Thank you for your interest in reading The Astorian. Here are a few stories that you might have missed this week:

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When January rolls around, it’s typically the end of the road for Christmas trees. The lights come off, and once-festive pines find new homes sidled up next to trash bins.

This season, the Necanicum Watershed Council is hoping to give those trees a second life.

On Saturday, the nonprofit is collecting clean Christmas trees at its office in Seaside for habitat restoration work on the main stem of the Necanicum River.

“It’s actually a pretty popular project across Oregon, because it’s a great way to get your used Christmas trees out of the dump and into the stream where it offers nutrients,” said Sarah Walker, the Necanicum Watershed Council’s operations director.

It’s not the first time something like this has happened on the North Coast. In years past, the Necanicum Watershed Council and other organizations like the North Coast Watershed Association and North Coast Land Conservancy have put on similar programs. But a new partnership is helping the watershed council take on that work in a bigger way.

Last year, the nonprofit began collecting Christmas tree donations from the Home Depot, helping to up the amount of materials available for habitat restoration. Walker said the nonprofit is working with a small grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to place those trees and new ones collected this year in local streams.

It’s not an overnight process — in fact, the roughly 170 trees collected last year are still sitting around on dry land.

“A lot of these trees come from tree farms, and so sometimes they use different fertilizers, and then sometimes they use different sprays on them,” said Hugh Ahnatook, the nonprofit’s tribal lands and waters steward. “And to have them sit out for a year alleviates a lot of those chemicals and contaminations that we don’t want to put in the river.”

See the story by Olivia Palmer by clicking here.

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Clatsop Community College is putting $100,000 toward its recently expanded nursing program with the help of a new grant from Providence Health & Services.

The funding, which the college has designated for the 2025-2026 school year, builds upon an initial $100,000 grant awarded last year — money that has helped expand the program’s reach amid a nationwide nurse shortage spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Now, more than ever, we need to meet the needs of filling a lot of empty spots that are available for registered nurses,” said Tina Kotson, the college’s interim director of nursing and allied health.

The initial funding helped bring the college’s nursing cohort up from 20 to 24 students, representing a 20% increase in admissions and the potential to add more than a dozen extra trained nurses to the community over the next four years. That first expanded cohort will be graduating this spring, with a second expanded cohort graduating the following year.

Looking ahead, Kotson said the new grant will help the college maintain the same commitment for the group of students starting in September.

The money has also allowed the college to put more resources toward admissions, recruitment and retention, purchase new equipment and hire additional adjunct instructors. Those changes have been a game-changer for supporting the program’s larger cohorts, Kotson said.

“It may not sound like a lot, but that’s four more people that we need equipment for, whether it’s equipment in the lab, whether it’s extra manikins, IV poles and pumps, whether it’s manikins that we use for simulation,” Kotson said. “So the grant that Providence has given us — the first grant — has allowed us to accept those 24 students, those extra four bodies, and actually serve them and the rest of the group in a way that they’re getting their needs met, they’re staying in the program, they’re going to graduate. And now with this new grant, we’re going to be able to continue that commitment, because without that, it would be very difficult to accept more than 18 to 20 students every year.”

Take a look at the story by Olivia Palmer by clicking here.

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— Derrick DePledge