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PENINSULA DAILY NEWS October 7, 2012 | $1.50
Port Townsend-Jefferson County’s Daily Newspaper
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PT cuts positions after shortfall Services bound to be affected
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BY CHARLIE BERMANT PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
PORT TOWNSEND — The city has eliminated 10 positions, a move that will affect services, City Manager David Timmons said. The cuts, which affect personnel in six departments, are in
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response to budget conditions, Timmons said in a memo distributed to department heads Friday. “The staff adjustments will necessarily affect the ability of the city to provide services and mean that other employees will need to assume greater responsibilities to provide needed services,� Timmons said in the memo. “It is with deep regret that I am making these changes and I am only doing so because they are necessary.�
A recently discovered $200,000 shortfall of income tax revenue was a factor, Timmons said, but not the only one. “The loss of the $200,000 is not the only reason for budget adjustments,� his memo said.
estate excise taxes continue to lag.� Another budget stress is the mandatory construction of a new water system. The Public Works and Engineering department was hardest hit, with three positions eliminated. The Water Department ‘Financial constraints’ loses one position, the Parks and Recreation Division was trimmed “The city continues to face by two, and the public pool at financial constraints, revenue 1919 Blaine St., loses one position. increases are less than consumer TURN TO CUTS/A6 price index increases [and] real
Putting Lake Mills to bed Blasting resumes to bring down 85-year-old Glines Canyon Dam BY ROB OLLIKAINEN PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — The big mud puddle behind what’s left of Glines Canyon Dam is about to get a lot smaller. Crews will resume blasting the 85-year-old dam Monday, lowering what’s left of Lake Mills by another 8 feet. The Elwha River currently is flowing over the top of the dam 73 feet above the canyon floor, Olympic National Park spokeswoman Rainey McKenna said. Thirteen months into the historic removal project, nearly two-thirds of the once-210-foot Glines Canyon Dam is gone. The last remnants of its older cousin — the Elwha Dam 9 miles downstream and 5 miles from the river mouth — were removed in March.
More than a year ahead of schedule Barnard Construction of Bozeman, Mont., the National Park Service contractor for physical dam removal, is more than a year ahead of schedule on the removal of Glines Canyon Dam. The project is scheduled to be completed by next spring. The dam-removal contract contains specific sediment-management holds to promote erosion of the lake bed and fish windows to prevent the sediment from reaching toxic levels for salmon. The $325 million federal river restoration project is intended to restore Elwha River salmon runs, as both dams were built without fish ladders. Crews used the current sediment-management hold to continue demolishing the Glines dam’s intake tower and to remove concrete rubble that had accumulated upstream from the dam. On Tuesday, the park used a heavy-lift helicopter to move hundreds of logs from the rim of the former reservoir to the exposed lake bed below. This was done to encourage new vegetation to grow, McKenna said. The eight-hour operation was funded by an Environmental Protection Agency grant that the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe obtained. Olympic National Park is posting regular updates on the dam-removal project at http://tinyurl.com/ 8st2klp.
KEITH THORPE (2)/PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
Above: Looking northeast, the Elwha River meanders through the former bed of Lake Mills into all that’s left of the lake behind Glines Canyon Dam in Olympic National Park. Left: Water from what remains of Lake Mills flows through a breach in Glines Canyon Dam as demolition continues Wednesday. The spillway gate to the right of the breach will be kept as an observation platform for park visitors.
________ Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
ORCAA recommends four air-quality monitors BY PAUL GOTTLIEB PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
SEQUIM — Fran McNair, the director of the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency, is recommending that four temporary air-quality monitors be purchased so that they can be placed in counties, including Clallam and Jefferson, to facilitate a study of air quality. If approved, the four monitors would be installed in Clallam County in January: three in Port Angeles and one in Sequim.
The following year, in 2014, some or all of the monitors would be placed in Port Townsend, McNair said. Purchase of McNair the monitors, which will measure particulates smaller than the 2.5-micron threshold already mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency, will be dis-
Jefferson, in which ORCAA regulates air quality. Environmental groups have been fighting the maximum 20-megawatt, $71 million biomass cogeneration expansion project being built in Port Angeles by Nippon Industries USA, which will burn wood waste to create electricity, and a similar $55 million, 24-megawatt biomass-facilSaturation studies ity expansion project at Port The monitors would be used Townsend Paper. McNair said the monitors are for “saturation studies� in six counties, including Clallam and meant to address concerns
cussed at the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency — or ORCAA — board of directors meeting at 5 p.m. Oct. 15 at the Sequim Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St., McNair said. “The focus of the meeting is ambient air-quality monitoring,� she said last week.
expressed by area residents about toxin-laden ultrafine particulates that fall under the EPA threshold. The monitors would measure the size of particulates that are between 0.3 and 10 microns, McNair said. “We want to look at air quality and the particulates that they are potentially breathing in,� she said. “We want to make sure it’s good, clean air,� she said. TURN
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INSIDE TODAY’S PENINSULA DAILY NEWS 96th year, 241st issue — 7 sections, 72 pages
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