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In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories of the weekend:
One of the most influential voices weighing in on the nation’s largest proposed oil-by-rail terminal recommended rejecting the Vancouver project.
“Protecting the environment and public safety are top priorities of my office, and we considered the evidence presented with the care those priorities demands,” Washington’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement on Thursday. “The bottom line is that the potential benefits of this project are dramatically outweighed by the potential risks and costs of a spill.”
The decision from the attorney general’s office to oppose the Vancouver Energy project could send a strong message to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the ultimate say over the project’s future.
Read more about the state attorney general’s stance oil terminals.
Julie Hannon, director of Vancouver’s park department, has an idea of how to improve the city’s parks without costing taxpayers a dime: Stop the vandalism.
On a recent afternoon, Hannon pointed to trouble spots at Marine Park on the Columbia River.
She was barely out of her car before she spotted black circles from hot-rodders all over the parking lot. She took a couple of more steps and noted an empty wine bottle in the brush and crumpled trash on the ground. Hannon walked down to the beach and look frustrated when she noticed remnants of a wooden dresser that appeared to have helped someone start an illegal fire on the beach.
“Who brings a dresser down to the beach to burn it?” Hannon said.
Learn more about the damage done to area parks.
Almost as soon as they purchased about 350 acres of timberland in Skamania County in 2012, Ted and Mary Salka made moves to sell most of it off.
The couple found a buyer in the U.S. Forest Service, but the sale became symbolic of the fiscally struggling Skamania County’s frustrations with the federal agency’s overwhelming presence in the county. Soon, county officials and Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler worked hard to stop it.
Read more about the land deal.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and it turns out it tastes pretty good, too.
“It’s great to be back here,” said WareHouse ’23 owner Mark Matthias.
The new restaurant quietly opened last week after Matthias’ team renovated the restaurant and banquet space at the former Red Lion Hotel at the Quay, breathing life into an iconic piece of Vancouver’s past and future: the downtown waterfront.
“It’s been a good start,” said Matthias, who also owns Beaches restaurant about a mile upstream
Learn more about the new restaurant on the waterfront.
There are dozens of places to look for homes online, and plenty of other places to look for information about those homes. One local app developer decided to put all that data under one shiny new roof.
“Consumers find their homes online today, that’s old news,” said Gary Schultz, founder of the web-based platform Zeppidy. “Then the question is, can I get all the information I need to make a decision about whether I want to live in an area?”
Schultz, based in Lake Oswego, Ore., started Zeppidy to streamline home buying and selling (and, as a business, make some money doing so). Now in its beta version, Zeppidy is available for Oregon and Southwest Washington before it rolls out to a national audience, likely this fall.
Read more about the new web-based platform.
You can learn about growing, preserving and eating nutritious food in the gardens and classrooms of the 78th Street Heritage Farm.
Soon, an area for cars will offer other environmentally related lessons. Work is underway on a new parking lot at the historic property at 1919 N.E. 78th St.
“It will help a lot,” said Doug Stienbarger, director of the Washington State University Clark County Extension, which is headquartered there. “For big events, (people) were parking in the grass.”
Learn more about the new types of paving materials.
