WASHINGTON: Port of Astoria Commissioners Stephen Fulton and Bill Hunsinger, two consistent critics of the Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce, raised a stink at the Port’s Tuesday meeting about CREST placing tidal monitors last week at the Vera Slough tide gates outside the Astoria Regional Airport. The two commissioners attempted to pass a motion asking that the equipment be removed from the site, despite Port Executive Director Jim Knight having already asked CREST staff to remove the equipment. The motion failed.
Knight said he gave CREST permission to access Port property and install probes around tide gates to monitor water levels during the king tides, one of the three highest tidal events of the year. Knight said CREST wanted to help the Port, at no cost, understand the effect of king tides on the airport at Vera Slough, a tidal inlet near the Warrenton end of the Youngs Bay Bridge.
“As far as the probes’ location, they’re in waters of the state,” said Madeline Ishikawa, a habitat restoration program manager with CREST, adding that the Port’s airport manager, Gary Kobes, was around during the installation. Knight said he is befuddled by the calls to expel CREST from Port property, adding the information CREST was going to provide would have been valuable to the hydrological study the Port is having done. “Because of this controversy, and because of the commission’s concerns and a variety of other reasons, it was my choice to then remove the monitoring equipment because I could see that we were not going to be able to obtain the information from this monitoring,” Knight said. “There was nothing more complicated than that.”
