Read for the Need; Clear Lake Neighbors express concern; Wild Coho

Coast Radio News
Local News

17 September 2013

Fall Book Sale to Benefit Food Share

Shelves that normally hold canned and dry food at Florence Food Share may be nearly empty, but interim director Ken Gaylord says they have some storage areas that are overflowing.

Ken Gaylord – “We have actually more books now than we had in June leading up to the sale.  They just keep coming, which is wonderful, I mean this outpouring of books, so we have to do something.”

In May and June of each year, Florence Food Share, with the help of Siuslaw High Schooler Taylor Graham, collects books and holds a two-day sale to raise money.  This year, according to Gaylord, the books just kept coming.  That prompted a simple solution from his standpoint…

Ken Gaylord – “Do another book sale.  But this one we want to do for a little longer duration and so we’ve leased that building for three months.  So we’ll set the books back up and do it again over a longer period of time.”

The vacant storefront at 3120 Highway 101, next to the Central Coast Resource Center, will open Wednesdays through Saturdays beginning October 1st as the “Read for the Need Bookery”.

Heceta Water Neighbors “Horrified”

Despite assurances of officials from Heceta Water District, many neighbors around Clear Lake are very concerned about the application of herbicides on a parcel of recently logged land.

Many say there were “horrified” to learn that chemicals could be sprayed within the Clear Lake Watershed Protection Zone, the source of drinking water for more than two-thousand residences North of Florence.

Neighbors, like many others including public officials, thought the protection zone would do just that… protect them from the possibility of chemicals that might travel into their water source.

They say recent media accounts have been “put forth to calm the public” but maintain that no one is really aware of the dangers.

Heceta Water officials have said they are stepping up monitoring for the main chemical… which is also the primary component in the week killer Roundup.  They also say existing filtering systems will remove any traces of it if it does make it as far as the distribution system.

Going Wild for Coho

There have been dozens and dozens of sport fishermen trolling up and down the Siuslaw River over the past few weeks, in search of hatchery Coho salmon.

This past Sunday though, it seems as if the number of boats increased dramatically.

That’s when anglers could legally take and keep wild Coho as well as their fin-clipped hatchery raised brethren.

It’s the fifth year in a row that angling for the once-endangered salmon is being allowed on the Siuslaw River.  It’s one of 13 river systems in Oregon open to the harvest of the wild fish.

This year is slightly different than in the past… there’s no quota on the number of fish that can be taken on the Siuslaw and Umpqua rivers; just a time limit through November.

Fish biologists say individual bag limits will remain conservative in order to limit the number of fish taken and quotas will remain in place on the Nehalem River along the north coast.