The Morning Press: Oil terminal review, judge appointment, food trucks

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Here are some of the week’s top stories and news you may have missed:

Panel reviewing proposed oil terminal

Mark Leed took time off work to drive two hours from his Vancouver home for a meeting of the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, only to get lost on the way.

When Leed finally buzzed through the locked doors of a dull brown building three miles from the state capitol building, he’d missed the few minutes the council spent on the matter he drove all that way to hear: an update on the proposal by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies to build an oil-by-rail transfer terminal at the Port of Vancouver.

Leed would not have had an opportunity to speak to the council. Still, “I think it’s important for Southwest Washington residents to show they’re concerned about this facility,” said Leed, a vice chairman of the Loo-Wit Group of the Sierra Club.

Melnick, 58, of Hockinson will be the first Clark County resident to serve on the appellate court since October 2005, when Judge J. Dean Morgan retired.

“Judge Melnick’s distinguished career made him a standout choice for appointment to the Court of Appeals,” said Gov. Inslee in a statement Friday. “He has extensive experience as an appellate advocate, having appeared in our appellate courts in over 100 cases. He also has deep roots in Southwest Washington and will serve the community well.”

Melnick will succeed Division 2 appellate Judge Joel M. Penoyar of Pacific County, who is retiring Feb. 28. Melnick’s term begins March 10.

“I’m excited, I’m honored, I’m humbled,” Melnick said Friday in a phone interview.

Read the full story here.

Vehicular homicide witness allowed to live with suspect’s family

The live-in girlfriend of the man accused of killing two women in a crosswalk in a hit-and-run collision in Vancouver will be allowed to live with a couple related to his family.

Brandon Smith’s girlfriend, Kalista Andino, and Smith’s mother, Linda Smith, are accused of tampering with witnesses in the vehicular homicide case against him. A court order bars them from having any form of contact with each other or other witnesses in the case.

However, Clark County Superior Court Judge David Gregerson today allowed Andino to live with Terry and Maryanna Belland of Washougal, despite objections by Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Vu and a supervised release officer. The Bellands are the parents of Brandon Smith’s sister-in-law, Briana Peterson. Peterson is married to Smith’s half-brother, Craig Peterson, of Camas.

Late winter departures now underway: tundra swans, mew gulls, northern pintails, buffleheads, golden-crowned sparrows, rough-legged hawks, greater white-fronted geese and ring-necked ducks. Among others.

Incoming early spring arrivals: cinnamon teals, turkey vultures, Western tanagers, rufous hummingbirds, Pacific-slope flycatchers and black-headed grosbeaks. To name a few.

Year-round residents: pied-billed grebes, great blue herons, woodpeckers, Western meadowlarks, marsh wrens, red-breasted nuthatches, great horned owls, red-tailed hawks and bald eagles.

That’s just a smattering of the vibrant airborne society that either comes through or stays put in Clark County. As aerial crossroads go, this is an unusually busy spot because of the habitats and climates that converge here. The west side in particular offers a mild and rainy winter and many thousands of acres of linked grasslands and wetlands — from La Center Bottoms to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge to the Vancouver Lake lowlands.

Bickett isn’t alone. Heidi Batchelor and her husband Donny have operated food carts in Clark County for more than a decade. They’ve managed to make a living mostly at special events, but Batchelor recalls establishing a sidewalk burrito cart at Esther Short Park in 2002.

“We were the first ones to get a street-use permit (for a food cart),” she said. “We had no business whatsoever.” It took the couple about five years to become profitable with their Chewy’s Really Big Burritos food stand, which they set up at special events and, recently, at Clark College, she said. She sees limited potential for full-time food carts, and even worries that expansion of carts and trucks in Vancouver’s downtown could harm existing restaurants.

Certainly, a handful of mobile food entrepreneurs have entered into the fray in recent years. Newcomers have favored costly mobile food trucks over the more Portland-like food carts, which allow them to move and create what Steve Valenta, an owner of the Mighty Bowl food truck, calls “artificial pockets of density” in various locations in the downtown and uptown districts. And at Clark College, three carts are operating under a two-year contract during a reconstruction of the college’s culinary arts program kitchen. Downtown, the Weiner Wagon at East 12th and Main streets has survived for decades with a small, low-cost menu.

Read the full story here.