News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 1400 - 1424 of 1807
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...
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 reports. 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 on highway 2, left the road to the right and struck... Full story
The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce singled out members to honor at its annual banquet last Thursday night at Pepper Jack's Bar and Grille. The Coulee Dam Federal Credit Union was voted business of the year by the membership. The credit union had what President Kerry Higgins said was probably its best year ever, despite the challenges of a year filled with news of identity theft fraud across the country and in their own market. And they've been great supporters of the chamber, said... Full story
The dream of a community swimming pool and wellness center is due for a visible rendering, which architects started to get a feel for Tuesday morning in a field of weeds. In January, the Coulee Area Park and Recreation District awarded the job of helping the community see what could be to NAC Architecture of Spokane. NAC's Keith Comes and Ryan Palmquist met with district commissioners Bob Valen and Phil Hansen Tuesday. They toured two possible sites for a "wellness center" - the old Grand... Full story
Several bills before the Legislature this session all seek to weaken in some way the state’s model Public Records Act, and therefore, the entire state. One of the most egregious, HB 1349, is scheduled for a hearing Thursday afternoon before the House of Representatives’ State Government Committee, on which 12th District Rep. Brad Hawkins sits. The bill purportedly seeks to protect corrections workers, but does so in a way that would basically make the state’s Public Records Act ineffective for many legitimate and beneficial uses, inclu... Full story
A 39-year-old Omak man was taken to Coulee Medical Center today after he swerved to miss a deer on SR 17 and hit a telephone pole. Jason Reise was headed north in a 2005 Dodge Caravan 13.4 miles north of Coulee City when he had to swerve to miss a deer about 7:45 a.m., the Washington State Patrol reported. The van left the roadway to the left and hit the pole. Reise, who was wearing a seatbelt, was taken to Coulee Medical Center. The van was towed to Jack’s 4 Corners in Grand Coulee....
It seemed to be pumping through the veins of people all over the community last week, but there couldn't have been more concrete evidence of the Pacific Northwest's support of the Seattle Seahawks for their bid to repeat last year's Superbowl victory than a big 12 emblazened on the great Grand Coulee Dam. Friday night, as workers doing maintenance work on the largest nightly laser light show in the country tuned the lasers on the Grand Coulee Dam, they made a 300-foot tall blue and green "12"... Full story
“I don’t have kids in school,” she said, “why should I have to pay taxes for schools?” Someone paid when you were a kid in need of an education, I said. “But I didn’t live here then,” she said. Wherever you were in this country, I said, somebody paid for your education. What goes around, comes around. And if it ever stops, we’re all done. Think about that in relation to the school levy currently sought by the Grand Coulee Dam School District. It’s fundamental to our nation that a good school system must be in place to educate our youth,... Full story