Malden to get wireless internet

Malden residents will soon have access to internet service.

A Spokane Valley telecommunications company last week began construction on a community center that will provide high-speed internet access with computers.

“Our hope is that this really proves to be an economic benefit to them,” said Erica Schreiber with Wired or Wireless.

The company is funding construction of the community computer center, located next to town hall, under a $671,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture. Wired or Wireless will soon offer high-speed wireless internet connection to Malden residents.

Malden Mayor Ted Maxwell said he hoped the connection will provide a link to the state universities at Cheney and Pullman that would spur new business development.

“This town has struggled for so long to find some way to bring business to town. With a solid internet connection, we should be able to pull some companies that can work with Cheney or Pullman,” said Maxwell.

The new building will also house Malden’s branch of the Whitman County Rural Library. Books for the library have been located at Malden’s city hall since being moved out of the historic Felton Hall.

The building will be 25 x 30 foot steel pole structure, and the center will have ten computers that residents can use to access the internet at no charge.

After two years, the building and computers will be turned over to Malden, and Wired or Wireless will begin to charge internet service fees. Dennis Arnold, project manager with the company, said the fee will be minimal to provide continued service.

Arnold said the tower will be erected after the company does a geological survey to determine what ground would be best suited to hold the tower.

Schreiber said the connection of Malden should make real estate in the town a more sought-after commodity.

“That’s the number one question I get from realtors,” said Schreiber, “What’s the internet service like?”

“If this allows people to live in a beautiful place like Malden, which has cheap property available, and have a great internet connection. That should really help develop businesses.”

The grant from the USDA’s rural utility service program was announced last summer, but construction was delayed until Wired or Wireless worked out a transmission path.

The company used the grant money to purchase transmission towers to bounce a wireless internet signal from Mica Mountain southeast of the Spokane Valley to Malden.

Along with construction of the center, the company will erect a transmission tower on top of the town’s water tower to catch the signal.

Under terms of the grant, Wired or Wireless will provide internet service for free to town hall and to the town fire department. The company hopes to generate revenue from subscribers in Malden.

n’s 2009 winter wheat yield of 59 bushels per acre accounted for 96.8 million bushels of wheat, according to figures released last week by the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service in Olympia.

Eighty-five percent of that total was white wheat, the primary cash crop in Whitman County.

Yields were up three bushels per acre from the 2008 crop, while the total crop was up less than one percent from last year’s crop.

Winter wheat was planted on 1.64 million acres of land last fall, which was 1.72 million acres of land seeded in fall 2007 for the 2008 crop.

The 2009 spring wheat crop yielded 26.3 million bushels, up 17 percent from the 22.5 million bushels reaped in 2008.

Spring wheat yielded an average of 45 bushels per acre, up three bushels from the 2008 crop which was damaged by a scorching spring.

Spring wheat plantings in 2009 of 585,000 acres were up 50,000 acres from 2008.

Across the nation, more than 1.52 billion bushels of winter wheat were harvested, down 18 percent from 2008. Spring wheat harvest, though, was up seven percent from 2008, as growers reaped 587 million bushels across the country.

Washington’s overall barley crop dropped despite higher yields, because farmers planted 98,000 fewer acres of barley in 2009. The total haul was 6.2 million bushels, down from 11.1 million in 2008. Barley yields rose from 57 in 2008 to 64 in 2009.