Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 826 - 850 of 2119
Deep into the night on Thanksgiving – actually at 3 a.m. the next morning – the Palouse solar farm data quit tracking. It turned out someone or something had cut the line which transmits data from the site on a hill at the south edge of town. It was determined it was a person with a blade of some kind because the four-inch cut was even and straight, not something that would have been done by an animal. “The cuts were deliberate,” said Palouse Clerk/Treasurer Kyle Dixon. After discovering the dat...
A new Solid Waste Management Plan is taking shape for Whitman County, as Solid Waste Operations Manager David Nails works with J.U.B. Engineers of Spokane to write the state law-required five-year plan. The process began last summer when J.U.B.’s $25,000 bid was again chosen for consulting. They helped the county prepare the 2012-17 document. After much activity at the waste transfer site in the past five years south of Colfax, the new plan is expected to entail less construction. “We’re mainl...
Colfax Superintendent Jerry Pugh presents a 10-year service award from the Washington School Directors’ Association Dec. 21 to board member Robert Smith. The Colfax School Board held its last meeting of the year Dec. 21, with the students leaving for Christmas break the day before. Subjects discussed and/or approved included new hires, the school bond project to come to a vote in February and a salute for board member Robert Smith for 10 years of service. Supt. Jerry Pugh opened the meeting w...
The Palouse Brownfields environmental cleanup site has drawn interest from three separate entities in recent months. The project is a Main Street lot along the North Fork of the Palouse River. Formerly the location of a welding shop, gas station and fuel storage facility, the building was torn down in 2012. It has since been tested for petroleum and manganese as part of a state Department of Ecology (DOE) program. A conference call was held Tuesday, Dec. 19, in Palouse with interested parties...
Fourth-year Garfield/Palouse coach Garrett Parrish directs his team in a timeout against Lakeside Dec. 1. A new interest has been drawn into the Garfield/Palouse High School gym this winter as the girls basketball team is off to a 5-1 start. Long an opener for the more successful boys teams in recent years, the Vikings have turned notice in 2017, beating Oakesdale (6-1) Dec. 8 for a definitive win of the new Southeast 1B season. The good start is a reward of a kind for Gar/Pal leaders Payson...
The dominant Pomeroy boys again hold first place this week in Southeast 1B league standings, their record at 7-0, 4-0, followed by Garfield/ Palouse at 5-1, 4-0. Pomeroy and Gar/Pal are the only two teams without a league loss. Heading into Christmas break – a mix of days off, tournament games and non-league – the two teams will meet Jan. 5 at Palouse. The Gar/Pal boys opened the Colton tournament Wednesday against Entiat. Colton played Wahkiakum. Losers’ and winners’ bracket games will be playe...
Leading to Christmas break, the Colton girls beat Garfield/Palouse Dec. 15 in a matchup of unbeaten teams to hold first place in Southeast 1B league standings. Colton (6-0, 3-0) is followed by Gar/Pal (5-1, 3-1), Pomeroy (5-1, 3-1) and Oakesdale (5-1, 2-1). This week, Colton and Gar/Pal may meet again in the Wildcats’ Christmas tournament, which began Wednesday. The four-team bracket includes Wahkiakum and Entiat. Games will be played at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Dec. 20-21. Also, this week around W...
Change orders on the West Whitman Street project at Palouse, which was done last summer, added $40,000 to the street-and-rail replacement project. The extra cost evolved after contaminated soil, a result of a two-inch gas pipe, was discovered last summer during construction. Two dump truck loads of dirt were dug up and sent to Lewiston for required testing. “It was pure petroleum product,” said engineer Munir Daud. The dirt samples showed the contamination was limited. “It didn’t move from wh...
The town of Uniontown opened three bids Dec. 5 on its sidewalk-extension project. Motley-Motley Inc. of Pullman was the successful low bidder with a bid of $297,953. Other bidders were Knox Concrete of Lewiston for $339,950 and Crea Construction, also of Lewiston, for $339,262. Cost estimate by estimate engineer Munir Daud, done two years ago, was $287,882, for the project which was targeted for last summer. The project was pushed to next year after a longer-than-expected time until it was...
Tekoa Trestle and Trail Association volunteers move access boards into place, putting up lights two years ago. Christmas lights again glow from the high span of the Tekoa Trestle while on the ground it has yet to be decided if they are permitted to be there by Washington State Parks, which owns the trestle as part of the John Wayne Pioneer Trail. The lights were hung Nov. 22 in the fourth year of an effort led by members of the Tekoa Trestle and Trail Association. What the group did not have...
Southeast 1B league games began with a weekend of early matchups and Pomeroy showed its favored status. Running Colton by 25 points and dismissing St. John/Endicott/ LaCrosse, the Pirates have set the tone so far. For Whitman County teams, Garfield/Palouse beat Oakesdale by five points and blew out a young Waitsburg team. Gar/Pal will play at Colton Friday at 7:30 p.m. Oakesdale plays at St. John, also at 7:30 p.m. Garfield/Palouse 62, Waitsburg 18 Sanderson and Anderson, Caden and Tanner, led...
Colton’s Emily Schultheis works underneath in a home win over Touchet Dec. 9. The Wildcats are now 5-0. The Colton and Garfield/Palouse girls remain undefeated after an early round of league games last weekend. Gar/Pal, led by its two seniors and longtime starters, Payson Griner and Katie Arrasmith, beat Oakesdale and blew out Waitsburg. Colton handled Touchet and Pomeroy. Garfield/Palouse will play at Colton Friday. Game time is 6 p.m. Colton 64, Grangeville 37 The Colton bus went to G...
Whitman County Public Works has decided to halt work on the new effluent tanks at the Solid Waste transfer station until next year. Cold weather precludes further welding on the liner of the evaporation pond. Needing temperatures of 40 degrees or higher for the task, contractor M.A. DeAtley of Clarkston will hold off until spring. Construction of the two tanks and evaporation pond began in August. Public Works Director Mark Storey estimates the work is now 95 percent done with just the liner wel...
Justin Brown started what became Osage Woodworking as a junior in college at Oklahoma State. He and wife Lindsay now live in Palouse with their two children. A new tenant at the corner of the St. Elmo’s building on Main Street in Palouse will open for business Dec. 16. Osage Woodworking is a showroom gallery for the shop in Moscow owned by Palouse residents Justin and Lindsay Brown. The gallery will feature furniture and cabinetry made by Justin, plus a small retail side selling cutting boards,...
The Office of Washington State Auditor Pat McCarthy concluded its audit of the Town of Albion last week, issuing a report Dec. 7 of compliance with applicable state requirements and control over safeguarding public resources. The results come after a disputed audit three years ago that led to a mediator being assigned from Olympia. The state’s 2012-2014 Albion report found the town lacked in internal controls over key operations, noting it failed to maintain records in an organized manner. It a...
1B basketball season began around Whitman County last weekend with boys and girls teams in action. The Colton girls welcomed Tenison Woods Academy from Australia Friday, Dec. 1, for their opener at home while, across the county in Garfield, freshman guard Austin Jones led the Garfield/Palouse boys in a non-league loss to Lakeside. Colton got a narrow girls’ win over the Australians before blowing out Genesee Saturday. League foes Garfield/ Palouse opened the senior season of Katie Arrasmith a...
Uniontown has reached an agreement with the owners of an abandoned house to be torn down behind town hall. Known as the pigeon house, the structure was vacant for more than 10 years, as its owner, Margaret Huggins, listed it for sale. Roach Construction of Genesee, Idaho, will tear it down this winter, to be paid for by Huggins, who lives in Weston, Ore. “It’s all off the city’s hands,” said Brent Lane, Uniontown building inspector. At a town council meeting in July, Marv Entel, the town’s...
Tekoa building owner Keith Andersson has until Dec. 9 to file an appeal of the city’s ruling that the red-brick former Cohn Motor Co. building is unfit. The designation was made in early November, decided by a three-member volunteer committee selected by Mayor John Jaeger, who said he chose the first three people to step forward, in order to avoid any charge of favoritism. An estimated 1,200 square foot section of the Crosby Street building’s roof and part of two walls collapsed under snow las...
This one mattered. WSU has been blown out the past three years in the Apple Cup, but in two of them they were not expected to win. Last year, U.W. was No. 4 in the country, the year before Falk was not there and neither was Hylinski. While a closer look showed WSU was embarrassed in all aspects of both the 2015 and 2016 games, it was largely filed away as understandable. Until now. The 2017 blowout allows for no alibis, no attempts at an alibi, and brings into question previous ones. WSU this...
The Colton girls are back. Last seen dismantling Sunnyside Christian to finish third in state for 2017, ending their record streak at eight 1B championships in a row, the team returned to action Monday at the Colfax jamboree. Led by 13th year coach Clark Vining (288-37), this year’s Wildcats roster includes three returning starters and seven lettermen. Junior guards Jordyn Moerhle and Dakota Patchen were all-league as sophomores a year ago and played significant minutes as freshmen. Emily S...
Joe Merry outside the Palouse Police Department on his last day, Nov. 28. Garfield/Palouse police officer Joe Merry worked his last day on Tuesday, after 14 years in the two communities, beginning as Garfield town marshal in 2003. Five years in, he was hired as an Officer-in-Charge for the city of Palouse. A year later, an agreement between the two towns made it so Garfield contracted its police from Palouse. So Merry was at work in both towns for nine years until his retirement. “We’re los...
Bob Sevedge and Chad Kincheloe inspect the underside of a bridge as part of regular evaluations to access the conditions of bridges around Whitman County. The Whitman County Public Works department is near the midpoint of its annual bridge inspections. Work evaluating about 200 bridges per year on one and two-year inspection cycles began in October by County Bridge Supervisor Bob Sevedge and assistant Chad Kincheloe, engineering technician. The two now work exclusively on bridge inspections – o...
Gar/Pal’s Jordan Paddock and Caden Sanderson tackle Camden Weber. (Below) Riley Pederson, No. 55, in the scrum. On a cold, strange night in Royal City, the Garfield/Palouse football season ended in a state 1B quarterfinal loss to Odessa. The unbeaten Tigers went to 11-0 and advanced to meet Sunnyside Christian in the semifinals Saturday at Pasco. “It was probably the weirdest football game I've ever been involved with,” said Garfield/Palouse coach Will Woltering. The young, athletic Odess...
Disbanded plans are back on in Palouse as another round of discussions on the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System have led them back to where they were earlier this year. The change comes after a meeting Nov. 6 with Washington Department of Ecology (DOE) representatives on the subject of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), which may lead to further mandates for the Palouse wastewater treatment plant and its discharge into the Palouse River. The PCB question is new to Palouse, w...
The city of Palouse has increased the wage listing in its search for a new police officer. Approved Nov. 14 as part of an overall city wage raise package for the 2018 budget, the new rate to be offered is $44,000 per year, up six percent. The new officer would join after the retirement of Joe Merry, whose last day is Nov. 28. “I think they are being competitive,” said Palouse Police Chief Jerry Neumann, of the city council’s move. “We’re getting better. They want quality personnel. Palouse is a...
