In brief: Hanford-area fish to undergo testing
RICHLAND – Hundreds of fish are being caught in the Columbia River as part of the cleanup efforts at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
The Tri-City Herald reports the U.S. Department of Energy wants to check how contamination from Hanford has affected the Columbia River’s fish.
Plans call for catching 530 fish. Their organs will be tested for any Hanford chemicals or radionuclides that could harm anyone eating the fish.
Environmental Assessment Services of Richland has been contracted to fish the waters.
The fish collection is part of a comprehensive study of Hanford that also includes sampling river water, soil on Hanford islands and sediment from the river.
Shark sighting prompts warning
PORTLAND – Police in Seaside, Ore., are warning beach crowds to watch out for sharks.
Police officers on Sunday drove up and down the beach and used loudspeakers to announce a shark sighting.
Lt. Dave Ham said lifeguards saw a distinctive dorsal fin on Sunday and a lifeguard came across a porpoise Saturday that had been bitten up.
The beach was not closed.
Ham said officials at the Seaside Aquarium said warm waters have moved closer to shore, bringing in seals and porpoises, which attract sharks.
Impact from ship may have killed whale
TACOMA – Biologists said a dead whale that turned up Friday in a Commencement Bay waterway in Tacoma was likely struck by a ship before it died.
A necropsy performed on the animal on Saturday showed the 46-foot-long juvenile fin whale had broken ribs, hemorrhaging, bruising and associated trauma in the chest area, indicating the animal was alive when it was struck.
The News Tribune of Tacoma reported that a team of eight scientists from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and Olympia-based Cascadia Research Collective conducted the necropsy on McNeil Island, where the carcass will remain.
Fin whales are the second largest species of whale.
The Port of Tacoma is among the largest container ports in North America.
Drug arrest made after special meeting
SEATTLE – One day after Seattle police and county prosecutors told more than a dozen drug dealers to clean up their act or go to prison in a closed-door meeting, one of the dealers has been arrested.
On Thursday night, Seattle police, prosecutors, friends, neighbors and family of 16 drug dealers operating in the city’s Central District gathered for a meeting, in which authorities showed the dealers evidence they had collected and gave them an ultimatum: clean up or prepare to be arrested and prosecuted.
But on Friday night, one of those 16 dealers and another suspect were arrested on suspicion of a felony drug offense, according to the Seattle Times.
Police spokesman Mark Jamieson said the arrests won’t be a setback to the new approach being tried by the department. He said the department didn’t expect all the dealers to stop selling.
At the meeting, the drug dealers were offered drug treatment, education and job training, but only if they stop selling drugs.
More Montanans seeking food stamps
HELENA – More than 10 percent of Montana residents are receiving food stamps.
Linda Snedigar, administrator of the Human and Community Services Division at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, said the 100,000 people in the state receiving help is a 24 percent jump from May of 2008.
She said state officials started seeing a sharp increase in applications for the federal program last fall.