Morning Press: SWAT standoff, Stuart’s seat, dream of a new bridge and salad from the street

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Here are some of the week’s top stories and news you may have missed:

Fugitive killed after Ridgefield standoff

One of “Washington’s Most Wanted” fugitives died Friday afternoon after shots were fired during a police standoff at his parents’ house in Ridgefield, according to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

The regional SWAT team was called in about 1:40 p.m. Friday after members of the U.S. Marshals Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force discovered someone inside the house at 19306 N.E. 29th Ave. during a search for 36-year-old Derral Kenneth “Kenny” Mosby, of Mossyrock, said Eric Wahlstrom, supervisory deputy U.S. Marshal.

Walstrom said task force members were checking the residence where Mosby’s parents reportedly lived, thinking it was unoccupied, when they noticed an open back door and then saw someone inside shut it. They called in reinforcements.

o Lentz, a Clark County freeholder and Democratic precinct committee officer, also writes a political blog and works for High Five Media, a marketing firm that specializes in small political campaigns.

o Love Parker, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, worked as Rep. Brian Baird’s district director from 2005 to 2010, overseeing district projects and managing staff. Prior to that, Love Parker worked for 22 years as a TV news reporter, including 15 years at KGW in Portland.

Read the full story here and here.

And Editor Lou Brancaccio commented on the search for a new commissioner in his weekly Press Talk column.

Road to an East County Bridge not clear

Clark County Commissioner David Madore has spoken passionately about the need to build a third metro-area bridge across the Columbia River, but when it comes to that proposal, partnerships may be hard to foment.

The cornerstone in Madore’s plan to ease interstate congestion, a toll-free “East County Bridge” would take buy-in from a complicated web of landowners and jurisdictions on both sides of the river. While Madore has pushed the project in recent weeks, going so far as to say it’s “possible that we could be driving across our new third toll-free bridge in five years,” it appears the project faces a slew of regulatory and boundary hurdles.

Bill Ganley, a Battle Ground city councilor who also sits on the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council, said receiving the necessary approval from local and state agencies will take time. A five-year timeline, while not impossible, is unlikely, he said.

“The bigger the (jurisdictional) boundaries, the more you’ll have to work through those issues,” he said. “Once you cross a state line, the more players you have at the table, and that always takes longer.”

Read the full story here.

Oil spill preparation may have to ratchet up

BNSF Railway uses a familiar refrain to reassure people worried about the safety of transporting oil by rail. Company officials say 99.997 percent of all hazardous material moved by rail reaches its destination without incident.

“It’s not very reassuring,” said Dan Serres, conservation director for environmental advocacy group Columbia Riverkeeper. “In fact, it’s disturbing.”

Here’s why: The proposed facility would be capable of handling up to 380,000 barrels of crude per day. Even if 0.003 percent of that spilled on its way — three out of every 100,000 barrels — it would still add up to more than 4,000 barrels per year on average, either on the ground or in the water.

But that’s only half of the equation.

The millions of barrels of oil that would arrive at the Vancouver terminal by rail each year would leave on vessels floating down the Columbia River.

The Maritime Fire & Safety Association, which helps coordinate spill response on the lower Columbia and Willamette rivers, now prepares for a worst-case scenario of 300,000 barrels of oil released into the water. Under the Tesoro-Savage proposal, vessels leaving the facility would carry as much as 350,000 barrels of crude at a time.

Read the full story here.

Foraging a locavore path

Sebastian Corosi likes to brag that he can make a salad from plants he finds just walking around downtown Vancouver. And on a partially rainy morning last week, he proved it.

Just a few blocks south of the park on a weedy, grassy parking lot divider, Corosi plucked a small bounty of early spring greens — and that was just the start.

“There’s a huge fennel patch down here,” he said, poking around the soft, fuzzy young leaves. “In this little patch, there’s also dandelion greens and English plantain.”

There’s a frugality to foraging, especially when you realize there’s a free gourmet salad at your feet. But it’s also a healthier way to eat, appreciate the seasons and understand how far most of us have gotten from the source of our food, he said.

“We have such abundance here,” Corosi said. “If you think about the river, what was going on in trade down there for centuries, the plants we have here reflect that and the variety of food people ate.”