A scheduled hearing before the Hood River City Planning Commission on a site plan review application for a 135-room hotel at the location of the former Hood River News building on State Street across from the Hood River Library has been cancelled. Municipal Planning Director Dustin Nilsen says Monday’s hearing to review the application for development of the five-story Marriott hotel was scrubbed at the request of applicant Line 29 Architecture, and there is no date certain for it to be rescheduled. He adds a new notice of hearing will be required in the future should it be rescheduled. The proposed hotel had drawn plenty of negative comments. The packet for the hearing included mostly negative public feedback on the proposal, mostly centering around downtown parking and traffic impacts, and the size of the building itself being out of character with the surrounding community.
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Construction To Start On White Salmon Water Infrastructure
Construction is set to begin Monday on water infrastructure upgrades along Spring Street and North Main Avenue in White Salmon. It is the start of the North Main Booster Pump Station Project, and city officials say it is designed to improve both everyday water service and emergency fire flow capacity for residents in the North Main/Simmons Road pressure zone. The new booster pump station is intended to restore and improve service to the zone by connecting it to the Spring Street Reservoir, which has sufficient capacity to meet current and future needs. The project is being funded by a $2.4 million state Public Works Board Loan as well as $177,500 in American Rescue Plan Act funding. It was originally scheduled to begin three weeks ago. The public should expect traffic impacts and potential detours in the construction area, especially as work moves westward. A detour map is available online at whitesalmonwa.gov.
Single Lane Traffic On West 6th Week Of August 18
Starting Monday West 6th Street in The Dalles will be down to a single lane between John L Scott and Spookys Pizza for the installation of a 24-inch PVC storm line. Bi-Mart entrances will be affected and closed one at a time as contractors bring the storm line north along the curbline and then turn west and connect into an existing storm manhole in the northern entrance to Bi-Mart. Installation of the storm line is estimated to take two to three weeks, but the single lane flagging is expected to only take pkXW next week. Pour and placement of the new curb and sidewalk on West 6th has progressed well with a majority being completed this week. Grading for the first phase of paving is currently scheduled for the week of September 15.
City of Hood River Preps For 2026 Bond Measure
The City of Hood River is beginning the process of preparing for a bond measure in November of 2026. City Manager Abigail Elder presented City Councilors a timeline for exploring going to the voters with a bond proposal, starting with a presentation on the process at the panel’s next meeting on September 8. Elder says they will have a special facilitated meeting on September 29 to consider a potential project list for bond funding. Once a list is gathered and levy rate estimates are put together, the final two months of this year the City will work with a consultant to do polling to gauge public support for a bond measure. The City Council identified general obligation bond funding as a “critical project” in its 2025-26 work plan.
HR County Hears From ODOT on Possible Cuts
Hood River County emergency officials and the Oregon Department of Transportation held a meeting to discuss issues when traffic jams up in the Hood River area due to a freeway closure, but a large part of it became ODOT talking about what will happen if a transporation funding package does not pass in a special legislative session at the end of the month. County Commission Chair Jennifer Euwer says ODOT representatives told them if a package does not pass, service to major roads in the area like Highway 35 will decrease. The ODOT representatives floated the idea of local governments backfilling, but Euwer pointed out Hood River County doesn’t have the money to do that. She added emergency agencies represented at the meeting, including Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital, expressed their concerns about their employees being able to report for work if plowing levels decrease.
Hege Says Work Continues To Pay For Phase 2 Of Fire Recovery
Wasco County Commissioner Scott Hege says they are still working with state officials to do phase two of Rowena Fire. Hege says in a meeting with the Governor’s office, Oregon Office of Emergency Management, and the Department of Enviromental Quality, local officials were given an estimate of $5.9 million, but that number is going to get revised. Hege says a meeting next week will look at developing a more accurate estimate. Hege says once the number is refined, they hope to go to the Legislative Emergency Board and get the money to do the phase two work from there.
Outreach Team To Talk Child Care Project In D.C.
When The Dalles Community Outreach Team goes to Washington, D.C. on its bi-annual trip, trying to revive a project that would have remodeled the Chenowith Middle School into a child care center for up to 200 will be a big part of it. Federal officials cancelled a contract for a $21 million grant for the project when the new administration took over this past winter. Port of The Dalles Executive Director Andrea Klaas says they want to find out if the grant will be reissued. The grant was from the Environmental Protection Agency, as the facility would also have served as an emergency response center during extreme weather events.
Bridge Design Expected To Take Over A Year To Complete
It will probably take about a year-and-a-half for Kiewit Construction to complete design plans for the Hood River-White Salmon Interstate Bridge. The Hood River-White Salmon Bridge Authority signed documents two weeks ago to allow the design to move forward after legislatures in Oregon and Washington approved their shares of funding for the bridge. Authority board member Jacob Anderson says there will plenty of other tasks going on while the design work is in progress. The next big marker for the bridge project is learning whether it will receive $532 million from the federal Bridge Investment Program. Anderson says they should learn that in the first quarter of 2026.
Carson Woman Injured In Highway 142 Motorcycle Accident
A 76-year-old Carson woman was flown to a Portland hospital after a Saturday afternoon motorcycle accident on Highway 142 in Klickitat County. According to a Washington State Patrol report, the woman was westbound on Highway 142 near milepost 10 at around 3:10 p.m. Saturday afternoon. The report says the motorcycle the woman was driving failed to negotiate a curve, struck the guardrail, and then she was ejected from the bike. Both the woman and the motorcycle came to rest on the right shoulder of the highway. The woman was taken by LifeFlight to Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital in Portland. There was no information on her condition.
The Dalles Wastewater Plant Back In Compliance
The discharge to the Columbia River from the The Dalles Wastewater Treatment Plant has returned to compliance with permit limits for E. coli as of Friday night. A statement from the City says the average of five samples taken throughout Thursday at the City discharge point to the river were within limits. The delay in reading out the test results is due to the 24- hour incubation time that the test requires. Recent Columbia River samples show that E. coli levels at the sample locations were well below bacterial criteria set by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for freshwater recreation. Signs that had been placed at locations of public river access on the Oregon shore of the Columbia River, to warn of contaminated water, were taken down on Saturday morning.
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