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Brews that ‘Speak of Place’ Page A4
Headlight Herald
Tuesday, December 3, 2024 | Vol. 136, Issue 49
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www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com
Kidney center prepares for opening Land Use WILL CHAPPELL
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County commissioners hew own path in response to FEMA
Headlight Editor
ince the February closure of the U.S. Renal Care Dialysis clinic in Tillamook, patients with end stage renal disease have been forced to travel more than an hour for thrice-weekly, life-sustaining care. But that is all set to change in the coming weeks when the clinic reopens under the management of Dialysis Clinics Incorporated (DCI), a Nashville-based nonprofit, as the Tillamook Kidney Center. Dr. Doug Johnson, the Vice Chairman of DCI’s Board, said that he was enthusiastic about the opportunity to help bring dialysis back to Tillamook and stressed that it would not have been possible without the strong partnership of Adventist Health, and especially Adventist President Eric Swanson. “Eric and the Adventist team have been such incredible partners, and it was so inspiring to be able to visit the community, be able to spend time in the community,” Johnson said. “We’re so excited to be able to help provide this service.” The situation began unfolding in late January of this year, when patients at the U.S. Renal Care (USRC) dialysis clinic in Tillamook received a letter from the company’s management informing them that the center would be closing as of February 23, due to economic factors. That forced the clinic’s 11 patients to either transition to in-home treatments or travel to Lincoln City, Astoria or Forest Grove three times weekly to dialyze. “IT’s been rough, there for a month or two I had to be on the road by 3:30 in the morning to be there at 4:30, and for an old lady, that’s a long way,” said Sharon Gallino, a patient who was forced to seek care in Lincoln City. Fortunately, the early start time that forced the pre-dawn departures
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Photos by John Hay
Tillamook Adventist Patient Care Executive Heather Thompson, Dialysis Clinic Inc. Nurse manager Molly Lust and Tillamook Adventist President Erik Swanson next to one of the recently arrived machines that will treat patients when the Tillamook Kidney Center opens in the coming weeks.
has since shifted, but Gallino is still spending a minimum of six hours on travel and treatment on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and says that driving after treatments is grueling. Knowing of these challenges and especially concerned about the difficulty of travel when winter weather returned, Swanson immediately swung into action following the closure announcement looking for a way to get the center reopened. “I was on the phone every single day talking with people about dialysis, trying to find a good option for Tillamook,” Swanson said. Tillamook’s low number of dialysis patients, just 11 patients
at the time of closure, created a hurdle, as any for-profit company, like USRC, would not be able to make money operating a center. But after receiving a tip from a consultant, Swanson reached out to DCI, and a path towards reopening began to take shape. Dialysis Clinics Incorporated was founded in 1971 by Johnson’s father, Dr. Keith Johnson, a nephrologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was concerned about the hurdles preventing non-veterans from accessing dialysis care. Johnson would treat patients during the day and then stay late in the evening to dialyze several patients who were waiting for transplants and had
nowhere else to go for care. After hearing about an outpatient dialysis program in Seattle, the elder Johnson solicited a $100,000 charitable contribution from his father and opened the company’s first clinic in Nashville. Although Medicare started reimbursing dialysis providers for treatments in 1972, helping to alleviate the issues that had initially drawn Johnson to open a clinic, he saw that there was still a need for dialysis care in certain communities that wasn’t being met. The younger Johnson said that the company always partners with See KIDNEY TO, Page A3
Rockaway Beach ramps up higher ground project WILL CHAPPELL
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Headlight Editor
ive years after purchasing a property in the hills above the city, Rockaway Beach leadership has resumed forward progress toward moving the city’s fire station out of the tsunami inundation zone in the past year. Thomas Fiorelli of Fiorelli Consulting was contracted last November to create a strategic plan for the project, which was approved in May, and is currently working on building public awareness of and support for the project while exploring funding sources. “We have to build the support from our community, folks who know what we’re doing and support it,” Fiorelli said. “We have to then also get buy in from citizens in the local area that recognize how important it is and are willing to say, ‘yeah, I think this is valuable.’” The idea for the project first emerged in 2018 or 2019, when city leaders became concerned by the lack of properties outside the tsunami inundation zone and what that would mean for emergency response in the event of a tsunami. However, discussions stalled out during the coronavirus pandemic, until 2023 when City Manager Luke Shepard worked with council to acquire a ten-acre property in the hills above the north end of the city and expand the city’s urban growth boundary to encompass the parcel. Shepard also reached out to Fiorelli to ask for assistance in developing and funding a plan for the property. Council approved a contract with Fiorelli to develop a strategic plan for the project in November 2023 and approved the
A map of Rockaway Beach’s tsunami inundation zone with property purchased by the city for the higher ground project highlighted.
plan itself this May. Included in the plan was a rough estimate of the facility’s scope and budget. In addition to serving as a new fire station for the city’s department, the building would also house emergency services equipment for public works and space to accommodate local, state and federal agencies responding to emergent events. Fiorelli said that north Tillamook County currently lacks such a facility and that it could serve as a distribution point for emergency supplies around the area and place to congregate.
IN THIS ISSUE News Opinion Obituaries Sports Classifieds
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Fiorelli’s initial cost estimate for the project included in the strategic plan was $15-20 million, including adding utilities to the undeveloped property and necessary seismic mitigation measures for the facility to withstand a major earthquake. Fiorelli and his team are looking at possible outside funding sources to help support the budget and prioritizing foundation grants that would help support the planning stages of the
Headlight Editor
fter discussing the possibility of declining to select from among three options to update floodplain development codes in favor of a county-developed alternative at a meeting earlier in the month, Tillamook’s Board of County Commissioners officially chose that path on November 27. The decision was unanimously formalized in a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that informed the agency that the county will require projects in areas of special flood hazard to submit a letter from a biologist certifying that the project will cause no take of endangered species beginning December 1. Tillamook County Director of Community Development Sarah Absher has been a leader on the issue across the state and came up with the proposed alternative in conjunction with Molly Lawrence, a land-use attorney for the county. Absher and Lawrence argue that the new ordinance will meet the letter of federal law while allowing for more development in areas of special flood hazard, though it is unclear how FEMA will respond. Absher said that given this lack of clarity and with Oregonians for Floodplain Protection, a coalition opposed to the required development updates, set to file a lawsuit challenging the requirements in the coming weeks, the situation is far from resolved. “This is not the end, I would say this letter brings us forward into the beginning of a new process,” Absher told commissioners. Work on updating the requirements for participation in the FEMA’s flood insurance program has been ongoing since a 2009 lawsuit by the Audubon Society, which claimed that FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was harming coho salmon in Oregon in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). FEMA commissioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to investigate the claim and in 2016, the fisheries service released a report saying that the flood insurance plan was causing an illegal take of coho, other anadromous fish species and orca whales. This meant that FEMA needed to update the requirements of partner governments in the flood insurance plan to comply with federal statute. But that work was delayed, first by a 2016 suit against FEMA by Oregonians for Floodplain Protection and then by a 2018 congressional delay of three years passed by former Congressman Peter Defazio. When the implementation stay expired in 2021, progress resumed on updating the program, with a proposal for updates released in 2023. The biological opinion called for the program to update the ordinances for building in flood plains to achieve zero net loss in three areas of floodplain functionality that help preserve fish habitat: flood storage, water quality and riparian vegetation.
See PROJECT TO, Page A3
See FEMA TO, Page A4
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