A new study commissioned by the Port of Vancouver has found a very low likelihood of a train derailment on tracks that run alongside a waterfront redevelopment project whose leader says will largely be ruined if an oil-by-rail transfer terminal is built at the port.
A port spokeswoman said Friday the study — which focuses on a key 3,000-foot-long segment of the port’s rail corridor that begins just west of Columbia Street — reflects the port’s longstanding commitment to safety in handling a variety of cargo. But it also benefits the “community conversation” about the proposal by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies to handle oil at the port, said Theresa Wagner, the port’s communications manager.
“We’re part of this community,” she said. “We want this to be as safe as possible.”
The port paid just under $20,000 to global firm TUVRheinland to study the 3,000-foot-long rail segment, part of which runs parallel to BNSF tracks. The segment leads to a new entrance the port is building to move cargo by train more efficiently, all of which is part of the port’s larger ongoing $275 million West Vancouver Freight Access project to improve its rail network.
Based on the current design of the port’s 3,000-foot-long rail segment and the train speed involved — which is no more than 10 miles per hour — Wagner said, TUVRheinland found the segment poses a “very low likelihood” of derailment. What’s more, she said, the port is going above and beyond the study’s recommendations. The port will build another safeguard that runs along the entire 3,000-foot-long segment: a second set of tracks that will catch a train if it comes off the primary line. “We believe that by making the additional safety enhancements, the current very low likelihood of a train derailment on our rail system becomes even more remote,” Wagner said in an email to The Columbian. “Again, we engineered our rail project to be very safe, and now we’re looking to over-engineer it to be even safer.”
During the 2012-13 school year, 887 youths ages 12-18 were held in detention at the Clark County Juvenile Justice Center, said Kathleen Sande, institution education program supervisor for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia. That’s a 48 percent increase over the previous school year’s 598. Most stay only 48 to 72 hours.
“All kids who come into a detention center are not charged with a crime and most or many are simply waiting to see a judge or awaiting their trial, hence the term ‘detention,'” said Sande.
“It’s not that they’re bad kids. They’ve made poor decisions,” said Pat Escamilla, Clark County Juvenile Court administrator.
Clark County’s Juvenile Court system has received national recognition for its restorative justice approach championed by Escamilla and his predecessor, Ernie Veach-White.
The county’s detention facility has three certified teachers with Educational Service District 112 who provide daily education Monday through Friday, said Escamilla.
The locked area is divided into three pods for boys and one pod for girls. Each pod has 12 single-occupancy cells, plus a classroom and a common room. Only two pods for male offenders are in use, because Clark County’s Juvenile Justice Center is focusing on restorative justice, which means many lower-level offenders do restorative community service and make restitution to their victims rather than being incarcerated, said Kevin Johnson, who works for ESD 112 and oversees the educational programs at the juvenile justice center.
Until you’re well into your 20s — and especially in your early- to midteen years, somewhere between 12 and 15 — that brain of yours remains a bustling construction, demolition and reconstruction site. Cells and connecting synapses are being grown, used and strengthened — or not used, pruned and replaced. Totally occupied by vast volumes of incoming information and sensation, and practicing up on bodily functions and feelings, the young brain’s necessary skill at mature decision-making and top-down control develops much later — last, in fact. Meanwhile a region called the amygdala — the seat of fear, emotional reactions and fight-or-flight instincts — is fully functioning from day one.
For parents of not-so-young children, knowing all that can help ease a life passage that’s fraught with conflict, risk, rapid changes, high emotion and little logic.
“The developmental phase and the dependency on parents goes well into the early 20s,” said Jane Lanigan, an associate professor of human development at Washington State University Vancouver. “Early childhood is critical, but I’m concerned about … the message that nothing matters from age 3 on. The research does not support that.
“It’s a time of intense change,” she said. “They can go in all different directions. It can be very inconsistent.” Parents who respond with both understanding and consistency “are going to see better outcomes,” she said.
Papa Murphy’s International has long maintained a low-key local presence as it expanded its network of franchised pizza outlets across the nation, while quietly increasing its workforce to 183 employees at its modest headquarters near Westfield Vancouver mall.
But the seller of take-and-bake pizzas shed more light on its ambitions this month with its bid to become one of the few Vancouver-based companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, controlled by a New York investment firm, filed papers to the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $70 million through an initial public stock offering, or IPO, on the Nasdaq Exchange.
Beyond that, Papa Murphy’s hopes to secure the resources to expand its reach well beyond its present 1,400 outlets into new national and international markets. The company sees potential for up to 4,500 outlets selling its products targeted at busy families who want healthy, inexpensive meals. It expects this year to grow by between 105 and 115 stores.
But Papa Murphy’s bid for growth in a hyper-competitive industry faces hurdles. Its filing reveals the company has lost money the past three years even as it added outlets and saw same-store sales increases in each of those years. And while Papa Murphy’s is ranked in fifth place in both sales and number of outlets among pizza chains, its net losses — including a $2.6 million loss in 2013 — as well as a lack of national recognition and current unsettled relations with some franchisees are among the company’s challenges.
Bill Savage stopped in his tracks Saturday morning outside Vancouver’s Water Resources Education Center when the 42-pound plastic water jug he was wheeling to his car listed and fell to the ground.
It was too heavy to carry by hand without risking a back injury, he said. But for a couple of women he knows in a rural African village, not a day goes by without several mileslong treks from their mud huts to the local water hole and back carrying a bucket of water just that heavy atop their heads.
Savage, who wrestled the five-gallon jug back onto a small cart, brought the container to the center for this year’s Walk for Water, an event designed to draw attention to the constant struggles people in less-privileged areas of the world endure just to get drinking water.
The center hosted the walk in honor of World Water Day, a designation the United Nations made in 1993 to draw attention to critical water problems throughout the world every year on March 22.
This year, about 50 parents and children showed up for a short stroll down to the Columbia River, where they filled plastic containers with water to carry back to the center. They had the option of going a mile to the water and back, or taking a 3.1-mile route instead.
Most chose the shorter route, and not all the kids carried water. Many walked back up from the river with only a small bottle or partially filled plastic gallon jugs, but the message still appeared to leave an impact, Savage said.
“They’re going to be a little different for having come to this walk,” he said.
In January, County Commissioner David Madore told Columbian Editor Lou Brancaccio that he believed it would take five years to have an East County Bridge built and open across the Columbia River. We’re waiting.
