This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
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Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
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Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
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Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.
Hard-hit Pacific needs answers from Corps
It’s one thing to get slammed by Mother Nature. It’s another to get flooded out by the federal government.
Moods are anything but pacific in Pacific.
Even though floodwaters are receding, many folks in the small South King County town are still fuming – and rightfully so. It was bad enough that Mother Nature dumped her wet stuff on them; then their fellow man added insult to injury.
That’s how a lot of Pacific residents are feeling after the Army Corps of Engineers added significantly to their flood misery by releasing water behind the Mud Mountain Dam Thursday with little warning.
The Corps said the release was to relieve pressure on the dam and to control flooding on the Puyallup and White rivers. Instead, floodwaters of up to 10 feet rushed into many residents’ homes and displaced a fifth of the population in a watery variation on destroying the village in order to save it. The irony, of course, is that the Corps’ mandate is controlling floods, not causing them.
Among the homes flooded were those in White River Estates, a development dating to 1990 that had never been flooded before. Many damaged homes are located outside of the federally designated flood plain.
Mayor Richard Hildreth estimates millions of dollars in damage. Federal disaster aid to Pacific should be forthcoming, given the role a federal agency certainly played in the damage there – even if it was inadvertent.
The Corps has released a lot of water before without this devastating result. So it suggests that other factors – ranging from broken gauges to higher water levels in feeder creeks – could have contributed to the unexpected onrush. The Corps was scheduled to participate in a town meeting Tuesday night to address residents’ concerns. And it has announced its intent to get to the bottom of why the release went so terribly wrong.
That’s important. Although the confluence of recent weather events – heavy snowfall followed by heavy rains – is unusual for the Puget Sound region, no one should assume that it won’t happen again. Those “500-year” and “100-year” floods seem to be occurring on a far more regular basis than their billing suggests.
