By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com Jim Rice gets lots of questions about seals and sea lions. Most inquiries are about their health or when adult or offspring come ashore. Rice is the sole employee of the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network at the OSU Marine Mammal Institute in Newport. His job now is to report on – […]
Environment
Central coast’s only elk habitat area has special meaning for ODFW
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com The pasture stretches for a mile, bordered on the south side by the Yachats River. In the middle are meandering bush-lined ditches filled with water for frogs and bugs. Swallows have returned to dip and dive and fight over bird boxes along the edge of the marsh. It is the only state-owned […]
Yachats conservation group puts riverside property pursuit on hold
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com A local conservation group organizing an effort to buy 30 acres of undeveloped land along the Yachats River is putting the effort on hold and dropping a request to the city for $200,000 to help fund the purchase. View the Future, a 15-year-old Yachats-based nonprofit, said it could not readily raise the […]
Yachats group looking high and low to help pay for Amanda Trail suspension bridge
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com Joanne Kittel has a bridge she wants you to help buy. But it’s not any old bridge. Kittel and the group she helps lead, View the Future, are trying to raise $75,000 by the end of July to help pay for a 142-foot suspension bridge on the Amanda Trail just south of […]
Noxious odors and community uproar closes Waldport elementary school Wednesday
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com WALDPORT – Officials cancelled classes Wednesday at Waldport’s only public elementary school after a series of air quality issues sent at least 14 students to the hospital for tests Tuesday. Classes are scheduled to resume Thursday, said Libba Sager, principal of Crestview Heights School. Students from eight classrooms in Hallway B will […]
Yachats council will begin discussing some sort of ban on single-use plastics
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com The Yachats City Council in May will begin working on an ordinance that could prohibit single-use plastic bags and possibly plastic containers in the city. Council members discussed their views on plastics during their meeting Wednesday, and agreed to begin working on an ordinance for Yachats should the Oregon Legislature adjourn in […]
Cleanup crews finish work early Friday on milk spill south of Yachats
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com Contractors early Friday finished cleaning up a 5-day-old 2,900 gallon milk spill on the east side of U.S. Highway 101 just south of Yachats. The operation started at 8 p.m. Thursday and was finished at 3 a.m. Friday. NWFF Environmental of Philomath and its contractors removed a foot of dirt from […]
One step at a time for Yachats Coastal Gems walking group
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com Maryann Brown believes that sitting is bad and walking is good. “First of all, it’s going to get your doctor off your back,” she says. Brown and her group – the Yachats Coastal Gems – want to help keep the doctor away. Each month it organizes walks in Lincoln or north Lane […]
2018 rainfall is second lowest in nine years
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com Yachats received a bit more than 58 inches of rain in 2018, the second lowest amount in the past nine years, reinforcing worries how the city collects, stores and distributes water during the driest months of summer. When midnight arrived Dec. 31 the rain gauge at the city’s wastewater treatment plant near […]