News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Anyone who has had problems with dangerous dogs in their neighborhoods may have a new reason to hope for improvement. Although it may not be financially practical for local cities to set up their own animal control facility, it’s possible the cities could contract with the Colville Tribes for those services. “The Regional Board of Mayors talked about having the cities basically get together and possibly contract [for animal control],” Grand Coulee Mayor Paul Townsend said at the March 19 city council meeting. “They were proposing to find so...
A bull-riding champion will be teaching kids the daredevil sport of bull riding in Nespelem next week. Local legend Shane Proctor — former Grand Coulee resident, Lake Roosevelt High School graduate, and the 2011 National Finals Rodeo World Champion Bull Rider — is hosting his 10th annual bull- and steer-riding school at the Nespelem Rodeo Grounds next Tuesday and Wednesday, April 2-3. The bull-riding school starts at 9 a.m. A barrel-racing school follows April 4-5. The bull-riding school is all booked up, but is free to watch. Proctor will be...
Wouldn’t it be nice to get to dump anything for free during the annual free spring clean up dump week? It won’t happen this year, but it may happen next year. March 30 to April 6 is the week when area residents can take their yard waste for free to the transfer station. The Grand Coulee City Council, mayor, and city clerk discussed allowing residents to be able to throw away anything for free, not just yard waste, during that week, at their March 19 meeting. “My thing is, we have an opportunity to utilize this to get some of these homes that we...
Wouldn’t it be nice to get to dump anything for free during the annual free spring clean up dump week? It won’t happen this year, but it may happen next year. March 30 to April 6 is the week when area residents can take their yard waste for free to the transfer station. The Grand Coulee City Council, mayor, and city clerk discussed allowing residents to be able to throw away anything for free, not just yard waste, during that week, at their March 19 meeting. “My thing is, we have an opportunity to utilize this to get some of these homes that we...
Grand Coulee 3/19 - At Grand Coulee Dam’s Third Powerhouse, between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m., someone reportedly opened a water valve that was left open for about three hours, causing some flooding inside an elevator shaft and elevator control room. An officer was unable to lift fingerprints from the valve. A note that was taped to the wall is being sent to the state crime lab to try to lift prints from it. The police report states that the valve will be secured in a way that only authorized employees of the dam can open it. 3/20 - Washington State P...
Evelyn Russell doesn't know how many people are involved in an annual effort to put together dozens of quilts for the benefit of people in need, around the world and at a nearby crisis shelter. "We've got a box in the back," Russell said, standing inside the sanctuary of Zion Lutheran Church in Grand Coulee Saturday, with 91 colorful quilts covering every available surface, anointed by sunlight coming through the colored glass. The box collects pieces that quilters finish at home. The tops and...
A $13.6 million fire station being built for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation along SR-155 has faced numerous delays, and a bigger delay now with the termination of the contract between the bureau and the construction company. The contract for the project was awarded to Post Falls, Idaho-based Innovative Construction & Design Ltd. in 2016, with construction beginning in April of 2017. The building was originally scheduled to be complete in April 2018, according to a bureau press release issued in...
Those who drive around Electric City regularly may be surprised this summer to find that the Y-shaped intersection near city hall will be losing the Western Avenue branch off that intersection that currently forks into Western and Stevens Avenue. Electric City is building some sidewalks along Coulee Boulevard, which is also highway 155, as well as along Grand Avenue this summer. Included in these projects is a sidewalk that will wrap around the front of city hall and eliminate the portion of...
One has devoted her career to the success of a local institution, the other just started a new business last year to fill a local need and fulfill a longtime ambition. Solveig Chaffee's Voltage Coffee House was named business of the year, and hospital CEO Ramona Hicks was honored as achiever of the year at the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce annual awards banquet Thursday at Pepper Jack's Bar and Grille. "Thank you for bringing a new business to the community ... putting in your own...
Electric City needs to upgrade a critical piece of infrastructure that every person in the city depends on, and for which the city will need to arrange several hundred thousand dollars in financing. Electric City’s 1960s-era sewage lift station, which pumps sewage to the wastewater treatment facility in Grand Coulee, needs to be upgraded soon. The facility at the southern end of Grand Avenue has two pumps, one that is about 60 years old and no longer works, the other just a few years old. The Electric City council discussed the issue at t...
OLYMPIA--Washington residents could vote to make daylight saving time year-round under a bill state senators passed on Tuesday, March 12. Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5139 was approved in a 46-3 vote, just two days after clocks were set forward. The measure is co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of five senators and was introduced by Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside. This is the third year in a row Honeyford has pitched the daylight saving bill. “With the time change, we find there’s more auto accidents, more heart attacks, more strokes and...
The Keller Ferry, which connects SR-21 from the Wilbur area to the Keller area, will be out of service from April 1 to April 7 for a permanent repair to be done on a weld crack that had closed the ferry from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2. A temporary repair had been done to reopen the ferry, and when the weather warms up a permanent repair can be made, explained Ryan Overton, who works for the Eastern Region Communications of the Washington State Department of Transportation. Overton said the repair may actually take less time, but they are giving the...
The Native American Voting Rights act was signed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee at a widely attended ceremony, Thursday. “We believe these three steps will allow tribal members to help us form a more perfect union and make good decisions about our destiny,” said Inslee of the changes the bill makes. The state House of Representatives passed an amended version of the bill with a 95-3 vote on March 5. House members voting against were Reps. Bob McCaslin, R- Spokane Valley, Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, and Matt Shea. R-Spokane Valley. The bill passed the...
Grand Coulee Police 3/13 - An officer responding to a 911 hangup call originating at the senior center was assured by volunteers who work there that there was no emergency there. - Someone allegedly driving under the influence was reported leaving the hospital in a grey sedan, but an officer was unable to find such a driver. 3/14 - A car reported as stolen out of Coulee City a few days earlier was found on Cardinal Road. A resident in the area didn’t know where the car came from or who was driving it. The owner of the car came and got it. - A...
People who felt the loss of convenience when The Variety Store in Grand Coulee closed down will welcome the news that a new proprietor will open a new store by the same name in the same building. Launi Ritter, who had attempted to come to rental terms with former owners of the building between Safeway and Coulee Hardware over a year ago. She and her parents, Doug and Mary Lou Lockard, had researched the business and were ready to start it up, but could not find a location with the right terms. That changed Feb. 27, Ritter said, when A. J. Gerar...
Darnell Sam has been appointed to the Nespelem District Position #2 on the Colville Business Council, following the expulsion of Andrea George, who had filled that position. The CBC named Sam to the council seat following a 94-53 vote by tribal members held at a March 5 Nespelem District meeting, according to a March 6 press release from the Colville Tribes. The council had expelled George Feb. 21 on ethics charges including improper influence, gross misconduct and malfeasance. George’s supporters insisted she was being expelled for calling int...
Discipline issues at Lake Roosevelt Elementary School are going down, and students are performing better in English Language Arts and math, according to the principal. Principal Lisa Lakin spoke to the Grand Coulee Dam Area School District board of directors March 11 about the elementary school, and presented a draft of an “Elementary School Improvement Plan.” Lakin discussed the need to improve students scores in English Language Arts and math, but said that scores are going up. “We have students that have already made, this year, two or th...
Out of five candidates, Kirk Marshlain has been chosen as the new Lake Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School principal. The Grand Coulee Dam School District board approved giving Superintendent Paul Turner the go-ahead to hire Marshlain at their March 11 meeting. “I think he’ll be a great addition to our team,” Turner said about Marshlain. Marshlain currently works as a special education teacher in the Wenatchee School District and has worked at a home for troubled youth, Turner said. He’s currently finishing an administrative internship in Wena...
The walls of the Grand Coulee were populated with ice climbers Saturday, that breed of outdoor enthusiast who enjoys scaling giant icicles hundreds of feet high. The pair in this photo, one at the top and one midway up, scaled the ice just north of the Million Dollar Mile on SR-155. Here's a video - Climbing Ice from The Star on Vimeo....
3th District reps to hold town hall meeting Reps. Mike Steele, R-Chelan, and Keith Goehner, R-Dryden, will hold a “town hall” meeting on Saturday, March 23, at Wenatchee Valley College’s Grove Recital Hall, 1300 Fifth Street from 10 a.m. to noon. The lawmakers will provide an update on the 2019 legislative session. Community members in the 12th District, which includes much of the Grand Coulee Dam area, are invited to attend, ask questions and share their comments about state government-related issues. Local kids to star The Missoula Children...
After a delivery last week had added to the meager stores at the Care and Share Food Bank a couple weeks ago, volunteers came once again to unload another truck on Thursday, this time stuffing shelves with the proceeds made possible by local donations last fall. If you wondered exactly when that donation you made at Safeway to the local food bank last November or December would actually arrive, the answer is last week. "This is the time of year we really need that," said Carol Nordine, the...
Not only did dozens of gigantic floods shape the local landscape thousands of years ago, they raced across the solid-rock remains of hundreds of layers of lava flows that built the local bedrock millions of years earlier. So said Geologist Nick Zentner to roughly 130 people at the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center on Saturday, brought to town by the Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club. Zentner, who hosts the video series "Nick on the Rocks," spoke for over an hour in the upstairs theater in the Visitor...
Grand Coulee 3/4 - A man said he had been kicked out of his grandmother’s Dill Avenue house, and that his girlfriend was still there, felt unsafe, and wasn’t allowed to leave. The man also said he was told his uncles would kill him on the grandmother’s order if he returned to the place. An officer spoke to the girlfriend, who said she did feel unsafe and wanted to leave. The grandmother told the officer that the man had threatened to burn the house down, and that the girlfriend was under her foster care, for which she had no paperwork. The g...
Are you interested in helping make a difference in the local cities, parks, schools, hospital, or elsewhere? There are 28 local offices up for election this fall, including positions on city councils, school boards, and various districts in the area. Those interested in running need to file their candidacy with their county elections office between May 13 and 17. Cities Electric City has four city council positions, as well as the mayor’s office, up for election this fall. Three of the four council positions are for four-year terms; the fourth...
Snow drifts across U.S. 2 west of Davenport Wednesday in conditions that had Lincoln County Sheriff Wade Magers and others cautioning motorists about hazardous roads, some of which were closing frequently with drifts, even as basketball teams were heading to a state tournament in Spokane. With low temperatures at night and not much melting, if any, during the day, snow conditions remain suited for drifting, something this region hasn't seen much of in recent history. The forecast is on page 8....