10 years ago this week — 2015

It looks like it’s curtains for the cormorants.

In a scaled-back version of the management plan it first proposed last summer, the U.S. Army Corps announced Friday that it plans to kill 11,000 double-crested cormorants on East Sand Island and use a combination of nonlethal tactics to reduce the number of breeding pairs on the island from about 13,000 to 5,000.

“We’re definitely prepared to litigate and seek an injunction,” said Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland. That society has successfully pursued lawsuits on similar issues in the past, he said.

“All the concerns we raised several months ago are still in place,” Sallinger said. He and others question the science behind the Corps’ plan and think the response is too drastic.

The Knappa Loggers’ FFA forestry team members had friendly revenge on their minds Saturday.

There was revenge against opponent Clatskanie, which beat Knappa last May to win its first FFA state forestry championship.

And there was friendly revenge against Clatskanie’s coach Jeff Skirvin, who two years earlier led Knappa to its fourth FFA state forestry championship before taking a teaching job with his alma mater.

On Sept. 27, 1963, two months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy visited Tongue Point in Astoria and foretold of the plan to save the former U.S. Navy reserve fleet base from the wrecking ball. It would become a helicopter base for the U.S. Coast Guard, he said, as well as a weapons-procurement training school for senior civilian and military personnel.

Kennedy had the part about the training school right, But rather than weapons, Tongue Point Job Corps Center opened Feb. 2, 1995, as a school for young men (and shortly thereafter women) to procure vocational skills and jobs as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.

WARRENTON — Warning of a potentially substantial disruption, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended that Oregon LNG perform a thorough analysis of the impact of its proposed terminal on commercial recreational fishing in the Columbia River.

The department, in comments on the project in January to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, found that Oregon LNG has not sufficiently characterized the local importance of fishing and the possible disruption during the construction and operation of the liquefied natural gas export terminal on 96 acres along the Skipanon Peninsula.

The project could interfere with access to the Skipanon Marina, popular recreational chinook and coho salmon fishing at the mouth of the Skipanon River known as Buoy 10 and recreational crabbing in the estuary near the proposed terminal’s berthing dock and outside the mouth of Youngs Bay.

50 years ago — 1975

The Lower Columbia region lacks three fundamental elements that are needed to attract commerce, Alfred Eschbach, assistant Port of Portland director, said Friday.

Eschbach told members of the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce the area needs to attract producers, processors and consumers of goods in order to cultivate commerce.

He said the area has a good harbor, adequate transportation facilities and access to a “hinterland” where agricultural products are produced — three other fundamental elements that breed commerce.

“I think you have to concentrate on getting fundamental industry in the area, which gives constant employment and a high-level tax base,” Eschbach said.

He advised local leaders to form a “committee of 100” to attract consumers of goods.

Eschbach indicated there is potential for development of Astoria as a commercial center because of the projected commercial growth of the Northwest and Pacific Rim nations.

The Port of Umatilla announced AMAX has signed a purchase option for 1,000 acres of port-owned land at the McNary Industrial Park site near Hermiston.

Bill Penney, manager of the port, said AMAX also is negotiating with adjacent property owners to buy more land for a site for its proposed aluminum plant now planned for Warrenton.

It also was learned former U.S. Rep. Wendell Wyatt, who now is a Portland attorney, has been retained by AMAX.

The exact nature of his work for AMAX is uncertain, but some sources have indicated he has been retained to help effect a transfer of the company’s power contract with the Bonneville Power Administration in the event AMAX decides to build its aluminum plant somewhere besides Warrenton.

State Rep. Bill Wyatt, D-Warrenton, said today he has solid evidence indicating AMAX decided some time ago against building an aluminum plant in Warrenton.

Claiming it would take “nothing short of an act of God” to change the company’s mind, Wyatt said AMAX is using its investment in the Warrenton site as a lever to improve its bargaining position to get another site in Oregon.

He also advised Clatsop County residents “to look down the road at other possibilities for economic growth.”

An AMAX spokesman asked to comment on Wyatt’s statement said it is a long shot that the company will build its aluminum plant in Warrenton, but stressed AMAX has no concrete alternate site.

The spokesman also said AMAX was looking at sites other than Warrenton not because the company wanted to but because Oregon officials advised it to do so.

Put together a little card-playing, some friendly chatter, a book-lending library and varied craft activities and the result is a drop-in center for senior citizens.

North Coast senior citizens are taking advantage of the drop-in facilities available to them and seem to be enjoying the opportunity to get together with people of similar interests and meeting new people.

75 years ago — 1950

An ordinance forbidding use of power equipment for excavating, clearing or filling land within the city limits without a permit from the city engineer was introduced by the city commission at its Monday night meeting.

The ordinance cites the fact that such excavation in the past has done damage to buried sewers and drains.

The ordinance has been considered by the city commission for many months. Its introduction was expedited by the Irving Avenue slide. The city engineering department contends that movement of earth by power equipment is a dangerous procedure in many parts of the city, where slides are possible.

The Pillsbury mill here will operate only one of its two units as long as the flour business in the Northwest continues in its present depressed condition, B.J. Greer, Los Angeles, division president of Pillsbury Mills, announced Wednesday.

Greer said it was hoped that the one unit could be operated regularly, four to five days a week, and provide regular employment for about 60% of the present crew.

E.T. Christenson, Astoria plant manager, said the mill employs at present 96 men in its operating crew. Around 55 to 60 of these men will be retained.

Green, who visited here with other company officials, issued a statement that the decision to operate only one unit was “due to loss of export markets for flour and loss of domestic business due to high wheat support prices in the Pacific Northwest, and also prohibitive freight rates.”

Fresh crab has been available locally for consumers most of the winter so far, but the supply has enabled only one cannery to produce regularly, a survey of packers, fishermen and retail markets indicated Thursday.

Most plants which ordinarily pack crab meat reported “spasmodic” operations, as blizzards and persistent cold kept most crab fishermen ashore.

No estimate of the amounts handled was available, but one Astoria retailer said his supply had been continual although limited in quantity, and he had been able to offer fresh crab without interruption. Another market operator said he had kept a stock on hand during four weeks of the past six.

An economic survey of highway needs in the northwest corner of Oregon will start within 10 days to two weeks, R.H. Baldock, state highway engineer, informed the chamber of commerce by telephone today.

The economic survey had been asked by the chamber and the Lower Columbia Highway Association, as a preliminary to getting improvement work done on U.S. Highway 30 from Rainier to Astoria.

The highway commission authorized the survey following a visit by a delegation from the Lower Columbia Highway Association in December, plus a visit from a Warrenton delegation asking for shortening of U.S. Highway 101 between Astoria and Warrenton via a fill across Youngs Bay.

Smelt fishing in the Columbia was still halted Saturday morning by ice floes, according to Mrs. Edna Bradley, secretary of the smelt fishermen’s union.

Astoria retailers reported they had received only a few boxes during the week.

Fishermen were hoping to get out Saturday night, Mrs. Bradley said. Whether the smelt were there to be caught she declined to guess, but said the evidence so far received was discouraging. A boat which went out earlier this week returned with a haul of only 70 smelt.