News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 1850
Solveigh Chaffee has been trying to buy the dilapidated building next to her Voltage Coffee House for 10 years. Tuesday night she asked Grand Coulee's City Council to reject a bid to tear it down that would cost much more than it's worth, likely leading to more liens against it. Instead, Chaffee said she would like to bid on the property at auction when the county puts it up for sale for overdue taxes. It was once a little museum that showed people the work of Constantine Vlachos, a local invent...
The height differential was obvious from the start, but it didn't matter. Thursday night's Seniors vs Staff Basketball Game at Lake Roosevelt Jr/Sr High gym was more about having fun while beating the other team than just beating them. The fundraiser for the senior class drew lots of community support and winded their teachers and coaches several times, although staff coach Brad Oliver kept his team rotated and fairly fresh for a bunch of old folks. The first quarter turned out to indicate the...
One person visited with the Grand Coulee Dam School District Board on Monday regarding district plans for handling their budget emergency. "After reading some of the letters to the editor in The Star this week, I wanted to come and just kind of get an understanding from the board as to what cuts are being made and why," Sam Halvorsen said. Halvorsen visited on a day the board had just put off a discussion on an upcoming emergency budget resolution, opting to discuss it at a "workshop" on...
All four local towns are suing each other. You could be forgiven if you didn’t know this; the biggest beef between them involves the spectacularly uninteresting subjects of their shared sewage treatment plants, which are spectacularly expensive by your and my standards. Which is sad, because that’s who has to pay for them. That seems obviously unavoidable, as sewer plants are one thing we don’t want to do without. But making them even more expensive than they already are by deciding to sue each other over disagreements regarding them just rubs...
After a season that may have started out with more modest ambitions, the Lady Raiders competed in the WIAA State 2B Girls' Basketball Tournament at The Arena in Spokane March 4, where they played the Ducks, of Toutle Lake, staying ahead through halftime, outscoring them five points, 21-16. Toutle Lake took off in the third quarter, however, holding LR to 10 points while adding 26 to their own score for a 42-31 advantage going into the fourth. The Raiders beat them back by only a point after...
The geologist Nick Zentner "popped up" at Dry Falls State Park Visitor Center last Sunday, March 1 at 1 p.m. in one of his "pop up" events, where the popular prof just shows up to talk with the geologically curious. That was a curiosity he piqued by putting forth a new old idea about the formation of the Grand Coulee. An estimated 120-plus people showed up to the cliff-top venue, where Zentner lectured with his back to the 400-foot chasm and promised not to step backward. Zentner, the "Science...
Coulee Dam is hoping to finally get the grant funding it applied for to replace over 30 old maple trees removed during a sidewalk replacement project in 2023. The city applied for a grant, which was awarded in February of 2024 for over $71,000 to do the work. The money comes through the state Dept. of Natural Resources with federal funds awarded to the state-managed program. City Clerk Stefani Bowden told the city council Feb. 26 that a federal funding freeze in February of 2025 kept the project from moving forward. as funding was held up kept...
If you'd told Head Coach Jeremy Crollard during the Lady Raiders' first 10 games of the season that they'd being going to state this year, he'd have thought you were crazy. But the young team that started out less than stellar became a strong, competitive unit that battled in the last half of the regular season, and on Saturday in Wenatchee vanquished the Orcas Island Vikings 66-42 to survive the opening round of WIAA's 2026 2B Girls State Basketball Tournament. Freshman Paisley Fury-Smith led i...
A proposed reduction in high school secretary hours has become a flash point in the Grand Coulee Dam School District’s broader struggle to close a mounting budget gap, with staff warning of strained student support and administrators describing a years-long squeeze of rising costs and falling enrollment. High school secretary Tammy Norris told the school board that trimming one secretary position from 9 to 7.5 hours a day is more than a simple line-item cut. “In a district our size, there is no extra, there is no cushion,” Norris said during th...
The geologist Nick Zentner will be at Dry Falls State Park Visitor Center this coming Sunday, March 1 at 1 p.m. in one of his "pop up" events, where the popular prof just shows up to talk with the geologically curious. If you're me, that sounds like a perfect Sunday afternoon. (If you're new here, this is one of the most interesting geological areas on the planet.) Zentner, the "Science Outreach and Education Coordinator" at Central Washington University, shares his knowledge in entertaining... Full story
Grand Coulee’s recently adopted Ordinance 1105 is headed back to committee after city officials concluded they need clearer direction on how to enforce it and how quickly property owners must comply. The council briefly revisited the ordinance near the end of its Feb. 17 meeting, focusing not on whether to keep it, but how to implement it. ClerkTreasurer Lorna Pearce told council members that as staff prepared notification letters to business and property owners, several unanswered questions emerged. Chief among them: Who is the designated o...
The Lady Raiders will head to the first round of state Saturday, after vanquishing Mabton in the game for third or fourth in District 5 last weekend. The Vikings (13-11) are the top team in the Eastern Washington Athletic Conference East, but the Lady Raiders (14-10) took them down in East Wenatchee last Saturday, 61-37. Despite that score, Lake Roosevelt took some time catching up after Mabton's early five-point lead and did not pull decisively ahead until late third quarter. which ended for...
If you’ve ever dealt with a construction project, you may realize the near certainty of finding more problems than you planned for. Now apply that concept to an industrial plant built decades ago. The Grand Coulee City Council on Feb. 17 approved a significant electrical upgrade at the city’s wastewater treatment plant and advanced several related engineering agreements with Gray & Osborne, Inc., moves aimed at improving safety, reliability, and longterm compliance at the regional facility. The most expensive of the actions was a roughly $24...
Facing a steep jump in sewer treatment costs, the Elmer City Council voted last week to shift its utility rates, raising sewer charges while cutting water rates in an effort to limit the impact on residents. During a public hearing on Ordinance 393, ClerkTreasurer Kelly Ross laid out the numbers now confronting the town. Under an injunction stemming from a legal dispute with Coulee Dam, Elmer City is being billed $98.98 per household per month for sewer treatment and plant loan repayment alone. That does not include the town’s own sewer c...
If you have an old American Flag that's tattered and torn, official protocol calls for a proper disposal. That involves retiring the nation's symbol with respect, not a trash bag. That's where Addison "AJ" Cannon comes in. Cannon, almost 18, is working on getting her Eagle Scout rank, which involves an ambitious project to supply the local area with flag retirement boxes for used flags. She has been working with American Legion Post 157, which will have a key to the boxes. She presented one...
The Lady Raiders won their first game in the 2026 District 5 2B Girls Basketball Tournament, lost the second, and will play Saturday, Feb. 21 against Mabton at 4 p.m. at Eastmont High in East Wenatchee for third or fourth place and seeding into the state tournament in Spokane next week. To get this far, Lake Roosevelt's young team had to first beat White Swan's Cougars, who had held LR to a one-point win in January. The Raiders took them by 27 points on Friday, 71-44. Coach Jeremy Crollard said...
The educational leader who has led Nespelem School District since 2020 will resign at the end of the school year. Dr. Effie Dean, who took over in June of 2020 as the Covid pandemic was disrupting education and society in general, informed the district board of directors Jan. 30. Monday night, directors voted to begin the search for a new superintendent, engaging Northwest Leadership Associates, of Wenatchee, to begin the search and vetting process. Dean’s last official day is June 30. She told The Star on Tuesday that she is not certain of h...
In a change from a prior policy considered by the Regional Board of Mayors, the Delano Regional Transfer Station may soon accept credit cards following an Electric City Council vote on Feb. 3. Electric City administers the transfer station operation. It’s workers and administrators are city employees. New Mayor Blake Martin brought up the fact that only cash and checks have been accepted for payment at the transfer station, options that increasingly seem too limited in modern society. “I mean, I know I don’t really carry cash on me,” Martin...
The Lady Raiders basketball team missed the league championship by just two points Tuesday night as they took second in the 2026 CW2B League Girls Basketball Tournament and Brewster held onto a 46-44 win at Okanogan High School. LR's loss came after a big win for Lake Roosevelt's girls Saturday afternoon in Omak against Okanogan's Lady Bulldogs, 60-33. The Lady Raiders took the lead away from Okanogan early in that game and piled it on. Lady Raiders will be headed to Eastmont High School Feb....
The Raiders ended their basketball post-season Thursday after one game against the Bridgeport Mustangs that went into overtime. The Raiders were up by 13 points early in the third quarter but the Mustangs picked away at that lead, overtaking it by a point with just under two minutes to go in regulation. The Raiders led again but Bridgeport tied it with a foul shot at 54 each with 16 seconds left. The Raiders pulled ahead by two halfway throught the four-minute overtime, 58-56. But the Mustangs...
After years of arguing that Grand Coulee is treating it like a paying customer instead of a co‑owner of the regional wastewater treatment plant, Electric City is turning to the courts. The City Council voted Tuesday to seek a legal judgment on the 1984 agreement that created the joint facility, saying Grand Coulee has ignored board decisions, relied on a costly contractor, and refused to enter mediation. The two cities are parties to a 1984 interlocal agreement that created the jointly owned t...
By the end of the first quarter, the play was as fierce as a championship overtime. The Liberty Bell coach was calling out the seconds left to her players, but the clock ran out before they could will in another two points for a tie to head off the 16-14 psychological advantage for the Lady Raiders. Much of the first half was like that, but the LR girls were relentless, beginning their undeniable assent in the second quarter to leave the Lady Mountain Lions with a loss, 78-37 Friday in Coulee...
In their "best game" of the season the Raiders almost pulled out a win the Mountain Lions at home Friday in a game that showed the possibilities. Pushing through a tough season, missing a key player, the Raiders are near the bottom of the Central Washington 2B with a win-loss of 2-4, 7-13 overall. You wouldn't guess that by watching them play Liberty Bell (5-1, 18-3) as they adapted and persevered after adding their first two points five minutes in. By the end of the game, they'd taken the lead...
A big boulder fell from the wall of the Grand Coulee during the night, blocking most of two lanes on SR-155 along Banks Lake. Drivers could still drive around it where it was coned off at a wide spot in the shoulder of the road on an area of light traffic. But drivers Saturday morning found one-lane (mostly on a pull-out) traffic on the highway just south of the entrance to Steamboat Rock State Park. The Washington State Department of Transportation sent out an alert on its mobile app about 3...
A Grand Coulee man was arrested Jan. 18 after reportedly admitting to shooting his rifle at a boat on Rufus Woods Lake to try to “scare the occupants away,” a sheriff’s report says. Deputies of the Douglas County sheriff arrested Shawn W. Robison, 41, after an investigation, a Jan. 22 release from the sheriff’s office states. One of the five people on the boat called to report the shots, and deputies were dispatched at 8:14 p.m. to the “1000 block” of Strahl Canyon Road, in a remote section of the county about 25 minutes northwest of Grand Co...