
again until the fall before we would get nervous.”
set of fail-safe options. Current municipal consumer demand is using just under 3 million gallons of water per day. The average daily consumption is 4 million gallons, with a peak of 6 million to 7 million gallons per day in the summer. Even if it is only at half-full, that means 1 billion gallons still sits in Upper Pony Creek. So, there is good reason for Schab not to be too concerned at this point. Still, he says, he will feel better with more rain in the forecast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases its next three-month weather outlook Feb. 20, and water boards around the state will be paying close attention. “It’s a milestone at this point. We’ll definitely be looking to see what happens over the next two weeks, in terms of real precipitation, but we’ll be looking real closely at the Feb. 20 prediction,” Schab said. “If it falls on the side of below normal precipitation than we’ll definitely be ramping up our options.” So, how much rain should consumers be rooting for? It’s not that simple. “There are a lot of variables,” he says, “including our mitigation flows, including demand from our customers, precipitation, if we get a lot of sunny days and wind, (creating) evaporation issues.” That being said, he added, any potential reason for panic is still a long ways off. “It would have to not rain again until the fall before we would get nervous.”
Rob Schab CB-NB Water Board general manager
community, the capacity of the Upper Pony Creek Reservoir was tripled and now can hold 2 billion gallons of water. “Since the water supply expansion project was completed in 2001, we haven’t experienced the significant situations where we’ve had to curtail water use or ask for water use reduction,” Schab said Tuesday morning, as he surveyed the current level of the reservoir. “We were experiencing those about every 10 years, with some sort mild events in between there. But (we saw) significantly low rainfall and low amount of water available for the community about every 10 years. The last one was in 2001.” There is also some redundancy built into the system that helps out. If the Upper Pony Creek gets too low, which also includes the nearby Lake Merritt, they can turn to the Joe Ney Reservoir and ultimately the Dunes Aquifer before they ever have to go to the next
Floating windfarm off CB approved THE WORLD
The Associated Press
Oregon Gov.John Kitzhaber, left, announces plans Wednesday to develop the West Coast’s first offshore wind energy farm, as U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, center, and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Tommy Beaudreau look on in Portland.
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James Bastow, Coos Bay Larry GeDeros, Coquille Jayden Wright, Coos Bay Joseph Smith, Coos Bay
The federal government has given a green light for the West Coast’s first offshore wind energy project to move to the next step, off the coast of Coos Bay. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Tommy Beaudreau, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, announced Wednesday that Principle Power Inc. has received the go-ahead to craft plans for a 30-gigawatt pilot project that uses floating wind turbine technology. The Seattle-based company is proposing to site five floating “WindFloat” units within a 15square-mile area some 20 miles offshore in about 1,400 feet of water. Each unit will carry a 6megawatt offshore wind turbine. Electrical cables connect the units,
Fixes for failures Oregon Legislature begins looking at bills that would minimize damage from the slow rollout of Cover Oregon.
Obituaries | A5
Page A5
FORECAST
MP man is guilty on sex charges
Bay Area’s water supply still in good shape
STATE
SEE MURRELET | A8
By Alysha Beck, The World
Rob Schab, general manager of the Coos Bay-North Bend Water Board, gazes across the Upper Pony Creek Reservoir, which is at a lower-than-average level for February. Schab said it has been a dry water year since October and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts drought conditions will continue for the next three months.
DEATHS
COOS BAY — A legal battle is nearly over with the proposed cancellation of timber sales in Elliott, Clatsop and Tillamook state forests that environmentalists say harm an endangered seabird. The Oregon Department of Forestry agreed to cancel 28 timber sales on the three state forests, according to a settlement filed Wednesday. Three conservation organizations — the Audubon Society of Portland, Cascadia Wildlands and the Center for Biological Diversity — launched a lawsuit against the state in May 2012, arguing that logging in the three forests caused “take” of the marbled murrelet, in turn violating the Endangered Species Act. The murrelet, which nests on wide limbs of older trees up to 40 miles inland, landed on the list in 1992. The settlement also proposes a “more robust murrelet guidance policy that dictates what (the state) has to do when it discovers murrelets in proposed timber
and a single cable would bring the power onshore. The next step for the company is to submit a full plan for the area to Bureau of Energy Management. The bureau then completes a National Environmental Policy Act analysis, which includes opportunities for public comment, before granting final approval. If final approval is granted, it would be the first offshore wind project proposed in federal waters off the West Coast and the first in the nation to use floating structures to support wind generation in the Outer Continental Shelf. “This determination represents another milestone and more progress for WindFloat Pacific,” said Kevin Banister, vice president of business development and SEE WINDFARM | A2
Rain 43/34 Weather | A8
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