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You can’t dodge disasters, but AVERT will help avoid fatalities BY TIM NOVOTNY The World
By Lou Sennick, The World
A couple digs for clams in Charleston on Friday afternoon with an abandoned fishing vessel in the background.
Clammers ask state to refer Port to EPA BY THOMAS MORIARTY The World
COOS BAY — A statewide sportsmen’s group is asking the state of Oregon to sanction the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay for failing to cleanup the Charleston Boat Yard. At the heart of the Clam Diggers Association of Oregon's complaint against the port is its allegation that the publicly-chartered corporation failed to regularly test marine sediment for contaminants as required by a 1998 agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency. The agreement, requested by Gov. John Kitzhaber to defer listing of the shipyard as a federal Superfund site, requires the state agency to supervise the port’s cleanup efforts. Before the port purchased the shipyard in 1986, a portion of it had been used for scrap metal storage as well as ship building. Over the years, toxic chemicals associated with the latter process, including the now-banned tributyltin (or “TBT”) had accumulated in the sloughs near the shipyard. To remedy the damage, the port
capped contaminated upland portions of the site with asphalt and implemented a set of best management practices for the shipyard’s users. It also studied the potential impacts of dredging on sediment dispersal. But the clam-digging association says the port failed to meet one of the basic requirements of its cleanup orders. The EPA’s 2001 record of decision on the boat yard requires the port to “perform long-term monitoring of inter-tidal and subtidal sediments for the purposes of confirming the effectiveness of the remedy.” The agency stipulated that sampling be conducted annually for the first five years after the cleanup, and then at five-year intervals beyond that. According to emails obtained by association Director Chuck Erickson under a public records request and provided to The World, that never happened. A series of 2013 emails between the port’s chief operating officer, Kathy Wall, and a scientist for Geosyntec — which was hired to handle the port’s sample reporting to DEQ — confirms that neither the annual or the five-year interval sampling ever happened.
According to a timeline provided by Communications Manager Elise Hamner, the port did conduct sampling in September 2013 under authorization from the Department of State Lands and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after an outside consultant told administrators it hadn’t completed the work required for a letter of decision. In a letter sent Wednesday to Keith Andersen, Western Region administrator for the Department of Environmental Quality, Erickson asked the agency to notify the EPA of the port’s noncompliance. Speaking by phone Friday, Erickson said his organization is so concerned about the lack of testing that its members have thought about posting warning signage around the cleanup site. “But we shouldn’t have to pay for that out our own pockets,” he said. That, Erickson said, is the port’s responsibility. In addition to demanding the agency mark the area as a hazardous cleanup site, the letter also asks DEQ to force the port to conduct annual
ALLEGANY — A lot has changed over the last 10 years, particularly when it comes to disaster preparedness on the South Coast. People have, slowly, started to allow themselves to discuss the need to be ready for a natural disaster, even if they haven’t come to fully embrace the topic. “You know, disaster preparedness is a hard sell. Most people are so wrapped up in just the daily getting through; so few people really want to look beyond,” Fran Worthen, a resident of Allegany, said recently as she was discussing their community’s third annual Time to Prepare Fair. The fair, which is actually open to everyone in Coos County, will help get the preparedness ball rolling for some, while keeping it rolling for others. Worthen, who is also the communications coordinator for the Allegany Volunteer Emergency Response Team, called AVERT, said the event is a reminder of the amazing creation built by a couple of life-long residents, Jerry and June Kroeger. “I think it’s really amazing what the Kroeger’s have been able to do to get so many in a community going in the same direction,” Worthen added. The Kroeger’s are equally amazed. AVERT grew from a light bulb moment in a car, into an organization that has involved about one-third of the residents in their rural community located east of Coos Bay. June Kroeger said the idea started on a drive back from visiting family in Bandon after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. “I was driving home one night (seven years ago) and the thought came to my mind, ‘What’s to say something like that, Katrina, would never happen here?’” As more information about that disaster came to light, one fact from the American Red Cross struck Jerry like a thunderbolt: “If people were educated and trained to take care of themselves, 50 percent of the people who lost their lives in Katrina would have made it; would have survived.” From that point, the couple decided they needed to step-up efforts to get their community prepared to handle any disaster common to rural communities: flood, windstorm, landslides, wildfire and earthquakes. They received training through the local CERT training program, brought first aid/CPR classes to the community center, worked with Red Cross and Coos County Emergency Management to bring resources into Allegany and distribute the information to residents. Then they went to work enlisting volunteers to help in the effort. Worthen said the Millicoma River Park and Recreation District board of directors has been supportive from the start, helping to get grants for GMRS radios, shelter supplies and a satellite phone on loan from Coos County. “Very few of the county disaster plans reach out into the rural areas. They are focused in the urban areas where there’s the most people and where they can get services to people, but the rural areas already know that we’ll be isolated and we’ll have to help ourselves,” Worthen said. One of the things that the Kroeger’s understood, early
SEE EPA | A10
SEE AVERT | A10
Best picture is an Can you walk like an Egyptian? Oscars horse race
INSIDE
LOS ANGELES — Many of the winners who will take home an Oscar on Sunday have long been forecast, their triumph made seemingly self-evident after months of anticipation. That is, except for one little category: best picture. Even in a particularly lengthy awards season (the Academy Awards were pushed back slightly for the Olympics), and despite the tireless analysis of an everswelling Oscar blogosphere, no one really knows which film is going to
Police reports . . . . A2 What’s Up . . . . . . . Go! South Coast. . . . . . A3 Opinion. . . . . . . . . . A4
take the night’s biggest award. This Oscars, more than any in years, will go down to the wire. Of the nine best picture nominees, the front-runners are widely considered to be Alfonso Cuaron’s 3-D spectacle “Gravity,” Steve McQueen’s historical odyssey “12 Years a Slave” and David O. Russell’s corruption comedy “American Hustle.” The industry guild awards, usually the most predictive honors, have only muddied the waters. Actors, the largest branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures, have
By Lou Sennick, The World
A crew with the city of Coos Bay takes down the temporary plywood facade in front of the Egyptian Theatre on Thursday afternoon. The plywood was put up a couple months ago so contractors could put in a new tile sidwalk in front of the theater. Saturday at noon, the fencing will be pulled back and the tarp covering the tile work for the public to get its first look.
SEE OSCARS | A10
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DEATHS
BY JAKE COYLE The Associated Press
Estella Smith, Coos Bay Wilma Smith, Coos Bay J. Robert Foster, Winchester Bay Ronaldo Baker, Coquille Diane Harrel, North Bend
David Coleman, Coos Bay Lois Tendell, Coos Bay Willis Williamson II Carol Baker, North Bend Mary Bouffard, Coos Bay
Colleen Fizpatrick, Coos Bay Nancy Triplett, North Bend Gary Johnson Sr., Coquille
Obituaries | A6-7