Dan Hansen

The Spokane County Planning Commission is recommending a "critical areas" ordinance strikingly similar to one county commissioners softened a year ago. The commissioners' version was rejected by the regional Growth Management Act hearings board, which said there was no proof the ordinance was based on science. The state requires counties to write laws protecting streams, wetlands, forests and other sensitive areas. A key provision of the ordinance is the minimum distance between new development and streams.

A state House of Representatives subcommittee will be in Spokane on Thursday and Friday to discuss the Growth Management Act and wetlands regulations. The House Government Reform and Land-Use Committee wants to hear success stories and complaints, as well as ideas for reforming regulations, said committee staff member Kathy Thompson. The meetings are part of a series scheduled across the state.

The crowd that gathers for a U.S. Senate hearing on Saturday could fill every motel in this central Washington farm town. Could, that is, if there were any motels to fill. "Several people have contacted us, asking if there are spaces for RVs, and where are the motels," said Judy Esser, mayor of the town of 2,000. Like most people in town, Esser wants locals to control the Columbia River and the counties to decide the future of Wahluke Slope.

1. Strong feelings run deep. Mark Ufkes descends the White Bluffs toward the Hanford Reach on the Columbia River. "Why give it away? We (the public) already own it. Why give it to a special interest?" Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review 2. Pelicans rise off a flooded island. 3. Mattawa mayor Judy Esser is all for giving Hanford Reach lands back to counties for private development or farming. Hearings on the Reach will be held in the town of 2,000, where she is a Realtor. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Flooding in the Columbia River and landslides off the White Bluffs are combining to erode an island so rich in archeological treasures that it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places. At its midpoint, Locke Island is about 35 feet narrower than it was two weeks ago, said Paul Nickens, archeologist for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories. The island, which is a half-mile wide and 3 miles long, has lost 85 feet of width since 1995. Nickens said the causes are two-fold.

Saying they want time to consider turning over sewers to private operators, Spokane County commissioners put the brakes on a plan to build a large Valley shop. County utilities director Bruce Rawls on Tuesday asked permission to pay $200,000 for 3.5 acres east of Millwood owned by Hugh and Anita Smith. The Utilities Department would spend another $300,000 to build a 8,000-square-foot shop. The county now leases a 5,000-square foot warehouse, with no outside storage space, near Felts Field. That lease costs $1,500 a month, and may increase when it's re-negotiated in October, Rawls told commissioners.

Time is short for people who want to tell senators their opinion of "wild and scenic" protection for Hanford Reach, one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River. The hearing, hosted by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on June 21, at the middle school in Mattawa, a small central Washington town near the river. The deadline for applying to speak at that hearing is Friday.

The artist who put runners in Riverfront Park and horses in the central Washington scablands plans to put a pioneer back in the Spokane Valley. The county is paying David Govedare $30,000 to create a sculpture for Plantes Ferry Park, the site of a ferry operated by Antoine Plante in the mid-1800s. Elements of the multipiece sculpture may span the Spokane River and Centennial Trail.

Mountain bikers hit a section of the Centennial Trail west of Barker Road that was recently rebuilt with sand and gravel after being flooded by the Spokane River, which is still lapping at the edges. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Spokane County commissioners and three of their top employees went behind closed doors Tuesday, announcing they were going to talk about personnel issues. Instead, they discussed a fairgrounds contract officials say ran afoul of the law. The meeting itself may have been illegal.

Spokane County violated state law by not seeking competitive bids before hiring a contractor for a $134,000 project at the fairgrounds, officials say. The work - building an elaborate electrical system in a failed attempt to lure a motor-home convention - was called "ordinary maintenance," a designation that eliminated the need for bidding. The details were worked out during an informal meeting last winter in a hospital cafeteria. County Commissioner Phil Harris participated in the meeting.

Call Auntie Em and tell her it's official. The squall that toppled trees in Eastern Washington on Saturday wasn't your typical windstorm. In places, it was a tornado, albeit a mild one. Meteorologist John Livingston said the twister touched down in southeastern Stevens County, then skipped across Spokane County south of Deer Park, crossing both U.S. Highway 395 and 2, a distance of at least 10 miles.

More than 500 homes and 115 businesses many of them in one of Spokane's poorest and most ethnically diverse neighborhood would be razed or moved if engineers ever get the money to build the North Spokane Freeway. And quiet, rural areas in northeastern Washington would become more crowded as commuting to Spokane becomes easier. The economies of Pend Oreille, Ferry and Stevens counties would improve, as would trade with Canada. Those are some of the conclusions of a $3 million study of the freeway that has been discussed for 51 years.

Six-year-old Steven Bos is greeted by his family Tuesday as he gets off the school bus. Tom and Myrna Bos erected "Slow, Children at Play" signs in the Colbert neighborhood to warn drivers. However, the county says the signs are illegal. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Lael Weis, 17, cleans out a stall at the fairgrounds to raise money for her two clubs, the Bare Mountain Bandits 4-H and the Inland Empire Arabian Youth Club. Photo by Liz Kishimoto/The Spokesman-Review

Spokane businesses owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes that the county has done little to collect. The unpaid taxes on business equipment - computers, desks and other items - means there's less money for schools, library books and road repairs. Ultimately, other taxpayers must fork over more for those services. The county treasurer's office did not have anyone to track down scofflaws from 1991 until late last year. The assessor's office still has no one to hold businesses accountable, despite a 1996 state review that said audits are needed.

Helen and Mya Byers cool off with a refreshing spray from the Spokane Falls near the Monroe Street Bridge on Wednesday. The Spokane River flowed at 38,000 cubic feet per second Friday as near-record snow melted under unseasonable warmth. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Harley Douglass' Hunters Pointe subdivision got the approval it needed Tuesday, but opponents still may sue. After more than a year of hearings, appeals and other delays, county commissioners John Roskelley and Phil Harris on Tuesday signed the decision approving the controversial North Side project. Douglass plans to build 40 houses on 21 acres atop a ridge sandwiched between the Little Spokane River and Deadman Creek.

General Electric Co. is hauling 700 dump truck loads of contaminated soil from an east Spokane site where the company repaired transformers for 19 years. GE is spending "in excess of $10 million" cleaning up the 6-1/2-acre site at 4323 E. Mission, said Deborah Hankins, a company spokeswoman in San Francisco. The former service shop is on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund list.

Monthly sewer bills for 51 residents of a Veradale mobile home park will soar 262 percent as Spokane County adjusts the way it sets rates. "We're trying to provide affordable housing," said Leonard Bouge, owner of Birch Tree Manor mobile home park, who complained he'll have to pass the cost along to his residents.

Spokane County commissioners Tuesday approved construction of a road designed to ease traffic on main east-west routes through the Valley. Similar to the Ruby-Division couplet through north Spokane, the Valley couplet will run 2-1/2 miles, from University Road to a reconstructed Interstate 90 interchange at Sprague Avenue.

Concrete laid in the 1920s meets asphalt on a stretch of Appleway in the Spokane Valley. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

A Spokane city crew applies a thin asphalt overlay on Freya near Longfellow. Photo by Sandra Bancroft-Billings/The Spokesman-Review

Dick and Fe Taylor can never boast, as some innkeepers do, that the president slept in their Four Winds Guest House. Visited, yes. But slept? Not unless Franklin Roosevelt nodded off during a meeting in what was then a dormitory for bachelor engineers working on Grand Coulee Dam.