News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Those of us who look at the Grand Coulee Dam and think “how in the hell did they manage to build that?” will have the opportunity to have that question answered in detail by an engineering expert. Raymond “Paul” Giroux will be making a free presentation on “Building Grand Coulee Dam,” Saturday, Aug. 25, at 6:30 p.m. at the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center. The roughly hour-long presentation will highlight the construction of the primary structure, which was completed by the spring of 1942. Giroux spoke to The Star about what made the constru...
The Inchelium softball team won the Grand Coulee Summer Softball League's Kenny Hearne Summer Classic Tournament on Saturday. Inchelium had to beat the Electric City Bar & Grill team twice on Saturday in the championship after losing to them previously in the winner's bracket. Inchelium came back from behind to win the first game of the championship 13-12. They won the second game 12-9. "The [Electric City Bar & Grill] is a very good team and very tough to beat," said Inchelium's Galen...
Local skateboard enthusiast Ben Hughes has already received outreach from skateboarding companies after The Star published an article about his ambition to improve on the current skateboarding culture. “The article that was in the paper (‘Skateboarding scene could grow in the coulee’) is a testament to how the internet works,” Hughes, a commissioner of the Coulee Area Park and Recreation District, said at their Aug. 6 meeting. “I named Zumiez in the article, and someone at Zumiez forwarded it on to someone who forwarded it on, and they cont...
A free presentation on “Building Grand Coulee Dam,” by Raymond Paul Giroux, will discuss how the right conditions, people and engineering allowed it to happen at that time. The Aug. 25 program will be presented at 6:30 p.m. at the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center. “During the early twentieth century, the Bureau of Reclamation was charged with harnessing the water potential of the western United States,” an Aug. 13 bureau press release states. “Critical to this vision was taming the mighty Columbia River. With river flows more than 300,000 c...
Agencies that control most of the public lands in the region have issued restrictions on the use of fire. “Fire restrictions on lands administered by the Bureau of Reclamation have been modified to prohibit the building, maintaining, attending or using a fire of any type, including charcoal briquette fires,” a press release from the Bureau of Land Management states. The BLM has an agreement with the USBR to operate on their lands for fire management purposes. “An exemption is made for liquefied and bottled gas stoves and heaters, provi...
The Colville Confederated Tribes have proposed a release of salmon above Chief Joseph Dam and Grand Coulee Dam to return the once-native species to waters from which they’ve been absent since the construction of those giant barriers to their migration. The proposal is to release thousands of adult salmon and tens of thousands of juvenile salmon above the two dams in the Columbia River, as well as its tributaries. “There is a spiritual connection between salmon and Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest that is celebrated in many cer...
Turn your eyes to the sky on Aug. 13, when the Perseid meteor shower will illuminate the darkness, all the darker due to a new moon, as the National Park Service Sky Rangers give guided tours of the heavens on August 10-11. On Aug. 10, from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m., rangers will be at the Crescent Bay area, where the public is welcome to join and look at planets, constellations, and more through their telescope. “We have everything you need to look up, but you are welcome to bring your own telescopes, spotting scopes, or binoculars plus bug spray, a...
Four Lake Roosevelt wrestlers competed on Team Washington, which finished second at the U.S. Marine Corps Cadet and Junior Nationals wrestling tournament held in Fargo, North Dakota, July 12-20. Colton Jackson wrestled in the 106-pound weight class, David Crowe wrestled at 132, Kaleb Horn wrestled at 138, and Tony Nichols at 160. Horn and Nichols were both state champions this past year in their respective weight classes, wrestling for LR. "Competing in statewide freestyle and Greco Roman...
Volunteer firefighters in Grand Coulee responded quickly to local fires recently, stopping them before they could grow in size and do major damage. Firefighters responded to a fire right in Hometown Pizza's backyard on July 26, the second fire that week following a July 23 smoldering fire in a pile of manure. The Hometown Pizza fire was responded to by 14 firefighters, five fire engines, two law enforcement officers, and two Grant County PUD linemen who kept the grass and brush fire to approxima...
In the face of requests for power that total more than three times what they typically sell, Grant County PUD is considering raising electricity rates for "evolving industries" that suck up a lot of power, such as bitcoin mining operations. Atlas Blockchain Group Inc, formerly Atlas Cloud, is a Canada-based company that purchased the former Young's Welding building in Electric City to house such a facility, a decision made to take advantage of Grant County PUD's low electricity rates....
Local athlete Sean Garvin has been offered a full scholarship to play volleyball at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls, a junior college ranked third nationally in volleyball with a history of winning championships and sending athletes to play at the National Collegiate Athletics Association level. Garvin was a 12-year Lake Roosevelt student, the youngest of three children to 1992 LR graduates Shawn and Kasey Garvin. She was a four-year varsity letterman in volleyball, as well as captai...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District will have to figure out how to not go broke in four years. That was one of the darker notes presented at the district board meeting Monday night, where Business Manager Sally Ryan presented the proposed 2018-19 budget, as well as a projected budget for the next four years, which shows the district running out of money by the 2021-22 school year. The 2018-19 school year budget is $12,003,678, up from $11,250,133 last year. With a projected enrollment of 733.5 full time equivalent students (FTEs) in...
Three elementary-age girls walking down Central Drive in Coulee Dam were approached July 20 by a man who asked the girls to get in the truck with him. The girls stated that the man was persistent in his attempt to get them to get into the truck with him before he drove away. The girls described him as having short gray hair, dark red skin and driving a blue or gray pickup truck. Two dogs, one black and white and the other brown, were in the back of the truck, described as an older model Ford with poles sticking up out of it, the kind used when...
What do students think about the educational system? The system, most often run by older people who haven't been students themselves in decades, doesn't receive a lot of input from the student body, at least not in the Grand Coulee Dam School District. But students Ashlyn Olsen and Raven Clark made a presentation to the school board on Monday night. Olsen and Clark expressed their desire for change within the school dress code, making points such as the difficulty of shopping for items that fit...
The city council in Grand Coulee voted to go out to bid for the demolition of the "Vlachos building," on Spokane Way. The building, once belonging to inventor and mechanic Constantinos Vlachos, has been boarded up and abandoned for some time now. Thomas Geiger, an attorney who represents the Vlachos estate, had requested an extension to work out a deal selling the property. The city, tired of granting extensions, moved instead to seek bids to demolish the property that is in a decrepit...
Elmer City could be up to its knees in a messy problem if leaders don’t find a solution to their waste water treatment facility issue with Coulee Dam, which was discussed by the town council last week. A meeting between council members and mayors of the two towns is planned within the next weeks or so to casually discuss viewpoints on the issue in the hopes of coming to a solution. Coulee Dam is building a new wastewater treatment plant at a higher elevation than the previous facility. The increase in elevation will require new lift pumps to g...
A 385-acre wildfire burned on Washington Flats across the Columbia River from the Seaton's Grove area near Elmer City last week, and was handled by crews from the Department of Natural Resources and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as local firefighters. The fire, first reported at about 2 p.m. on July 11, had helicopters scooping water from the river to dump on the fire, as well as four single-engine air tankers and one air-attack aircraft. People watched the action from the parking...
A human-caused fire that burned 2,773 acres 45 miles southeast of Keller is 100 percent contained, a July 17 press release from the Colville Confederated Tribes Department of Natural Resources stated. The Rattlesnake Fire, which started on July 12, was within the Hellgate Game Reserve on the Colville Indian Reservation, and west of the Lincoln boat launch near Creston. Named after Rattlesnake Canyon, firefighters did have to watch out for the venomous snakes. A crew of about 100 people, down from 200, will remain with the fire to quell hot...
Snyder Hill residents raised a rousing ruckus at the July 10 Electric City council meeting on the agreement made with the city concerning their 2010 annexation to the city. During a public comment time slot on the council meeting agenda, complaints from citizens of Snyder Hill ranged from the city not treating the roads of the area to the failure of the city to plow snow to certain points of the roads, something understood by residents there to be conditions of the annexation. A solution for the snow plow issue is in the works as the city...
Rodney Cawston was named the new chairman of the Colville Business Council July 12 after a ceremony in which seven recently elected council members were sworn into office and positions were assigned to the 14 members of the CBC. At the Lucy Covington Government Center near Nespelem Thursday morning, the oath of office ceremony started with traditional native American songs and drumming, and a prayer from Cawston. Six out of the seven recently elected CBC members are new, with only Joseph...
Electric City Councilmember Rich McGuire addressed the issue of the city’s appearance at the July 10 council meeting, and the council may form a committee to improve its appearance at their August meeting. McGuire said he was responding to a Star newspaper opinion column by Roger Lucas, headlined “Ugliest town in the west can do better.” “The many eyesores along the entrance to the city stood out like sore thumbs,” Lucas wrote, describing the city in his column. McGuire agreed with the sentiments of the Lucas piece. “I walk and I walk and I wal...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District will invite public comment on its 2018-19 school year budget at its July 23 board meeting at 6 p.m. in the high school library in Coulee Dam. Sally Ryan, the district’s business manager contracted from Educational Service District 171, will present the budget, and people will be able to comment on it if they wish. The budget, estimated at $12 million, will not take funds that would be generated from the proposed capital projects levy into account. “We have to build a budget on facts,” Superintendent Paul...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District board Monday night approved the hiring of Ronanda Liberty as the new interim high school principal. Hired for a year, Liberty will serve as the principal while the search continues for the right fit for the long term. “I feel real strongly that her presence with the staff; they know her, it’s not something new. ... She’ll be a great asset for us,” said Superintendent Paul Turner. Liberty, whose home is in Ritzville, served as principal in the 2015-16 school year, the first woman to fill the position in the...
A guy who had brightly colored hair in his youth, but wears a tie to work now, would like to see the local skateboarding scene grow to include more features at the park, local competitions, and more, and would like all the support he can get from local skaters. Ben Hughes, a commissioner on the Coulee Area Park and Recreation District since February, has a background in skateboarding himself. "I started skating in 1985 on a bright orange banana board (now called Penny boards)," Hughes says, and...
Pronghorn antelope, native to the area before being wiped out, were transplanted on the Colville Indian Reservation by way of Nevada in 2016, and again in 2017, and appear to be doing well. With 51 of the animals wearing tracking collars, there are at least 89 adults and 29 fawns, according to an aerial headcount by Colville Tribal Fish & Wildlife Biologist Sam Rushing. "I know there's more out there," Rushing said. The animals have been roaming as far south as Wenatchee and Quincy, and as far...