News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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A Nespelem woman died Feb. 15 in an early-morning crash on SR-155, a mile south of Nespelem. Bridget Boyd, 38, was driving a 2005 Buick Rendezvous southbound at 6:43 a.m. when it crossed into the northbound lane and onto the shoulder. She overcorrected to the right, and the vehicle left the road. It hit an embankment, rolled, and came to rest on its wheels at milepost 43. Boyd was ejected during the crash, a Washington State Patrol investigator reported. She was not wearing a seatbelt. The cause of the crash is still under investigation, the...
A young family man has been suddenly struck by a serious disease, without insurance, leading to an effort by friends and family to raise funds to help pay the bills. George Davis III, 29, lives in Wilbur, works for a farmer in Coulee City and was raised in the Grand Coulee area. Friday before last, he came home tired and weak, and he was bruising. His wife, Amber, took him to Coulee Medical Center, from which he was quickly transferred by ambulance to Holy Family Hospital in Spokane. Davis was...
When Grand Coulee leaders put Proposition 1 on the ballot, they thought a bump in sales tax would be the best way for the city to collect a little extra money needed for street repair. Voters agreed, evidently, as votes tallied up last night yielded an 111-39 win for the idea. The 74-percent approval will raise the sales tax in the city from 7.9 percent to 8.1 percent, with the extra money funding a transportation benefits district. The money raised, which city officials expect to come to about $50,000 a year, will be levied against both...
A Nespelem woman died today (Feb. 15, 2018) in an early morning crash on SR-155, a mile south of Nespelem. Bridget Boyd, 38, was driving a 2005 Buick Rendezvous southbound at 6:43 a.m. when it crossed into the northbound lane and onto the shoulder. She overcorrected to the right, and the vehicle left the road. It hit an embankment, rolled, and came to rest on its wheels at milepost 43. Boyd was ejected during the crash, a Washington State Patrol investigator reported. She was not wearing a seatbelt. The cause of the crash is still under...
Two people were found dead in a home in Coulee City Monday evening, with carbon monoxide poisoning suspected as the cause of death. The Grant County Sheriff’s Office said investigators Tuesday were looking into the tragic deaths of two people in a trailer park in the 500 block of West Walnut Street after their landlord discovered their bodies about 7 p.m. Monday. Grant County Coroner Craig Morrison stated Wednesday that 68-year-old Roxy Mae Ergler and 72-year-old Kenneth W. Gomez were the two victims. Their families have been notified. The c...
Immediately after joining the board, a new commissioner with decades of experience in the skateboard industry said he’d like to arrange a competition for the local skatepark for this summer. The Coulee Area Park and Recreation District board had just appointed Ben Hughes and Kevin Portch to fill vacant positions on the board at the Feb. 5 meeting. CAPRD, which extends through a wide swath of the four-county area, manages North Dam Park, which is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Hughes proposed adding features to the skatepark and planni...
A vote on a boost to the Grand Coulee sales tax that passed on Tuesday will add a bit to the bottom line of most non-food retail sales made in Grand Coulee. The city council showed good sense in allowing the public to vote on it as a solution to the problem of crumbling city streets in need of repair. Ideally, a sales tax wouldn’t be the first solution you’d think of for fixing streets. It’s not directly tied to the problem and so shifts some of the burden to another part of the economy (consumers buying things, not cars and trucks weari...
Elmer City has requested Coulee Dam’s help in paying for adjustments needed to keep the two towns’ sewage treatment systems working together, an idea that met with resistance at Coulee Dam’s town council Wednesday night. Coulee Dam, which treats Elmer City’s sewage, is building a new wastewater treatment plant, due to come online later this year. Elmer City’s leadership has chosen to pursue building its own plant, but that would be years from opening, provided they are successful getting the financing to build it. In the meantime, Coulee Da...
A four-car crash blocked the intersection of two highways at Soap Lake Tuesday, injuring three people, including a Grand Coulee man. The Washington State Patrol said the collision occurred at 10:13 a.m. when a Twisp driver headed south in a 2014 Jeep Wrangler ran a stop sign where SR-17 meets SR-28. The Jeep, driven by Amy Days, 39, struck the passenger side of a 2010 Honda Element driven by 79-year-old Colleen Martin, of Wilson Creek, who was driving west through the intersection. The Jeep...
Utility rate discounts set in December for Coulee Dam were repealed by the town council last week when members passed a set of ordinances identical to the ones the previous council had replaced in December. The new ordinances passed Wednesday reset the discount amounts charged for water, sewer, electricity and trash collection to their previous rates, but may be amended again after the new council agrees on new rates. Councilmember Keith St. Jeor had objected to the ordinances passed in December and contends that discounts set for low-income...
Online subscribers have access to this week's special Remember When ... section via their included digital copy of the newspaper by signing in and clicking on the Jan. 31, 2018 PDF at the upper right corner of the content section. You can also find past electronic versions of the printed Stars there. This week's Remember When ... section can be found by scrolling through the pages of The Star; the special section simply starts after the last Star page. This was one of the most difficult special...
When Coulee Medical Center's infection control nurse went home for the weekend a couple weeks ago, the state of Washington was in the green, but had turned dark red by Monday morning. Those are the colors that represent the best and the worst cases on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's map of the spread of flu across the country. Sandy Edwards is the infection control czar at the local hospital, which was recognized by the state Dept. of Health this year for its control procedures,...
A Coulee City man died Thursday morning when the pickup he was driving slid off the highway into Lake Lenore upside down. Harold J. Chadwick, 78, and Connie Chadwick, 74, were headed south on SR-17 when the 1996 Ford F150 rotated clockwise and went of the left embankment about 12 miles north of Soap Lake at milepost 86, according to a Washington State Patrol investigation. The pickup rolled several times, coming to rest on its top half submerged in Lake Lenore. Connie Chadwick was injured and taken to Samaritan Hospital in Moses...
Three new town council members and a new mayor took the oath of office at the first council meeting of the new year last Wednesday. Larry Price, who was elected in November with a nearly 74-percent margin, presided over his first council meeting quite readily taking tips on protocol, having sat through few such meetings before. He was sworn in by Clerk/Treasurer Stefani Bowden, as were the council members. Sworn in and taking their seats on the council were council members Bob Poch, in council... Full story
At the beginning of a new era in Coulee Dam, the city council Wednesday night rolled back one of the last pieces of legislation passed under the previous council in December. Councilmember Keith St. Jeor had voted against a measure at a special meeting Dec. 20 to give a steeper discount to income-eligible people on rates for utilities. At the Jan. 10 meeting, after three new council members took their oaths of office, St. Jeor moved to repeal the earlier rate-setting ordinance, which boosted discounts to 30-35 percent for qualifying low-income...
A Coulee City man died Thursday morning when the pickup he was driving slid off the highway into Lake Lenore upside down. Harold J. Chadwick, 78, and Connie Chadwick, 74, were headed south on SR 17 when the 1996 Ford F150 rotated clockwise and went off of the left embankment about 12 miles north of Soap Lake at milepost 86, according to a Washington State Patrol investigation. The pickup rolled several times, coming to rest on its top half submerged in Lake Lenore. Connie Chadwick was injured...
Through a statewide association, The Star will provide its readers in the next few weeks with news from our state capital as our elected representatives wrestle with the issues of the session which just began. Experience tells us we won’t always have room for news in the printed product from our Olympia News Bureau; our priorities lie with local issues. Such is the case this week, the first this year that journalism students from the University of Washington, who are coached by experienced journalists under a grant from the Washington N...
With a prediction from the National Weather Service for up to 6 inches of snow today and at least one road closure so far, travel plans may be altered. SR 17 is closed due to a collision about halfway between Soap Lake and Coulee City, the Grant County Sheriff's Office said about 10 a.m. Thursday advising motorists to find an alternative route. The National Weather Service in Spokane issued a weather advisory in effect until 4 p.m. today that predicts precipitation will remain in the form of...
A warehouse in Electric City will soon become the "Grant County Data Centre" for processing a type of currency that only exists digitally and has gained recent worldwide attention as its value increased 2,700 percent since September. Atlas Cloud Enterprises Inc., a Canadian company, has apparently purchased the former Young's Welding building in Electric City for $300,000, and plans to invest another $2.6 million into it. Atlas Cloud, shares of which are traded on the Canadian Securities Exchang...
The city of Coulee Dam has bought a business and its 96 strands of fiber-optic cable that run beneath the Columbia River bridge, the mayor announced at a special city council meeting Wednesday. The purchase, a year-and-a-half in the making according to Mayor Greg Wilder, will allow Coulee Dam to move forward in developing plans that council members have advocated to bring internet speeds in town up to modern standards. The council had voted Dec. 13 to allow Wilder and City Attorney Mick Howe to work out a deal with Basin Broadband LLC, a Moses...
Coulee Dam’s city council voted Wednesday to sewer service rates that will charge low-income customers a little less and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a lot more. Low income senior citizens and disabled residents who qualify for a discount will find slightly better rates, with discount levels bumped from 25 to 30 percent and from 30 to 35 percent. Mayor Greg Wilder said the increased discount would make very little difference, about a couple hundred dollars, to the town’s budget, but could make a meaningful difference to those who qua...
As we enter the New Year, we suggest the best resolution of all would be to keep a level head, an open ear and a metaphorical red pen at the ready to scratch out the hyperbole in our political rhetoric, examples of which can be found in each of the following columns. They represent the arguments at both ends of the debate over the tax-cut bill that just passed, and each overstates the case made — one by your elected congressman for Washington’s fourth district in the U. S. House of Representatives, the other by the liberal group Americans for...
The mayor of Coulee Dam intends to ask the city council to pass new water and sewer rates tonight (Wednesday) in the last council meeting over which he will preside, with some significant changes. Mayor Greg Wilder explained to the council at their last regular meeting Dec. 13 that he was working on an ordinance for their consideration at tonight’s meeting, called especially for that purpose. Wilder explained that he had been examining usage rates on the east and west sides of town and would recommend rates based on the “Orange Book,” a docum...
In the business world, decisions are generally made by weighing the costs of something desirable for a business against its benefits over time. A piece of equipment may cost a lot of money, but if it pays for itself in a few years and provides an added benefit, such as increased customer satisfaction, it’s likely to be bought. Public schools don’t generally have the luxury of increasing their revenue by such means. They get what a state formula says they’ll get, regardless of any increased value its leaders think the school could bring to st...
Leaders of the little government district that has kept North Dam Park from collapsing into disrepair for several years is feeling uncertain about the future. After approving a budget Monday night in which they show spending at about $33,000 next year, commissioners at the Coulee Area Park and Recreation District, all volunteers, discussed the uncertainty of the district’s continued funding. Originally formed with the intent of building a swimming pool in 2003, the district has never collected a tax to help fund its efforts, having been t...