John Craig

Town Council members, facing loss of insurance coverage, backed away last week from a plan to quit paying Marshal Jerry Taylor's salary. They choked, though, when Taylor's attorney slapped them with a $15,624 claim for wages that were withheld in January and February and for eight years of unpaid vacation and sick leave.

Stevens County residents will have another opportunity Monday - perhaps their last - to comment on the Shoreline Management Plan they were supposed to have adopted 23 years ago. The plan would establish controls on development within 200 feet of lakes of 20 or more acres and streams with flows of 20 cubic feet per second or more, a measure that includes nine large creeks.

Proponents of a library district for Stevens County hope to find out Monday whether there are more book lovers than tax haters in the county. Anyone who is interested in a library district is asked to meet at 7 p.m. at the Library of the Lakes, in the old Loon Lake School building.

A state Health Department review judge Thursday upheld the department's decision to allow Dawn Mining Co. to import radioactive uranium mill tailings to pay for cleaning up an abandoned mill at Ford, Wash. Review Judge Colleen Klein's action clears the way for a lawsuit by the Dawn Watch coalition of environmental organizations and the Spokane Tribe, whose reservation is next to the mill. Klein's ruling swept away the last of 20 arguments that a supplemental environmental impact statement was inadequate to support the Health Department decision. She dismissed 17 issues before conducting a hearing last month in Spokane.

Go to the fair and have fun, my editor said. Just don't spend any money. Fortunately, there's all kinds of cool free stuff at the fair. Start at the Spokane police booth and get a handy litterbag to carry all the stuff you'll want to collect.

The race to replace Kettle Falls Mayor Eric Weatherman is the hottest municipal primary in rural northeastern Washington. It would have been the hottest contest even without five candidates. No other city in Stevens, Pend Oreille, Lincoln or Ferry counties has a primary race for council or mayoral positions.

The father of a mentally retarded teenage sex offender has been charged with shooting at one of the neighbors who sought court protection from his son. Even so, Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson said Thursday he is optimistic that the tense situation in the backwoods of southern Pend Oreille County will improve now that he has banished 18-year-old sex offender Shawn McIntyre from his parents' home.

About half of this 1936-1937 elementary class will attend the reunion. Photo courtesy of Northport Union High School.

A suspect in a Sunday night shooting north of Kettle Falls, Wash., was identified Wednesday as Jess M. Brown. Brown, 34, is believed to have fired several shots at a man who tried to help a woman who reportedly was being harassed by Brown's roommate. One of the shots Brown is suspected of firing caused a superficial wound in the back of 43-year-old Mark Friend's right leg.

Police officers in Colville and other small towns in northeastern Washington say new "stealth" technology is improving their effectiveness. Not only can they appear out of nowhere and catch bad guys in the act, they're better able to meet the good folks who pay their salaries.

Pend Oreille County Superior Court Clerk Winnie Sundseth faces a criminal charge for allegedly harboring a fugitive in her office. Special Prosecutor Clark Colwell announced Wednesday that he will file a charge of second-degree rendering criminal assistance against Sundseth later this week or early next week.

Friends and neighbors gathered Saturday to party and build an Old World-style timber frame house, without nails, for Kettle Falls-area resident James Fish. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

The second of two altercations Sunday night proved fatal for Colville area resident William J. Barr, 33. Margarita Kingsbury, 32, said she shot Barr to death when he threatened her with a revolver. The shooting occurred about four hours after Barr had been involved in a shooting at the nearby home of April Kingsbury, 20, believed to be Margarita Kingsbury's daughter or stepdaughter.

Sportsmen are happy, but some landowners are upset about U.S. Bureau of Land Management efforts to trade small, scattered parcels of land for large, consolidated tracts. The BLM is trading mountainous land in Stevens and Ferry counties for grassy "channeled scabland" in southwestern Lincoln County. The Colville National Forest has lots of land like the largely inaccessible parcels the BLM is trading away, but the public has relatively little scabland in northeastern Washington.

(From For the Record, Wednesday, August 16, 1995:) Attorney Jeffrey Leppo was misidentified in a story Tuesday about the Dawn Mining Co. uranium mill at Ford, Wash. Leppo works for a Seattle law firm representing Dawn.

Assault charges are being dropped against a woman who slapped a Newport city councilman's teenage son when the boy used foul language on a downtown street corner. "This case is going down the toilet and I'm flushing it," Deputy Pend Oreille County Prosecutor Greg Hicks said. "We are not able to proceed because we are not able to prove the charges at this time."

Springdale Marshal Jerry Taylor may not get paid at the end of the month if the Town Council gets its way, but Taylor says he'll keep working. The council voted 4-0 in a special meeting on Monday to withhold Taylor's $1,500 monthly salary on grounds that an injury prevents him from performing his duties. Taylor's right arm will be in a sling for almost three months while he recovers from surgery to repair ligaments torn when he was thrown from a horse.

From left, Ashley Pillow, 10, Coulee Dam, gets help on a jingle dress from Dawn Phillips, 13, Judy Carson, 11, and Suzette Seymour, 12, all of Spokane. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

Construction began last week on a $4 million "rice paddy" that will allow Dawn Mining Co. to receive out-of-state uranium mill tailings at its abandoned uranium mill site in Ford. The company is building five evaporation ponds that officials say will be tiered like rice paddies because of a slight slope across the 97 acres the ponds will occupy. The ponds will be used to get rid of 138 million gallons of acidic, radioactive water in a 28-acre disposal pit.

Transportation promises to be the next big issue in the Dawn Mining Co. plan to import uranium mill tailings to pay for cleaning up its abandoned uranium mill here. Dawn and the state Transportation Department are in sharp disagreement about the best route for shipping the waste, and there are questions about how much Dawn will pay to improve the roads it uses.

A series of informational meetings is under way for members of the Colville Confederated Tribes who will be asked to vote in September on whether to allow mining on their reservation. Mining companies have expressed interest in exploring the reservation for minerals, but the Tribal Council placed a moratorium on the issue last August so members could be consulted. A representative of the tribe's Geology Department said the council has not yet set a date for the vote, written the ballot question or decided whether the result will be binding.

Newport High School teacher Roger Coplen says two female co-workers are sexually harassing him and one of their husbands assaulted him with a handshake. Newport police are investigating the handshake, and the sexual harassment charges are now before state and federal agencies after being dismissed by school officials. The high school is in turmoil and morale has plummeted, insiders say.

Pend Oreille County Clerk Winnie Sundseth is being investigated for allegedly helping a criminal suspect avoid arrest. Washington State Patrol Sgt. Chris Powell confirmed Friday that the WSP is investigating Sundseth on a possible misdemeanor charge of rendering criminal assistance in the third degree.

Defense attorney Dennis Scott dropped a bombshell late Thursday on the vehicular homicide conviction of former Pend Oreille County sheriff's dispatcher Cathy Van Stedum. Scott filed a sworn statement in which one of the jurors who convicted Van Stedum of the alcohol-related crime admitted to a history of drunken-driving convictions.