Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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The first of three lagoons lies in the spring sun outside the south-county town of Uniontown. A six-inch layer of human feces lies at the bottom and will be dredged up when construction on the lagoons is in full swing this summer. Construction workers will begin clearing away vegetation and a thin film of topsoil in a dry lagoon outside Uniontown April 1, the first step in a $2.3 million state project to plug up the city’s leaking lagoons. Over the next six months, workers funded on a state loan will first drain the 10-acre patch of leaking was...
Four dead pets in Farmington have led one owner to suspect they were poisoned. Kristina Mikalson of Farmington has lost a 7-year-old Australian shepherd and an 8-year-old cat within the past 10 months. She alleged the dog, Angie, became violently sick the same day last spring as two other dogs that live across the street at separate homes. Those two dogs died the same day. Her dog remained in ill health and died eight months later. Whitman County Reserve Deputy Scotty Anderson said he couldn’t determine if the animals had been poisoned. ...
The activist group of citizens formed after the failure of the Colfax levy has now launched a city-wide campaign asking Colfax’s 2,500 voters for a thumbs-up on the upcoming school levy. A phone tree reaching all 2,500 voters, hundreds of fliers, a radio interview and some newspaper ads are all behind the group’s main message for the next crucial month; vote yes on the levy. “We do want to call every one on the voter list,” said Kirby Dailey. Dailey organized the Future of Colfax Education after the levy failure. That group has since joined for...
The Colfax school board mulled over how to shave more than $200,000 from the school’s already stretched budget at its March 22 meeting. The target of $200,000 comes in step with a second-round $950,000 levy the board will present to voters in April. The board passed out a proposal which suggested cutting hours of certified staff (teachers and administrators), shifting more program charges on to students, and trimming back of lights and electrical appliances in both district buildings. Instead of draining dozens of school programs, s...
The 1928 Wittman Barn was recently placed on the state’s Heritage Barn Register. In the 1920s, the Reisenauer family used the building to house draft horses for their fields, cattle, and later, jersey dairy cows. Granddaughter Angela Anegon hopes to obtain state funds to help restore the aging structure. A 1928 dairy barn in Uniontown just joined the ranks of 31 other Whitman County barns on the state’s heritage barn register. “It’s been in the family for a very long time, and I just wanted it to be recognized,” said Angela Anegon, 21-year-o...
A group of WSU architecture students rolled into the city of Palouse March 5 to begin a month-long project that draws up ideas for r access along the North Palouse river. For the next few weeks, students in small groups will make the drive from Pullman to Palouse to lay out ideas for foot bridges and paths along the river. The city will examine all the proposals at the end of the semester and pick a handful for Palouse citizens to vote on as a community. Palouse Mayor Michael Echanove said the students’ work will deal more in landscape d...
Palouse mayor Michael Echanove chats with a guest at a party in his honor. The party was held at Connie Newman’s home and more than 90 people attended. The group raised $3,000, $2,000 of which went to Echanove. More than 90 people showed up to a party March 13 to raise $2,000 to compensate the Palouse mayor after he was reprimanded by WSU with a two-week unpaid suspension. After a WSU audit showed mayor Michael Echanove had spent close to 30 hours over 15 months at his WSU job on personal phone calls, the WSU administration reprimanded him w...
Hole in the Ground Creek runs north toward Bonnie Lake. Both the creek and the lake are part of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s plan to create a water trail connecting Chapman, Bonnie and Rock lakes via streams like Hole in the Ground Creek. More than 40 owners of land along Rock Lake and Bonnie Lake are vehemently protesting a state proposal to turn that area into a state-owned public water corridor. Irritated landowners of the United Bonnie Lake Landowners now have made calls and penned letters to state Department of Fish and W...
A crowd of roughly 1,700 munched away on Uniontown sausage at the 57th annual sausage feed March 7. Approximately 1,750 pounds of raw pork was squeezed into links to make more than 6,800 sausages. They were consumed by people from small towns in the area, the Lewiston/Clarkston Valley and Spokane. Even license plates from Canada were seen. “Boy, I tell you that meat was ungoshly good. It made good sausage,” said life-long Uniontown resident Ken Oenning, who has been stuffing sausages for the event for more than 40 years. Oenning said the meat t...
Palouse residents will soon be charged $25 for an annual permit to use the city’s chipping station. The new fee is the result of Whitman County no longer funding small-town use of the county chipper. “I think it’s fair and very reasonable. By the time you have to haul anything out of town- it’s very convenient to have it here in town,” said Palouse resident Connie Newman, whose family hauls small tree branches out to the city facility once a year when they prune. The Palouse city council March 9 approved adding the fee. Starting April 1,...
Druffel in battle fatigues gets ready to move out of his transporter to consult with an Iraqi judge. Knee-deep in a foreign world of battle gear, Arabic and thousands of miles away from home, Whitman County’s deputy prosecutor Bill Druffel is four months into his deployment in Iraq. In an e-mail interview with the Gazette from just outside Mosul, Druffel painted a picture of a military branch set on re-establishing an ailing nation and one Whitman county native who spends his days advising American soldiers on legal matters. He described Iraq a...
After almost a month of sometimes heated public debate, the Colfax school board Monday night unanimously voted to place a special levy request of $950,000 for next year and a $970,000 for 2012 before the voters April 27. “I am happy. I feel like we met our goal…I feel like the school board listened and did what they needed to do,” said Michelle Miller, former substitute teacher who was part of a campaign to reach voters after the levy failed. Voters in the school district rejected a $1.3 million levy Feb. 9. The district had proposed that...
Ninety-one baby steelhead swim back and forth under the watchful eyes of Colton seventh-graders Phil Niehenke, Tyler Neely and Avin Lee (front to back). For a class project, 20 seventh grade science students will take care of the little fish for the next few months. Once the fish grow about two inches, the students will release them into the Clearwater River. The eggs, tank and fish care chemicals were all provided by the Dworshak Reservoir to Eric Nordquist’s science class. You can’t touch them, you can’t eat them, and you can’t tap the tan...
Seven golden-throated Colfax High School students have qualified for the state solo and ensemble contest. A soloist, a duet, and a seven-member ensemble from Colfax will bring their best warbling to the state festival April 23- 24 in Yakima. Colfax junior Kyle Largent, who will sing in the seven -member Colfax ensemble and the duet this year also qualified for the all-state mixed choir. Largent traveled to Yakima in mid-February where he practiced for several days on several numbers with the state choir. Approximately 3,000 students around the...
Gazette Reporter The final nail has been hammered for the now-finished Habitat for Humanity house in Palouse. An open house celebrating the completion will be March 7 at 3 p.m. at the house, located at 525 Union Street in Palouse. Krista Given and her two young children will move into the house March 12. Given was chosen from among 100 applicants to the Palouse chapter of Habitat for Humanity. The single story house features three bedrooms and one bathroom. To qualify to live in a home, a family must demonstrate they fall between the 30 to 60...
Desperately needed supplies for the earthquake ravaged country of Haiti are being collected for kits by two United Methodist Churches in the area. Kits should include one hand towel, one washcloth, one comb, one nail file or fingernail clippers, one bath-size bar of soap, one toothbrush and several adhesive plastic strip sterile bandages. One dollar is also needed for the purchase of a tube of toothpaste, a mass amount of which has already been purchased by the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). “It’s just responding to the bas...
For four and a half years, mothers in Palouse sweated away to earn the $36,000 it will take to purchase a pre-school friendly playground set for the Palouse city park. Bake sale after bake sale and silent auction after silent auction, the unsung mothers of Palouse amassed the needed funds for their toddlers to run wild. “I’m very proud of this,” said Shelly Goertzen, leader of the Little People’s Park Project. This summer, the fruit of their labor (the playground equipment, not their babies) will be constructed at the city park. The set of...
A tentative levy figure of $950,000 is on the table for the second Colfax levy proposal, after the public voted down a levy of $1.3 million proposal in the Feb. 9 special election. The new levy figure comes in the wake of a three-week series of public meetings in which voters turned out to ask the district about the failed levy and voice opinions on a new figure. The Colfax School board came to the $950,000 figure after more than six and a half hours of discussion Saturday, Feb. 27, in the high school cafeteria. Four hours were spent answering...
Six and a half miles of naked incline await the brave souls who enter the Wawawai Grade Hill Climb March 7. Two dozen or more cyclists will start at the bottom of the grade at 12:30 a.m. and race all the way to top of the grade. “It’s such a hard incline- there’s no switchback at all. It’s pretty steep all the way up,” said Ted Chauvin, organizer of two bike races at Wawawai March 7; Wawawai Landing Time Trial and Wawawai Grade Hill Climb. Chauvin is a member of KRYKI sports, a bicycling club out of Seattle which is sponsoring the race. The...
A legal hang-up has delayed the auction of an abandoned rock quarry in Palouse, from the planned Feb. 19 date to early March. The county discovered before the Feb. 19 auction their legal description of the land neglected to mention a paved road running through it; North River Road. The county is now waiting for county prosecutor Denis Tracy to rewrite the legal description of the land to include this road. “There will be some acknowledgment that there is a legal city road running through it,” said Kathy Lemon, county revenue officer. The sit...
A year long expansion of the Whitman Medical Group building will wrap up Feb. 28. Contractor Garco will put the finish on 11 new exam rooms, three physician offices, and the altering of their waiting room. The renovations extended the clinic into the former gap between the clinic building and the Whitman Hospital building. The added space is expected to cut down on patient waiting times, said clinic administrator Nathan Hymas. Total construction and architect fees ran to $1.1 million, according to Jim Heilsberg, chief clinical officer for...
The fruits of a week of activism by four concerned Colfax residents culminated in a 130-plus crowd of Colfax citizens Monday, Feb. 22 (see story, page 1). The group, Future of Colfax Education, spontaneously banded together at a special board meeting Feb. 15 to see what could be done about informing the Colfax public about the status of the Colfax levy proposal which failed to get a 50 percent approval in the Feb. 9 special election. As the meeting wore on Monday night, Colfax resident Kirby Dailey asked questions of the board and eventually...
A 130-strong crowd of concerned Colfax citizens let fly at a school meeting Feb. 22, questioning school officials on the district’s recently failed $1.3 million levy and weighing in on what they’d like in a new levy. Those at the meeting said they wanted simple, concise figures on their options for the upcoming levy, saying there was confusion with the district promising to “roll back” part of the $1.3 million levy. Several said they wanted a levy that kept the district running at the same quality. The group which organized the meeting...
Tekoa high school students and leaders have plans to make a running and walking trail through town in memory of two Tekoa students who died early this school year. Tekoa students Brandon Hay and Zach Smith died in separate car accidents. Hay died in a car accident on Lovell Valley Road northeast Tekoa July 7. Smith died in a Nov. 3 accident in Spokane County, outside Latah. Both were members of this year’s graduating class at Tekoa High School. The trail will run for roughly two miles from Crosby Street at the north end of Tekoa, east to the T...
Colfax farmer Mike Ensley’s RV7 kit plane banks sharply, offering a diamond-clear birds-eye view of the rolling expanse of the Palouse. The air was clear and mostly calm the day of the flight, Feb. 12. Ensley takes his plane for a cruise below the clouds about once a week. Colfax from 1,000 feet in the air is no longer the mile-long string of early 1900s buildings which it appears to be on the ground. No, from 1,000 feet in the air, Colfax becomes a three-pronged sprawl of colorful buildings through a deep canyon edged with cliffs, shining w...
