New West Network

My Page: Susan Hess

Gorge Arts & Humanities

The Cannes Film Festival started this week. It runs through May 28 in case you want to catch it. The big news is the The Da Vinci Code opened the festival. Big names, big money, big yawn. That glittery event sparkling with stars has had 59 years to develop into a front-page event.

The Parkdale Film Festival, by contrast, just finished its fourth year. The films may not be as polished as those on the Rivera, but it’s closer, it’s free, and the film mix just as eclectic and creative. And it’s ours, this Gorge event. On May 6, 200 filled the Mt. Hood Towne Hall to see the top 22 of the 40 films entered.

The festival hits the road to play in The Dalles tomorrow, Saturday, May 20, at Columbia Gorge Community College... [more]

Alternative Fuels

Do gasoline prices make you wonder about making your own biodiesel? Maybe see if your favorite restaurant would save their used cooking oil for you?

Gorge-area resident Dick Janz did. Though it might be harder now: Oregon restaurants and kitchens generate about three and a quarter million gallons of used cooking oil a year — and every ounce is spoken for, according to Oregon ’s Department of Energy. Officials say the oil gets snapped up for Asian markets, for making soap and by Northwest biofuelers small and large.

Janz got in early and now collects used cooking oil from two local restaurants. Janz lives in Tygh Valley, a village about 25 miles south of The Dalles. Like many garage biodiesel producers, he has no background that prepared him for making fuel. And like most others, he makes it only for his own vehicles: a VW Gulf and a one-ton Dodge pickup. In both vehicles, he’s get the same mileage with biodiesel as with regular diesel... [more]

Gorge Homes & Property

Why invest in the stock market when you can do much better buying a house in Hood River or White Salmon? We all know how pricey and popular the place is getting, but just how pricey and popular? Try half again as pricey as last year.

The numbers show that the average Hood River residential sales price rocketed up 52 percent in one year. In the first three months of last year, the average home sale was $272,802. This year, it’s $413,244.

For White Salmon and Bingen, the first-quarter home prices soared 56 percent, from $198,025 to $309,781...
[more]

Volunteering In the Gorge

Ready to get outdoors, breath pure air, get winter muscles working again? One way to help yourself and this beautiful Columbia Gorge is by volunteering for a work party. Whether you want to be in the backwoods or on the river, on a bike or horseback or feet on the ground, there's a work party for you. Pick your work: build a trail, fix a corral, clear brush, pick up litter, pull weeds, plant grass.

We at New West Columbia Gorge put together a list of some upcoming work parties with dates, places, and a person to contact for information on where to meet and what to bring. For example: On March 23, Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge manager Jim Clapp, asked my husband and I to bring rakes, pitchforks and a pickup to clear out a
blackberry patch. Clapp paid with enthusiastic appreciation and donut holes. We worked to the music of geese and ducks on the nearby refuge wetlands. Across the fields, the Columbia River rolled past. The blister I got on my thumb has healed; I'm ready to go again. I just have to decide which ones.

See you out there.

Columbia Gorge Work Parties
 
• Sat. April 8: Chenowith Forest and Farm Conservancy
9 a.m. to noon
Fence-building party. Potluck at noon.
Contact: Bruce Bolme, email bbolme@gorge.net   [more]

Property Rights and Development

"Agriculture occupies half of the land mass in the U.S. and we're losing it a little bit at a time," says Don Stuart of the American Farmland Trust. "Every year, 23,000 acres of Washington State's farmland is developed every year."

We're multiplying the problem, he adds, because we're fragmenting agricultural lands. The Trust estimates that the U.S. is loosing farmland at a rate two to three times greater than the rate of its population growth, at the same time the U.S. just moved from a net exporter to a net importer of food.

Stuart spoke about the future of agriculture recently at the White Salmon Library. In an odd juxtaposition, on that same day, March 16, the Washington Farm Bureau launched a signature-gathering campaign to put what it has titled the Property Fairness Initiative — Initiative 933 —on the November ballot. ... [more]

Climate and the Gorge

How many glaciers are on Mt. Hood? Eleven, spread around the mountain’s summit. That’s how we think of our volcano – snow covered. But if you think Mt. Hood is looking a bit scantily clad lately, you’re right.

A glaciologist team looked at whether Mt. Hood’s glaciers in particular were growing or shrinking and at what rate. They found that the mountain’s glaciers on average have lost 34 percent of their volume. Since 1982, one of those glaciers, Eliot Glacier, has shrunk 30 meters in depth and lost fifty percent of its volume. White River Glacier has lost 61 percent in volume... [more]

Designing the Gorge

The landscape design firm, GreenWorks presented three alternative designs for Hood River's waterfront park this week. And, the Port of Hood River gave the City of Hood River the deed to the much-debated, seven-acre Lot 6.

GreenWorks landscape architect, Mike Abbaté, presented the plans to a crowd of almost 90 people in a meeting Wednesday. The purpose of the meeting and of a duplicate meeting Thursday night in Odell was to find out which of the three alternatives best meets the community's needs and wants. You can see the plans on the City of Hood River's web site. At the bottom of the page is a survey to vote for your choice. The plans and survey forms will be displayed at 11 locations around the county. Surveys must be returned by Feb. 20. [more]

Innovative Conservation

For years, Farmers Irrigation District has had a number of debris screens, and two hydroelectric plants. Oregon's 1996 winter flooding washed away the protective screens. Instead of looking around for someone else to solve the problem, the district staff designed a horizontal screen, and installed a prototype on their Hood River diversion. Tests proved that fish passed over the screen with zero mortality. No dead salmon, steelhead, trout. Not even a scale damaged.
 
And the screen blocked debris, while providing water for farms.

"The screen design they produced and patented, they then licensed to the non-profit Farmers Conservation Alliance to ensure all screen profits went to the common good," says Julie Davies O'Shea, director of Farmers Conservation Alliance. The new screen goes on sale this month. [more]

Gorge Event

By the 7 p.m. start, more than 100 people crowded the intimate Hood River bistro, Jean's at 110, for a new event called "13 on the 13th." The evening offered thirteen writers reading their works on…Friday, January 13th. The seven-member Columbia River Writers group invited six other writers to join them in offering this free public event — an experiment in writing, reading and community... [more]