News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 1393 - 1417 of 1807
Our best guess is that last night’s non-decision by the less-than-courageous (being kind) Grand Coulee City Council was a dishonest move predesigned before the meeting to allow elected leaders not to make a decision. If that’s true, it’s disgusting. If it’s not true, it’s still at least disheartening. The city council foisted its responsibility as elected representatives of the people onto an unelected city clerk. She was told it’s now her responsibility to decide whether to issue a business license to a would-be marijuana retailer. A... Full story
Governance, like life, is full of trade-offs. One of them is efficiency versus efficacy, and you strive for one at the risk of losing the other. Such was the case at last week’s Electric City Council meeting, where the mayor and a council member slapped a mutually congratulatory high five for keeping the meeting under an hour long. The problem is that perhaps it would have been a better, more productive meeting if they hadn’t. As one who has spent innumerable hours at such meetings, I sympathize with the need to keep them moving. People can... Full story
The doors of the middle school in Grand Coulee will be opened for a special meeting of the minds next Wednesday from 5-7 p.m., a time arranged for the community to tour it and talk about the building's future and more. "Grand Coulee Dam Area 2020 Vision" will be a modest affair, offering a tour of the building that was until last fall the Grand Coulee Dam Middle School, and encouraging conversation about its possible uses and the direction of the community. The tag line on the event is "Let's... Full story
Kids at Lake Roosevelt Schools will have more direct access to health care if a plan to that end pans out between Coulee Medical Center and Lake Roosevelt Schools. The project was taken on by a University of Washington third-year medical student studying at CMC. "Across the nation there's this new trend of school-based health centers," explained Jonathan Patberg, speaking at a Rotary Club luncheon last week. In some places, that means building a clinic inside a school, but not here, Patberg... Full story
A spaghetti dinner set for Saturday will help fund a project that brings together sixth graders from Coulee Dam and Nespelem schools to pave their way as eventual classmates in high school. The Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club chose to work with the sixth graders for the annual fund raiser, possibly instilling an early lesson in community service. The annual trip to a Leavenworth challenge course is designed to build relationships and get the kids to work together. The first one took place 2012. Nate Piturachsatit, a teacher on special assignment a... Full story
Terry Reister speaks quite softly, but the guitars he makes sing out loud. Reister and his son, Terry Reister Jr, showed off the elder's products at the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon at The Melody last Thursday. The owner of Sandy's Grocery store in Wilbur started making guitars about 20 years ago, but now it's getting a little more serious. They are working on converting the former Texaco station in Wilbur into a store to display his guitars. They brought a few along last... Full story
Dogs are "awesome tools" that can reduce the time it takes to search a building for a suspect or a lost child by 70 percent, chase down running suspects, Deputy Mike Earney told chamber of commerce members last week. But they're not cheap and the Grant County Sheriff's Office wants four of them - without federal grants. In other words, Sheriff Tom Jones is looking for the people of Grant County to step up. Earney said the agency doesn't want to take federal money for the program because it... Full story
After the first day, Jessica Tufts could boast that she'd outfished her husband, dad and father-in-law in the third annual Triple Fish Challenge on Coulee Playland at Banks Lake. Jessica caught the biggest smallmouth bass (3.35 pounds) on Saturday, although her husband, Alex, reeled in the best trout on day two (2.51). The little tournament grew to 28 anglers this year from 18 in 2014 and included five kids. One of them, Payton Phillips, outfished all the adults in terms of total weight caught... Full story
Animal control workers removed over 60 cats from a home in Electric City Monday. Representatives from Pasado’s Safe Haven, a rescue operation from Monroe, Wash., along with Grand Coulee Police Chief John Tufts, completed taking the cats from Mardee Davis at 103 W. Grand Avenue. Davis said Tuesday that she had called Pasado’s for help. “I have been trying to get help since things started piling up on me,” Davis said. Friends are coming this weekend to help her clean the place, she explained. Davis said she had been busy helping her ailing... Full story
A free dinner, badminton, and the full display of Lake Roosevelt students’ artistic and scientific sides will be featured at the final Family Fun Night of the year next Wednesday at the school. Organizers Kim Stanger and Victor Camarena said the event, the fourth this year, will feature displays of student art, of all kinds. Some will be visual arts, but students will also perform in song and on instruments and recite poetry in the courtyard at Lake Roosevelt Schools. There will be a destructive aspect to the night, too. Students have been l... Full story
In the sixth year of an Earth Day event at the Nespelem powwow grounds, the event’s organizers have garnered some national recognition — by offering a free lunch, among other things. Next Wednesday, April 22, is Earth Day, and everyone is invited to the event occurring from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., where more than 50 agencies and businesses will have information booths set up to show what they do, or help others do, to be kind to the environment. With hundreds participating each year in a remote sparsely populated area, the event’s relative succe... Full story
A "summit" held to garner ideas about the future of the former Grand Coulee Dam Middle School was deemed a straight-up success by organizers, who met recently to discuss the March 12 event that brought together 19 agencies and businesses with an interest in the facility. The building, which was originally Grand Coulee High School, is mostly empty following the opening last fall of the new Lake Roosevelt Schools complex in Coulee Dam. What to do with the big building has been a concern on the min... Full story
One never knows what benefits will take shape when people come together to solve a problem. Aside from tackling the initial problem, the very act of meeting with open minds often precedes other unforeseen but important outcomes. Such may well prove the case after the meeting a month ago of knowledgeable people asked to come help evaluate the building that was until last fall the Grand Coulee Dam Middle School. Determined not to let this community asset eventually slip into disrepair and become a blight, a chamber of commerce committee, of... Full story
Lake Roosevelt is being held at a level about 47 feet below the full mark while maintenance is completed on the drum gates that hold the water back when the lake is full. The Bureau of Reclamation reports the lake will likely remain below 1,255 feet above sea level until May 10. The water forecast for the Columbia River drainage above Grand Coulee Dam, from April to August this year, is estimated at 82.5 percent of normal, so the maximum level allowed for flood control right now would actually... Full story
A 28-year-old Coulee Dam man died Saturday as he fled from authorities chasing him as a suspect in an armed robbery near Tonasket, the county sheriff said. Okanogan County Sheriff Frank T. Rogers said in a statement Monday that William J. Dick III stopped breathing after being chased and finally brought down by a Taser high-voltage stun device as he and another suspect “bailed out of the vehicle and took off running through the woods” on BIA Road 66 at the north end of the Colville Indian Reservation. At about 9:50 a.m., the sheriff said, a Sag... Full story
Lake Rufus Woods, behind Chief Joseph Dam, will be lowered a little this weekend in preparation for an upcoming bank stabilization project downstream from the Seaton's Grove boat launch. Check out our story at gcdvisitor.com....
Last week, the National Park Service launched a new public relations campaign aimed raising public awareness of the treasures it keeps available for all. The campaign urges folks to “Find Your Park” and is premised on the idea that many people don’t know about relatively local parks managed for their benefit by NPS. Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area is one such park. Remarkably, Lake Roosevelt is coming up on its 70th anniversary in 2016 when the NPS itself will celebrate its centennial. A central feature of the new awareness campa... Full story
A group of volunteers raised nearly 150,000 rainbow trout in Banks Lake over the winter and released them from net pens in Electric City Saturday. The Providers of Wildlife and Environmental Resources (POWER) fed the fish from last October on, growing them from 19.2 per pound to up to 5.4 per pound. They lost 2,594 to cold water disease, the group reported, and released 147,419 fish into the lake. POWER operates the large net pens for about nine months each year, raising about 300,000 fish using automated feeders that have to be stocked with... Full story
The cost of demolishing a house on Holly Street has been paid for by the brother of the woman who last lived there, Mayor Greg Wilder told the Coulee Dam Town Council last Wednesday, after first soliciting approval of a plan to match an extra related gift for fire department improvements. Wilder initiated discussion by stating that $300 had been given to the town. He didn’t mention that the check written by Jim Sayles was for $15,000, just $300 more than the cost of the cleanup. Wilder suggested the town could match the $300 if the fire f... Full story
We’d like to thank those people who have answered the local call for new emergency medical technicians, and those who made it possible. EMT training is not easy, takes a lot of time and requires significant commitment, not to mention money. But without those willing to undertake the effort, a community like this one would find itself in peril. For some time now, the numbers of EMTS to man local ambulances have needed boosting. Organizing and providing the months-long training required can’t be a simple matter. The community should be glad and... Full story
I gave the college kids a mixed bag of goods last week about the nature of newspapers and media in general, and tied it to some worries I have about the health of our democracy. Asked to be this year’s “publisher in residence” at Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communications, I spent a couple days at WSU talking with students about what it’s like to be a small-town newspaper editor and publisher. I started out by holding one up, so they’d know what I was talking about. That’s because the vast majority come from a city,... Full story
Two teenagers were killed and a third injured in Coulee City Friday night when the car they were in left the road and hit a light pole at the city park. The driver, Auston Frye, 17, of Hartline; and a passenger, Pedro Huitron, 18, of Lind, died in the crash that occurred about 8:30, the Washington State Patrol reported. Another passenger, Roberto Valdovinos, 16, also of Lind, was injured and flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. The 1994 Honda Civic, in which they were traveling west... Full story
A roundup of wild horses on the Colville Indian Reservation was stopped just before noon Sunday due to mounting pressure from tribal members. The roundup had been planned to take about three weeks, gathering between 700 and 1,000 of the horses. The process stopped short Saturday, just over a week into it. Ralph Moses, of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Range department, said they estimate 3,000 to 4,000 ferrel horses live across the reservation, creating "hot spots" of over-grazed habitat. Moses sa... Full story
Coulee Medical Center managed to show a slim profit in January, following months of losses, mostly due to downward adjustments in the amounts due from Medicaid in 2014. CMC’s financial statements for January showed a $1,351 gain on the bottom line. “I’m the happiest person in the world to say that,” Chief Executive Officer Debbie Bigelow told the hospital district’s commissioners Monday night. The hospital and clinics recorded net operating revenue of nearly $1.9 million in January. Expenses of just over that amount left the bottom line with... Full story
A roundup of wild horse on the Colville Indian Reservation was stopped just before noon Sunday due to mounting pressure from tribal members. The roundup had been planned to take about three weeks, gathering between 700 and 1000 of the horses. The process stopped short today, just over a week into it. Ralph Moses, of the Range department, said they estimate 3,000 to 4,000 live across the reservation, creating "hot spots" of over-grazed habitat. Moses said the operation took in a total of 422...