News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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An assembly held at Lake Roosevelt in May included stories of how drugs and alcohol can affect someone, as well as rap music, and the students reacted strongly to it all. A survey of the students following the survey has helped enlighten staff to issues the student body is facing, and has propelled them toward helping deal with these issues. At the assembly in May, James Pakootas spoke about the dark path of drugs and alcohol he went down, how it negatively affected him, how he got into it, and...
Imagine kayaking 1,250 miles down the Columbia River from Columbia Lake, in British Columbia, down to Astoria, Oregon. That's exactly what John Kuntz, of Fort Gamble, Washington, is doing. "It's beautiful," Kuntz said. "Lots of beaches, dramatic landscapes," adding that he's seen a variety of wildlife, including bear, elk, moose, river otter, turkey, coyotes, and at least the prints of cougars. Kuntz, who is paddling the river in part as a way of "teaching youth the art of adventure," left the...
Lightning struck, and the Raider football team demolished the Tonasket Tigers in a game that took two days to complete. The Raiders were winning 12-0 in Tonasket on Friday, Sept. 7, when the game was called due to weather after a two-hour lightning delay. With about nine minutes left in the second quarter, the game started back up on Monday, Sept. 10. The Raiders racked up an additional 36 points on Monday, making for a final score of 48-0. "We had great defense and special-teams play," said...
The Lady Raiders lost their soccer season opener Sept. 6 to the Bridgeport Fillies, on the Fillies’ home field, 5-1. Head Coach Casey Moore said it was a “tough loss.” “Overall, the entire team played very well,” Moore said. “Key improvements included communication, passing, and defense.” Sophomore Bryn Chaffee scored the only goal for Lake Roosevelt off an assist from Ravina Pakootas, who “brought the ball to mid-field from the defensive line and passed it to Bryn, who dribbled through three defenders to score a perfectly placed shot,” a...
The Lady Raiders lost against Manson but won against Wilbur/Creston in their first week of the volleyball season. At home on Sept. 6, the Lady Raiders lost 3-1 against the Manson Lady Trojans. "We struggled with serving, missing 16, and had nine 'in the net' calls," said Head Coach Teri Sue Reed. "That's just giving away too many points!" But the Lady Raiders had their highlights. Megan Abel made a whopping 17 assists, Ellie Hansen led the Lady Raiders with eight kills, Addison Hansen made a...
An electric utility has created a new rate class that could dramatically affect the local development of an “evolving industry” with an Electric City participant. Grant County Public Utility District commissioners voted last week to increase electricity rates for high-power cryptocurrency miners to protect “Grant PUD and its customers from risk,” a PUD press release stated Aug. 28. “Starting April 1, 2019, cryptocurrency miners and other ‘evolving-industry’ firms will pay the first of a three-year, graduated increase to a new, above-cost el...
Congressman Dan Newhouse, who represents Washington's 4th District, visited Coulee Medical Center Aug. 29 to discuss issues with rural hospitals, particularly in relation to obstetrical services. Newhouse, joined by staff member Liz Daniels, sat down to lunch from the Fusion Café with CMC staff at the hospital and watched a presentation by Beth Goetz, the obstetrical nurse manager at CMC. Goetz presented statistics related to rural area infant mortality compared to urban, maternal mortality,...
There’s nothing like some good views, brews and tunes to ring in the autumn season. At the Harvest Festival this year, helicopter rides will be available from Inland Helicopters from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 15, and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 16. Those who go along for the ride will receive a scenic bird’s-eye-view of the coulee’s unique landscape, a great opportunity to take photos for the photographer in all of us. And when you need to calm down from the adrenaline rush of flying in a helicopter, the Harvest Festi...
The Lake Roosevelt Raiders football team defeated the Okanogan JV team in the first game of the 2018-19 season with a final score of 44-0. With Bridgeport and Waterville not having football teams this year due to lack of qualifying players, LR took on the Okanogan JV team in a non-league game to help fill out the season, and will later play Kettle Falls, not a usual opponent. Towering over most of their opponents, LR controlled the entire game, leading 30-0 at the half before adding another 14...
More than a dozen teachers attended Monday's Grand Coulee Dam School District board meeting, where Pamela Johnson and Carrie Derr spoke on behalf of their union to make a case for higher pay to keep quality teachers in the district. Johnson and Derr, the president and vice president of the Grand Coulee Dam Education Association, took turns reciting lines from their prepared speech. "In our last school year we lost one third of our teaching staff," the speech began. "Most of these teachers have...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District may change the qualifications for a substitute teacher so that more people would qualify. According to the Office of Superintendent for Public Instruction, Washington state requires a substitute teacher to have a bachelor’s degree or higher, to have completed a teacher preparation program, an alternative route program leading to certification, or three years of out-of-state teaching with an out-of-state certificate, fingerprints, and a background check. An emergency substitute teaching certificate, on the o...
Due to complications from a new state law, the city of Grand Coulee is considering no longer issuing business licenses. The new law requires a lot of extra work for the city to coordinate with the state and the businesses, work that City Clerk Lorna Pearce feels may not justify the $4,500 a year the licenses bring into the city. If Grand Coulee chooses to continue issuing licenses, Pearce explained, their licenses would have to be issued from the state of Washington website. “We’ll have to wait for them to give us our money, pull reports fro...
After being kicked out of the Grand Coulee Dam School District in 2006 for not taking school seriously, Devin White moved to the Vancouver-Portland area, where he earned his graduation equivalency diploma and began to be classically trained in theater and film acting. White has studied at Clarke College and with the Portland Actors Conservatory, the second largest theater in Portland; the Artists Repertory Theatre; Blanche-Rooney Studios; the Actor Experiment; with Jana Lee Hamblin at ActNow...
Red tape, protocol, and a failure to communicate is keeping the Grand Gallery of Arts from reopening. Faran Sohappy owns a business called Music and Beyond. First located off of Midway Avenue across from Safeway, Sohappy was selling CDs, music equipment, movies, and more. Sohappy jumped at the opportunity to move his business to the Grand Gallery of Arts building on Main Street. The move to the new rented space would enable Sohappy to, in addition to running his shop, host music events on the stage and produce music, something he is passionate...
Better put another notch in your belt, the barbecue competition will be back at Harvest Festival. The Pacific Northwest BBQ Association will be bringing their competition to Banks Lake Park on Saturday, Sept. 15 and Sunday, Sept. 16. The event runs on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. the public can get their fingers on the tasty morsels. You can get four samples for $10. Prizes in the competition total $6,500, in addition to trophies and ribbons for the best meat masters....
The federal Bureau of Land Management’s recent agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation and local fire districts has already paid off this fire season. The USBR turned over 200,000 acres to the BLM to manage. With Grand Coulee’s fire district already on board with the agreement, Electric City has joined up as well. Fire Chief for Electric City Mark Payne spoke to the Electric City Council last week about the benefits of the agreement. “Ninety percent of our district is bureau ground,” Payne said, “and so we had access to ground troops, cats; it...
Lace up your running shoes, Run the Dam 2018 will be held on Sept. 15. Participants can walk or run a 5k, 10k, or half-marathon distance, beginning on the east side of the Grand Coulee Dam, running across the largest concrete structure in North America, through "Old Grand Coulee" along B Street, and back along Banks Lake, finishing at North Dam Park, where Harvest Festival will be taking place. Kelly Buche, who is in her third year organizing the event, is expecting about 220 people to...
Depending on where you live and work in the area, it can be hard to choose a cell-phone service provider that has service where you are. Who better to ask about where they have coverage than local citizens? Responding to an August 9 post on the Star’s Facebook page, people weighed in on three big cell-phone companies: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. People appear happiest with T-Mobile and Verizon, with AT&T being very spotty in Coulee Dam despite working above the dam and in Nespelem. “T-Mobile [is] the only way to go,” Gary Haag commented. “Year...
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...