A local labor group on Friday passed a resolution expressing gratitude to hundreds of individuals and organizations that worked on the defunct Columbia River Crossing project.
The Labor Round Table of Southwest Washington approved a lengthy document outlining a chronology of the proposed Interstate 5 Bridge replacement and conveying “deep appreciation to the many people who contributed their time and effort to the CRC project.”
Clark County Commissioner Ed Barnes, the labor group’s chair and one of the resolution’s authors, said it was drafted at least partly in response to a steady stream of criticism against the CRC both before and since its demise.
“Nobody’s thanking the people that spent the last 15 years working on this thing,” Barnes said.
After repeated delays, setbacks and missteps, the CRC completely shut down earlier this year without any funding or enough political support in the Washington and Oregon legislatures. The project’s implosion ended years of controversy and political wrangling in Clark County and beyond. The CRC spent some $200 million without turning a shovel.
The resolution passed Friday detailed the effort’s history as far back as 1996, when business and transportation leaders from Washington and Oregon met to discuss the I-5 corridor. The first committees were established in 1999, and the CRC project office formed in 2005.
Attached to the resolution is a 14-page list of players past and present who were involved in the CRC at some point.
A mixed-use development at Southeast 192nd Avenue just north of Highway 14 appears to illustrate another problem for Clark County Commissioner David Madore’s east county bridge proposal.
As with the other reasons why his plans aren’t likely to pencil out, however, Madore insisted it won’t be a problem.
An application for the 84-acre development, called Riverview Gateway, was submitted to the city of Vancouver on Aug. 6.
Consultant Don Hanson of Otak Inc., who submitted the application on behalf of the owner, Weston Investment Co. of Portland, said this week that if the Washington Department of Transportation thought it would be a good idea to build a bridge across the Columbia River at 192nd Avenue, the state wouldn’t have sold the property.
Ed Freeman, a Weston Investment partner charged with leading the Riverview Gateway project, said Tuesday that the company has spent seven years acquiring the necessary parcels from the state. WSDOT sold the former quarry to Weston in March 2006 for $17.6 million, then finalized a deal this year for a small additional piece of land north of the quarry for $1.5 million.
Freeman said he’d never heard of the idea for a bridge at 192nd Avenue until two weeks ago.
“We’re just going to proceed like it’s not happening,” Freeman said. “And I think that’s the correct assumption.”
While North Dakota and the Northwest are connected by oil trains, there’s a stark disconnect in the way Bakken crude is viewed in the two regions.
As North Dakota enjoys a historic windfall from the crude, critics say Vancouver will see relatively little gain but all of the risk that comes with its transport. A developer looking to create Vancouver’s first waterfront high-rise urban neighborhood says the proposed oil terminal is incompatible with his project, less than two miles away. In June, a majority of Vancouver’s city council voted to oppose the terminal and any project that increases the amount of Bakken crude transported through Clark County until there’s a “proven track record that demonstrates the safety of the methodology.”
An unsettling series of oil tanker accidents in North America, including one in Canada that cost dozens of lives last year, has unnerved some who live closest to the tracks and created political pressure nationally for improved safety measures. Oil stabilization and tanker car upgrades may provide some answers. But change hasn’t come fast enough to allay opponents’ fears.
Yet like it or not, oil trains may be here to stay. With or without the proposed terminal in Vancouver, market forces are poised to continue sending Bakken crude westward far into the future, industry players say. Emergency responders, meanwhile, are still learning when and where those trains pass from railroads sometimes reluctant to share information. Communities along the line hope to minimize the risks to their environment and safety.
“This thing’s going to be here for a long time, and I think a lot of people don’t realize that,” said Russell Atkins, production manager for Continental Resources’ Bakken operations. “Everybody’s used to that five- to six-year boom, and then we’re done.”
Lewis County Commissioner Lee Grose watched the jobs disappear and the mills go silent. He spent years discussing ways to bring them back.
And so, at a roundtable discussion hosted by U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dane Ashe, Grose told officials he was tired.
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The schools have closed, he said. The professionals, the dentists and doctors, have left town.
“I have a problem with sitting at a table again telling the agencies the impact this is having on our communities,” Grose told the packed room at the Stevenson Community Library on Friday.
“You know this stuff, you guys know this stuff, and yet we still have severe limitations on management of the forest. We still have minimal extraction of timber of forests that grow tons of timber every year. We still have fires that devastate, and that are far more harmful not only to the community but to the habitat out there.”
Skamania County Commissioner Bob Anderson said when he was a kid growing up in the region, two people from his community went to Portland to work. Now, he said, about 60 percent of the county’s workforce has to leave every morning in order to collect a paycheck. Young families are finding it harder to stay in the area, and more students are taking advantage of free-and-reduced lunch meals at school. About 80 percent of the county is covered by the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
“Let’s define this thing we’re calling healthy forests and then let’s walk in that direction,” Ashe said.
DALLESPORT — From her perch high atop a basalt cliff, Tsagaglalal watches over the Columbia River with large, round eyes. Her mouth forms a circle, as if she’s surprised.
Indeed, the Indian chief was surprised when Coyote told her change was coming. Women would no longer be allowed to be chief. Then, turning Tsagaglalal into a rock, Coyote placed her on the face of a basalt cliff for eternity, according to the legends of the Wishxam people, a band of the Yakama Nation.
Tsagaglalal, or She Who Watches, is among the most celebrated examples of aboriginal art in the Northwest, and even the nation. Measuring 3½ feet by 3 feet, her image has been recreated in many art forms, from jewelry to basketry to carved wood.
She Who Watches and about 150 other pieces of Native American art either painted on or carved into basalt can be viewed at the Horsethief Lake unit of Columbia Hills State Park about 100 miles east of Vancouver. She Who Watches is a combination of both pictograph (painted) and petroglyph (carved).
After vandals defaced some of the rock art in 1993, a locked gate protects the images. Now She Who Watches and the other rock art on the cliffs is visible only via guided tours. The tours are free, but are by reservation only and often fill up weeks in advance. The trail is not accessible to wheelchairs or strollers. Sturdy shoes are recommended, as is a hat and a bottle of water.
Lewis and Clark would have passed the rock art, but neither explorer mentioned it in their journals. They noted other petroglyphs along their journey, including those carved in a limestone cliff at the mouth of the Nemaha River near Troy, Kan.
Their omission of She Who Watches and the park’s other rock art might be because they didn’t see it, said Paula Christy, a volunteer who leads tours of the pictographs and petroglyphs.
Before the dams were built, the Columbia River was much narrower, and it hugged the Oregon shore, Christy said. When Lewis and Clark passed the basalt cliffs, the rock art likely was too far in the distance on the present-day Washington side of the river to be seen by the explorers, Christy surmised to a group on her Aug. 1 tour.
One person was killed and five others injured early Saturday in an alcohol-involved rollover crash on Interstate 205, according to the Washington State Patrol.
London D. Stoll, 18, of Vancouver was pronounced dead at the scene of the 3:05 a.m. crash at the exit from northbound I-205 to Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard, a WSP bulletin said.
Stoll was a passenger in a 1992 Subaru Legacy driven by Ryan J. McGuinness, 21, of Vancouver, the WSP said.
Police said McGuinness was driving north on I-205 and took the exit at freeway speed. The vehicle went off the roadway to the right, and McGuinness lost control of the vehicle while trying to get back on the roadway. The vehicle ended up on its top.
