Mark Leed took time off work to drive two hours from his Vancouver home for a meeting of the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, only to get lost on the way.
When Leed finally buzzed through the locked doors of a dull brown building three miles from the state capitol building, he’d missed the few minutes the council spent on the matter he drove all that way to hear: an update on the proposal by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies to build an oil-by-rail transfer terminal at the Port of Vancouver.
Leed would not have had an opportunity to speak to the council. Still, “I think it’s important for Southwest Washington residents to show they’re concerned about this facility,” said Leed, a vice chairman of the Loo-Wit Group of the Sierra Club.
His odyssey shows just how far out of Vancouver’s hands this decision is. The oil terminal siting is deemed by law to be of statewide significance, placing the decision solely in Gov. Jay Inslee’s hands. But before deciding, Inslee must hear from EFSEC, an arcane state council created in 1970 to address controversy over the siting of nuclear power plants.
The council’s task is to balance the need for energy with safety and protection of the environment — and it does so within the protective bubble of courtlike proceedings. In its history, the council has never outright rejected proposed power facilities, nor have governors ever dismissed its recommendations. That’s why activists like Leed pay close attention, and applicants like Tesoro and Savage work to present their strongest possible case.
Gov. Jay Inslee has appointed Clark County Superior Court Judge Rich Melnick to the state Court of Appeals.
Melnick, 58, of Hockinson will be the first Clark County resident to serve on the appellate court since October 2005, when Judge J. Dean Morgan retired.
“Judge Melnick’s distinguished career made him a standout choice for appointment to the Court of Appeals,” said Gov. Inslee in a statement Friday. “He has extensive experience as an appellate advocate, having appeared in our appellate courts in over 100 cases. He also has deep roots in Southwest Washington and will serve the community well.”
Melnick will succeed Division 2 appellate Judge Joel M. Penoyar of Pacific County, who is retiring Feb. 28. Melnick’s term begins March 10.
“I’m excited, I’m honored, I’m humbled,” Melnick said Friday in a phone interview.
The live-in girlfriend of the man accused of killing two women in a crosswalk in a hit-and-run collision in Vancouver will be allowed to live with a couple related to his family.
Brandon Smith’s girlfriend, Kalista Andino, and Smith’s mother, Linda Smith, are accused of tampering with witnesses in the vehicular homicide case against him. A court order bars them from having any form of contact with each other or other witnesses in the case.
However, Clark County Superior Court Judge David Gregerson today allowed Andino to live with Terry and Maryanna Belland of Washougal, despite objections by Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Vu and a supervised release officer. The Bellands are the parents of Brandon Smith’s sister-in-law, Briana Peterson. Peterson is married to Smith’s half-brother, Craig Peterson, of Camas.
Raisa Mosh, 45, and Irina Gardinant, 28, were killed about 8 p.m. Jan. 19 when a white pickup struck them in a crosswalk at Northeast 72nd Avenue and Vancouver Mall Drive. Vancouver police said Smith was the driver. He fled the scene of the collision without calling 911 or trying to help the victims, they said. Mosh’s 12-year-old son also was injured.
Clark County can get to be a little like Grand Central Station sometimes. And we’re not talking trains and taxicabs. We’re talking wings and waterfowl.
“There is a lot of traffic through here,” said Eric Bjorkman, president of the Vancouver Audubon Society, while hosting a “Bird-watching 101” visit to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. “It’s a pretty special place.”
Late winter departures now underway: tundra swans, mew gulls, northern pintails, buffleheads, golden-crowned sparrows, rough-legged hawks, greater white-fronted geese and ring-necked ducks. Among others.
Incoming early spring arrivals: cinnamon teals, turkey vultures, Western tanagers, rufous hummingbirds, Pacific-slope flycatchers and black-headed grosbeaks. To name a few.
Year-round residents: pied-billed grebes, great blue herons, woodpeckers, Western meadowlarks, marsh wrens, red-breasted nuthatches, great horned owls, red-tailed hawks and bald eagles.
That’s just a smattering of the vibrant airborne society that either comes through or stays put in Clark County. As aerial crossroads go, this is an unusually busy spot because of the habitats and climates that converge here. The west side in particular offers a mild and rainy winter and many thousands of acres of linked grasslands and wetlands — from La Center Bottoms to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge to the Vancouver Lake lowlands.
To those who love a taste of city life, there’s something about the presence of food carts that makes a city feel real.
But food carts haven’t established much of a foothold in Vancouver, even in the pedestrian-friendly downtown district that has the county’s largest concentration of office workers and some out-of-town visitors. And despite the desire of some downtown promoters and city planners to create urban ameneties that would appeal to young entrepreneurial workers, Vancouver appears far from embracing even a semblance of the food cart culture that has become entrenched in Portland.
“You need a lot of foot traffic, which Portland has,” said Gary Bickett, a Clark County Public Health department program manager in charge of food cart inspections. “I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Bickett isn’t alone. Heidi Batchelor and her husband Donny have operated food carts in Clark County for more than a decade. They’ve managed to make a living mostly at special events, but Batchelor recalls establishing a sidewalk burrito cart at Esther Short Park in 2002.
“We were the first ones to get a street-use permit (for a food cart),” she said. “We had no business whatsoever.” It took the couple about five years to become profitable with their Chewy’s Really Big Burritos food stand, which they set up at special events and, recently, at Clark College, she said. She sees limited potential for full-time food carts, and even worries that expansion of carts and trucks in Vancouver’s downtown could harm existing restaurants.
Certainly, a handful of mobile food entrepreneurs have entered into the fray in recent years. Newcomers have favored costly mobile food trucks over the more Portland-like food carts, which allow them to move and create what Steve Valenta, an owner of the Mighty Bowl food truck, calls “artificial pockets of density” in various locations in the downtown and uptown districts. And at Clark College, three carts are operating under a two-year contract during a reconstruction of the college’s culinary arts program kitchen. Downtown, the Weiner Wagon at East 12th and Main streets has survived for decades with a small, low-cost menu.
