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 slide of rocks and mud covered Peter Dan Road about a half mile from SR-155 Tuesday morning, forcing a detour until mid-afternoon and recalling a massive effort to keep the hillside from sloughing off. Okanogan County Emergency Management texted an alert at 6:40 a.m. to its subscribers, letting them know of the road closure as people got ready to go to work or school. Peter Dan runs between Elmer City and Keller, plus the Buffalo Lake area. The road remained closed until about 2:15 p.m. The sl...
Looking at something from a different angle can reveal much that hadn’t been noticed before. That principle may have been evident at a school board meeting Monday night. School leaders made plans Monday to systematically consider student opinion in coming meetings, the result of advocacy on the school board by two new student representatives. Appointed as ex-officio representatives in October 2022, Juniors Layla Flett and Celeste LaPlace have been discussing with other Grand Coulee Dam School District board members ways to get student c...
Park district commissioners last month approved a proposal for vendors to address in bidding on the maintenance work for North Dam Park for the year. The Coulee Area Park and Recreation District maintains and manages the park on about eight acres of land that belongs to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation below North Dam. Commissioners Dec. 14 approved as to form a document that lays out the scope of work they expect will be done for up to $25,000 in 2023, including everything from mowing the lawns...
Lake Roosevelt's wrestling team distinguished itself at a tournament full of much larger schools Dec. 30, earning placings in enough weights to take fourth in the Freeman Winter Classic. "Our success is coming from everyone contributing and finding a way to win," Head Coach Casey Brewster said. "They are wrestling the whole match and making it very difficult on their opponents." The 2B Raiders took fourth with a score of 107 behind 3A-4A size teams like Post Falls (194), West Valley (149) and Sh...
Covid is apparently on the move locally. Coulee Medical Center cautioned community members Monday that although all services are still available, covid-related staffing problems may cause delays in service. “We are now in the midst of a COVID 19 outbreak in the community which is affecting the operations of Coulee Medical Center,” CMC posted on their Facebook page Monday. CEO Ramona Hicks said CMC has had nine staff members out in just four days after testing positive, far more than they’ve had in months. “I think there’s just a lot more covi...
Grand Coulee’s city council passed its budget reluctantly last week, with one council member warning that the city would need to find another $50,000 by year’s end or layoffs would be necessary. “I wanted to have a balanced budget that we could vote on,” said Councilmember Tom Poplawski at the council’s meeting Dec. 20. “But after all the discussions and all of the meetings, looking at numbers and analysis of it all, we can’t get there unless we were to lay people off. That’s the bottom line. We’ve chosen not to do that.” The city’s 2023 bud...
Utility crews for Grant County PUD worked through the extreme weather last week as power outages affected their customers from Royal City to Grand Coulee. With temperatures plunging to the well-below-zero range, then frozen rain falling across the region, the National Weather Service warned people to prepare for power outages. One hit the Electric City-Grand Coulee area on Christmas night, apparently around 8 p.m. and took until morning to repair. Customers on the PUD Facebook page asked for...
Several people reported hearing a loud boom Monday night in west Coulee Dam, some speculating an electrical transformer may have blown in the town’s electric system. Not exactly. But City Superintendent Mike Steffens said that’s what it sounds like when two big fuses blow at the same time, which is what happened at the end of Stevens Avenue Monday about 4:30 p.m. “Turkeys in the line again,” Steffens said. A flock of about a dozen wild turkeys roam the west side of town, often roosting in trees in nearby Fiddle Creek or Cole Park. When they mi...
Over the last several weeks, I’ve felt slightly uneasy breaking the habit of strict social distancing and mask wearing to avoid infection. It was a justified queasiness. Following Christmas gatherings and indoor sporting events all over the country, an increase in viral spread was predictable and apparently is happening in our area. I’ll be donning a mask again when in crowded indoor spaces, including sporting events, small meetings in small rooms, and anywhere its likely we’re all breathing each other’s exhalations. That’s not the advice gi...
The Raiders hosted their annual Powerhouse Wrestling Tournament in Coulee Dam Dec. 22, bringing in competitors from as far away as Napavine, Washington and filling the Lake Roosevelt gym with over 100 athletes from 10 schools participating and finding out what they need to work on for the rest of the season. Three schools didn't make it because of the weather. The Raider boys' team had 11 members place in eight of the 13 weight categories, coming in third as a team with a score of 154, behind...
The Care and Share Food Bank last Friday gave out Christmas baskets of food to bout 150 clients, including families and a lot of elderly folks, said manager Carol Nordine. That number indicates need is up from past years. Last year’s big Christmas giveaway drew 115. A story in The Star recently reported that Second Harvest, a major food distributor to local food banks, is cutting back deliveries in Okanogan County. Care and Share is on the same route, but Nordine noted they only supply about 10 percent of the locals pantry’s supplies. Con...
The Raiders topped a mixed weekend with a very large lead Monday night over White Swan in Coulee Dam, beating the Cougars 85-44. The win came on the heels of a one-point loss to Omak on Saturday, which itself had followed a huge victory over Brewster's Bears, 71-60, on their home court, a game about which Raider Coach Jeremy Crollard had not been optimistic due to past experience with uneven officiating. "We left it all on the court when it came to Brewster," Crollard said. The Raiders played...
The Lady Raiders met a challenge by White Swan Monday night, fresh off a defeat by the Omak Lady Pioneers Saturday, to win 64-46. Starting off slow in the first quarter, Lake Roosevelt trailed to finish it behind three points, 11-8. And by the half the Lady Raiders had just reversed the advantage to lead 27-23. The pace was about to change. After the halftime break, Lake Roosevelt went into dominate mode, racking up another 37 points while holding White Swan again to 23 more. "The girls came...
School board directors will study whether to allow weighted grade point averages to be considered for graduation. Considering whether to pass a recommended policy on high school graduation requirements Monday night, Chairman George LaPlace and Superintendent Paul Turner each spoke in favor of tabling that discussion to give time for more discussion with students and staff. Weighted GPAs can add more points for higher-level courses. An honors course might gain half a point on a regular class in the same subject area, for instance. “It takes a li...
Local mayors decided against further studying whether their Regional Board of Mayors could consider taking over the Spring Canyon Cemetery. Meeting as the RBOM Dec. 7, the mayors voted to drop their research into taking over ownership of the cemetery currently owned by the local Lions Club. The club had approached the mayors about that possibility last August, and they’ve been looking into it ever since. Coulee Dam Mayor Bob Poch said his council was not in favor of it. City Clerk Stefani Bowden had asked the Municipal Research Services Corpora...
Sometimes, if it’s not one thing, it’s another when you’re dealing a federal agency that gives you money. Or takes it back. Nespelem’s school board learned Monday that some of their Impact Aid money was being clawed back. Impact Aid is a federal grant program for local educational agencies that have lost local property tax revenue due to the presence of non-taxable federal land. Superintendent Effie Dean explained that the Impact Aid agency had found the school district’s 2019-2020 school year application for Impact Aid faulty, for two years...
A trailer housing two families on E Street burned down Thursday on one of the coldest nights of the year so far, burning one man badly. "This is the devastation that no family should have to go through," Kimberly Minks wrote in an online message the next day. The fire started about 7 p.m. Dec. 1 on E Street, just west of the Bridgeport Highway. A friend, Crysta Harris, posted on Facebook her two kids were visiting at the time. She explained that two families were living in the home - a man with...
City leaders in Grand Coulee met with their engineers Monday to learn about options being recommended for upgrades to their wastewater treatment plant, estimated to cost $10.5 million. The good news is that the Dept. of Ecology has already stated it can fund the project. "You're in a real interesting situation," Gray and Osborne Engineer Nancy Wetch told the city council, noting that she's never seen funding promised without an application even submitted. But funded doesn't mean free. Wetch met...
The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce's first in-person winter event since 2019 was a success Saturday night, as community members turned out for the Vintners and Brewers dinner and auction. The annual auction was held as an online affair in 2020 and 2021 to meet restrictions or advice on in-person gatherings during the COVID-19 emergency. "It was huge," said Executive Director Roni Smith. "We couldn't have done it without all the volunteers, businesses, and community members who bought...
When it was all said and done, the Grand Coulee Dam School District Proposition No. 1 passed in each of the four counties where it was on the ballot earlier this month. The levy election was certified by county election officials in the office of each county auditor, who had to transmit their certifications on Tuesday to the state’s secretary of state. It was a squeaker, with vote tallying and signature checking often showing a winning margin in the 1-2% range and only in one county at times. But the final tally wasn’t as close. Overall, 1,7...
Electric City will set aside some of the money collected from tourists to make improvements to Coulee Playland, which sits on city-managed land. The city learned last month that it would need to invest in the campground to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act with an estimated $1 million in upgrades over coming years. City Clerk/Treasurer Peggy Nevsimal told the city council at their Nov. 22 meeting that the city usually budgets to spend money, itself, from its hotel/motel tax fund, but rarely if ever actually uses that budget line...
Lake Roosevelt's senior class trip to San Diego got a thumbs up from the school board Monday night, a reward for hard work at fundraising. "I have yet to see these kids not make goal," said class advisor Brandi Hansen. "They know what they want to do, and they're great at it." Their big trip at the end of May will take them on a tour of the USS Midway for at least three hours, to a nearby amusement park, and to the San Diego Zoo. The Midway is an aircraft carrier that was decommissioned in 1992...
Law enforcement officers from several agencies descended on a mobile home in Electric City Monday afternoon, after a bail bondsman reported he'd been shot at from inside the home and returned fire. He was there with a warrant to collect Christopher Morgan, 38, who had failed to appear for a court date in Spokane, according to Grand Coulee Police. The mobile home sits at the corner of Fifth Street and Sunny Drive toward the northwest corner of Electric City's residential neighborhood close to...
The National Weather Service is warning us to expect heavy snowfall from Tuesday night through Wednesday night, Nov. 29-30, that may make travel "difficult or impossible." An alert issued early Tuesday morning says people in the area from Highway 28 north, reaching to Wauconda and Republic, can expect 5-9 inches of snow, with mountain areas getting up to 10-15 inches. The snow is expected to start about 7 p.m. Tuesday night. Areas south of Highway 28 (the highway that connects Soap Lake and... Full story
Leaders in Electric City Tuesday night approved a slightly revised contract for police services with Coulee Dam after clarifying some language in it. The Electric City Council voted unanimously to approve the contract that will put the city’s law enforcement in the hands of Coulee Dam instead of Grand Coulee for the first time in many decades. Coulee Dam’s council voted last Wednesday to approve the contract with clarifications that had been worked out the prior two days after its last special meeting to consider the contract. Those inc...