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Headlight Herald
Tuesday, February 27, 2024 | Vol. 136, Issue 08
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Work underway on Sand Lake Road WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
W
ork to repair the washout on Sand Lake Road just south of Tierra Del Mar that occurred in December’s storms began on February 12, and should be complete by late March or early April. The initial repair will reopen a single lane of traffic, with a signal regulating traffic flow, while work on repairing both lanes of the road is undertaken, with completion expected in fall 2025. A 175-foot section of Sandlake Road located just south of the unincorporated community of Tierra Del Mar washed out during heavy rains on December 6. Tillamook County Public Works Director Chris Laity said that staff in his department had quickly realized that fully repairing both lanes would be an extensive process and decided to take a multi-phase approach to the project. The first phase of the project began on February 12, and is being overseen by Geostabilization International, with Advance Excavation from Garibaldi working alongside. This phase will cost $700,000 and allow for the northbound lane of traffic to reopen after the slope underneath it is stabilized. That stabilization will be achieved with the placement of 30-foot-long screws that are drilled into the earth to anchor a drain mat and rebar mat, which serve as the base for a stabilizing, shotcrete wall. Once that work is complete, concrete barriers will be installed along the abrupt edge and tempo-
PHOTO COURTESY TILLAMOOK PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT.
Workers blasting shotcrete onto the rebar mat base beneath the lane of Sandlake Road that will be reopened in late March or early April.
rary signals placed to regulate the flow of traffic. Laity said that the $700,000 budget includes funds for the county to purchase the temporary signals, as it is a more costeffective option than renting. Laity said that the lane’s shoulder may be widened and graveled to allow easier transit for wide
vehicles and that the signals will be solar-powered and operate on a time delay. There will be no load restriction on the road. Funding for the work will initially come from the public works contingency fund, before reimbursement is sought from the Oregon Department of Transporta-
tion and Federal Highway Administration (FHA). Both the state and federal governments declared a state of emergency in response to the storm, freeing up money to pay for projects like the one on Sandlake Road. Once the temporary fix is complete, focus will turn to a perma-
nent solution to reopen both lanes of traffic on the road. Currently, engineers at Haley Aldrich and Dowl are working on conceptual designs for the project, which they will then submit to the FHA. The FHA will then use those conceptual designs as a basis to field bids for final engineering and construction work on the project. Laity said that the engineers working on the conceptual designs recently provided two potential approaches for the project’s base, a slope with reinforced soil for increased stabilization or a mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) wall. The slope-stabilization option has a preliminary cost estimate of $1.9 million, while the MSE wall would carry a projected price tag of $2.7 million. Laity said that both options would offer relatively similar stability and that the decision on which to employ would come down to several factors, including cost, environmental impacts and land use restrictions. The road’s alignment, which will remain the same following the repairs, runs through a piece of Oregon Parks and Recreation Department land, meaning that department will need to be consulted. So too will the Department of Land Conservation and Development, whose approval would be needed for an exception to Oregon’s 18th land use planning goal regulating beaches and dunes to allow for bank stabilization along the shore should the slope-stabilization option be pursued. Laity said that he hopes the second phase of the project will be complete by fall 2025.
County Commissioners apply for RAISE grant WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
Tillamook’s board of county commissioners applied for a $25 million grant through the federal Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program at their meeting on February 21. If awarded, the funds would go towards the construction of a three plus mile section of the Salmonberry Trail in Rockaway Beach. The board also announced their intent to award a contract for more
than $500,000 in electrical work at the fairgrounds, was briefed on childcare in the county, accepted a $25,000 grant from the state for the county’s family court program, and approved the purchase of two new pickup trucks for the parks department. RAISE grant application The Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program is part of the Biden administration’s infrastructure rebuilding efforts
and invests in projects enhancing road, rail, transit and port projects. Rockaway Beach’s proposed trail would run between Washington and Beach Streets for just over three miles and lie immediately adjacent to the railroad tracks owned by the Port of Tillamook Bay and utilized by the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad. Salmonberry Trail Foundation Communications and Development Director Gavin Mahaley appeared at the meeting to discuss the grant application and told the commissioners that the RAISE program
had more funds available than many others that could be used for the trail. With that in mind, staff at the foundation had identified the Rockaway Beach project as being the best match along the 82-mile pathway of the trail. Rockaway Beach’s city government has already won two grants in the past, one for $60,000 that helped to collect community feedback on the project last summer and another for $750,000 from the Oregon Department of Transportation that will pay for 30% of the project’s design costs.
The proposed pathway would add dedicated pedestrian facilities to large sections of the city where the only current option for pedestrians is to walk on the shoulder of Highway 101. Its north end at Beach Street would be adjacent to Neah-Kah-Nie Middle and High Schools and seven new crossings of Highway 101 would be added, including one at the schools. Mike Sellinger, a senior planning associate from Alta Design, also appeared at the meeting to
See COUNTY, Page A4
A legislative update FTLAC briefed on HCP process from Senator Weber WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
Oregon State Senator Suzanne Weber recently sat down for a brief conversation with the Headlight Herald to discuss the ongoing legislative session and what she has been working on. Like many legislators in Salem, Weber is supportive of efforts to recriminalize certain drugs and is also prioritizing maintaining local control of schools, conducting a study of issues with Highway 30 and restoring recreational immunity across the state. Weber, who sits on the senate’s education committee, said that one of her focuses in that committee has been opposing senate bill 1583, which aims to stop school boards from using discriminatory policies when selecting books. Weber said that the bill was redundant with other state laws already on the books and that it raised concerns about
diminishing local control of schools, which she opposes. “We still have small school districts, people who are interested in the people who live in their school districts and the people that come to their school districts and I think they need to be acknowledged,” Weber said. “I think that local control needs to be maintained in a lot of different areas, how do you get buy in if you don’t have local control?” Regarding Measure 110, which decriminalized the possession of small amounts of hard drugs in 2020, Weber said that she agrees with her fellow Republican lawmakers’ desire to reinstate criminal penalties. Weber said that she was “completely in line” with law enforcement and district attorneys who wanted to see possession recriminalized. “I think that we have to take a stand rather than just fluff this up and I the way to go is a class A
See LEGISLATIVE, Page A7
IN THIS ISSUE News Opinion Obituaries Sports Classifieds
A2-4 A5-6 A7 A9-10 A11-16
The Forest Trust Lands Advisory Committee met on February 23, to discuss their testimony at an upcoming board of forestry meeting and hear a presentation about the development of the habitat conservation plan for western Oregon state forests. Oregon Department of Forestry staff detailed the reasons for pursuing the new conservation plan, which they say will give more certainty to the department’s harvest sales and reduce the risk of lawsuits. The meeting began with State Forester Cal Mukumoto briefly addressing the assembled committee members. Mukumoto told them that he was in the final stages of developing his recommendation on approval of the habitat conservation plan (HCP), which he plans to share next week ahead of the board of forestry’s meeting on March 6 and 7. Mukumoto said that during three recent listening sessions he had held with the public to gather feedback on the HCP, responses divided generally into two groups:
conservationists in support of the HCP and those who depended on timber revenues and opposed it. Coos County Commissioner John Sweet said that he felt conservationists’ pleasure with the proposed plan signaled that it was not a good compromise and that it should be revised with more consideration given to economic impacts. Mukumoto did not give any indication as to what he was planning to recommend but said that he would share a copy of his recommendation with county commissioners when it is complete. Following the opening remarks, State Forest Division Chief Mike Wilson and Resource Support Unit Manager Nick Palazotto began their presentation about the history of the HCP. Wilson shared a brief timeline of conservational lawsuits and developments that have affected the state forests since the 1980s. HCPs have been a contentious subject throughout that period and there have been three distinct processes involving them, including the current one. An HCP was adopted and in force in the Elliott State Forest
in southern Oregon from 19952001, before updates to the list of protected species rendered it moot. A proposed HCP was developed for all western Oregon state forests between 1998 and 2009 before its passage eventually failed. That failure left the department operating under employing takeavoidance management style on the forests, which Wilson said leads to significant costs. Take avoidance entails performing regular surveys of forestlands to determine the location of endangered species and create plans to avoid incidentally taking, or harming, them. Increasing protections for the two terrestrial species of concern in western Oregon state forests, the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet, have caused increased surveying costs for those species. Wilson said that updates to the marbled murrelet survey protocol in 2003 and spotted owl survey protocol in 2013 had doubled costs, and that a new protocol coming for murrelets in 2026 was expected to double those costs again. Wilson said that the current apSee FTLAC, Page A4
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