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Headlight Herald
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 | Vol. 137, Issue 16
$2.00
www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com
100,000 fins clipped at 36th annual Weber Tillamook Anglers Fin Clipping Day concerned
with Democrats transport proposal
WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
T
wo to three hundred Tillamook County residents assembled at Whiskey Creek Fish Hatchery on April 12, for the annual Tillamook Anglers Fin Clipping Day. By the end of the day, the volunteers had removed around 100,000 adipose fins from Spring Chinook salmon, which will be released in the waters of the Trask River in July. “That’s our future,” said Tillamook Anglers President Jim Skaar, “the kids that are doing this, someday they’re going to catch these fish.” The Tillamook Anglers were born in 1987, when Jerry Dove and other local fishermen were looking for ways to support local salmonid populations after the closure of hatch box programs run by the state of Oregon. Two years later, a friend mentioned a disused University of Oregon hatchery that had operated on Whiskey Creek along Netarts Bay, that could help with the group’s efforts. But when Dove went searching for the hatchery it took him several passes along Netarts Bay Road to find the property, which had become completely overgrown with blackberries. After finding the hatchery, Dove requested permission from the state to take over the property, and after receiving it, the anglers set to work removing overgrowth, rehabilitating the fish rearing ponds and building a new maintenance shed and structure around the ponds. Even as the property underwent maintenance, repairs and additions, the anglers hosted their first annual Fin Clipping Day in 1989, welcoming members of the community to clip the adipose fins from young salmon fry, marking them as hatchery-bred fish that can be kept if caught. Fish for the hatchery come from the Trask River Hatchery run by the Oregon Department of Fish and
WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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Headlight Photos by Will Chappell
(Top) Volunteers manned the fin clipping line throughout the day, removing adipose fins from anesthetized Spring Chinook salmon fry. (Bottom) A volunteer expertly clips the fin from a fry.
Wildlife, representing a quarter of the 400,000 Spring Chinook raised by the hatchery each year, according to Skaar. The fish are hatched from eggs gathered from returning female fish each fall and hatched and kept until they develop eyes at the Trask River Hatchery, when 100,000 are transferred to the Whiskey Creek Fish Hatchery. On the day of the fin clipping, volunteers began arriving at 8:30 a.m. and were welcomed by coffee and donuts, before taking up posiSee ANGLERS, Page A3
Miami-Foley Road bridge work begins Staff Report Crews placed temporary traffic signals at two locations on MiamiFoley Road on April 13, kicking off a project to build new bridges over Crystal and Dry Creeks that will be completed by November. Work is being undertaken by
the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), with a budget of $3.3 million and a mix of state and federal funding, including money from the Federal Highway Administration, ODOT and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Initial damage to the culverts that were installed at the two creeks occurred during a 2015 storm, which set the process in motion to replace both with bridges. By 2023, designs for both bridges had been completed, when a December storm caused a 30-foot washout at Crystal Creek, around milepost 8.8, after the Miami River rose four feet in one day. Thanks to the already completed plans and courtesy of materials stockpiled by Tillamook County Public Works, crews were able to complete a temporary bridge replacement at Crystal Creek and have the road reopened within three weeks. Now, the permanent replacement at Crystal Creek and a bridge to replace the culvert at Dry Creek are being constructed, with both using concrete beam
One of the two temporary signals at the Crystal Creek temporary bridge.
structures. The Crystal Creek Bridge will include nine 60-foot beams, while the Dry Creek Bridge will have nine 50-foot beams. Traffic on the bridges will be restricted to one lane throughout construction, metered by the temporary signals, and two full, nighttime closures will occur during the project to allow the contractor to
set the beams. ODOT will provide notice before those closures. FEMA funds are available for the project thanks to Governor Tina Kotek’s emergency declaration in response to the 2023 storms. Construction is expected to be completed by November and more information can be found on ODOT’s website.
s the long legislative session in Salem passes the halfway mark, State Senator Suzanne Weber is apprehensive about the proposed transportation package put forward by Democrats in Salem last week. Weber said that she was uneasy about the impacts of tax and fee increases on her constituents, and the absence of benefit for the heightened costs, while taking Democrats to task for their lack of transparency and bipartisanship in developing the bill. “It’s been said that we’re going to sit down and we’re going to negotiate several things in this structure. So far, no one has been approached to work on that,” Weber said. “It needs to be a team approach because it’s got to be more than just the Democrats deciding this, it’s got to be a concerted effort between both sides.” Weber is a member of the legislature’s joint transportation committee but said that as of last week she had only received the four-page document released to the public describing the proposed package. In the document, Democrats proposed a 20 cent in the state’s gas tax, from 40 to 60 cents, implemented in four phases by 2032, increasing title and registration fees, as well as the weight-mile tax, almost doubling the state’s payroll tax, instituting a road-user charge for electric vehicles, implementing a 1% fee on new vehicle sales and creating a 3% tax on tire sales. In total, the proposed new and increased fees and taxes would generate at least $1.9 billion biannually for the state’s highway fund, Oregon’s main transportation funding source. The revenues from the tire tax would go to support rail, wildlife crossings and salmon recovery. Weber said that the sweeping proposal had been developed without input from Republicans, lamenting the fact and saying that it marked a change from the process around amending Measure 110 last year when Democrats participated in bipartisan discussions. While recognizing that funding the state’s highways was going to necessitate increasing tax and fees, Weber had doubts about the equity of some of the proposed measures, particularly the tire tax. Weber pointed out that Tillamook did not have rail projects that could benefit from the funding and worried that the lack of consideration for returning value to rural taxpayers, who travel longer distances than their urban counterparts, would play out in other aspects of the package as well. “That is going to burden, especially rural Oregon, especially where we live,” Weber said. “Our gas is higher in price where we live on the coast, and we have to travel farther in order to get services and so we are paying more money in taxes than just about any other place other than eastern Oregon to See WEBER, Page A3
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