CCP724 by C.M.I.

SERVING CURRY COUNTY SINCE 1946 www.currypilot.com

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2024

Brookings, Oregon

Disabled camper sues Curry County Brookings CORE Response, a homeless services organization many rely on, and it allowed him to charge his electric wheelchair. The Curry County Sheriff’s and Code Enforcement offices issued a trespassing notice for BY NATE SCHWARTZ the public space. Dated July Curry Coastal Pilot 11th, 2022, the notice stated that Curry County and several of its trespassing was prohibited in this area, and all persons and property employees could be heading to court after attorneys representing must be removed by July 13th, the firms of LeDuc Montgomery 2022. This is in violation of an Oregon Revised Statute against LLC and Albies and Stark LLC unlawful camp removal policies. filed a federal lawsuit regarding According to ORS 195.505, civil rights and disability laws. any notice must be given County officials attempted to 72-hours prior to any removal remove an unhoused camper of homeless individuals from through unconventional means. a camping site. This statute The plaintiff, John Malaer, also provides that any personal is a 65-year-old local advocate property at the camping site left for disabled and unhoused unclaimed must be delivered communities who was camping to an organization in the same in the lot near Shopping Center community as the camping Ave. and Zimmerman Lane. site, for easy retrieval. That A paraplegic with significant medical challenges, Malaer chose organization and its location this location because it was near must be listed on the trespassing notice, which the County failed

Lawsuit filed on violations of civil rights and disability law

to do in this instance. St. Timothy’s Reverand Cora Rose was made aware of the situation and pointed out to county ofﬁcials that their trespass

notice was not in compliance video evidence of ofﬁcers and therefore not valid. Code acknowledging the notice was Enforcement was notiﬁed and inactionable. rescinded the notice. The plaintiff Please see LAWSUIT, Page 4 and their representation provided

Chetco girls bring home championship from Medford The Chetco Basketball Club and is comprised of 2-4 Grade girls from Brookings. The team was formed in March of this year, but are progressing rapidly. The girls have been practicing twice a week and have played 23 games since April. They have played teams from across Oregon and California. The program was started to provide a year-round, competitive basketball environment for the youth in the community. “The girls have progressed tremendously since March both on and off the court,” said coach Tyler Wood. “As coaches, we could not be prouder.” This past weekend the team competed in the coed 4th grade division of the MBA Summer Kickoff Tournament at the Rogue Credit Union Community Complex in Medford. The girls faced the MBA Girls 4th grade team from Medford in the Championship game and won by a ﬁnal score of 21-6.

Cable installation to begin for OSU-led wave energy testing facility off Oregon Coast to test different technologies for harnessing the power of ocean waves and transmitting that energy to the local electrical grid.

BY MICHELLE KLAMPE Guest Article

Later this month, crews will begin installing the power and data cables that are essential to completing construction of a new wave energy testing facility off the Oregon Coast. The cables will support Oregon State University’s PacWave South, the ﬁrst prepermitted, utility-scale, gridconnected wave energy test site in the United States. When the facility is completed, wave energy developers will be able

Huge challenge “Transmitting power from wave-energy generators to shore in a form compatible with the regional power grid is a huge challenge, and cabled connection from PacWave South provides the capability to test powerdelivery technologies,” said Burke Hales, PacWave’s chief scientist and a professor in the OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

“These cables are highly specialized and their installation and burial is a keystone of wave energy development in the U.S.” The work includes installing four power and data cables ranging in length from about 10 to 13 continuous miles from a vault under the parking lot of Driftwood Beach State Park south of Newport out to the test site offshore. Louisiana-based subsea cable services contractor R.T. Casey is overseeing the installation of the cables. The work will be carried out by crews aboard three vessels and will likely be visible

to beachgoers and visitors for the duration of the installation process, which is expected to take six to seven weeks, depending on ocean conditions, said Dan Hellin, deputy director of PacWave. The cables will be anchored in an underground vault at Driftwood and will run through conduits from the shore under the beach, then come up out of the

seafloor about 1 mile out. From there to the test site, the cable will be buried about three feet under the seafloor. The subsea cables, which were manufactured in Norway by the Paris-based firm Nexans, were transported via freighter to Louisiana and transferred to Offshore Support Vessel (OSV) Please see CABLES, Page 10

Schedule on page 3

INDEX

Phone Number: 541-813-1717 • Address: 519 Chetco Avenue, Unit 7, Brookings, OR 97415 • Email: Circulation@CountryMedia.net

Opinion

Classifieds Crossword Answer Calendar of Events

Crossword Puzzle