KWSO News for Tue., Jan. 18, 2022

The Warm Springs Pet food bank has been providing for about 200 families in Warm Springs each month. They are currently working on increasing their capacity to serve more families and currently can only distribute to those families who are already signed up. Once they are able to take more families they will be sure to let us know and we can have more families sign up. They are also working on another spay and neuter clinic for this spring.

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs has noted that there are several areas that are out of compliance with the safe water drinking act. The Warm Springs Public Works department is actively working to resolve the issue through several existing and ongoing projects. Many of the projects in West Hills and Greeley Heights has been completed while they are still working on projects like settling pond lining, finishing water lift pumps among other things.

The Biden administration plans to significantly increase efforts to stave off catastrophic wildfires that have been torching areas of the U.S. West by more aggressively thinning forests around areas called hotspots where nature and neighborhoods collide. Officials want to more than double their use of controlled fires and logging operations to reduce vegetation that can feed fires. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tells The Associated Press the work will focus on regions where out-of-control blazes wiped out neighborhoods, including California’s Sierra Nevada mountains and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain foothills. Climate change is heating and drying out the West. That makes wildfires more intense even as people increasingly move into fire-prone areas.

As COVID-19 cases surge in Oregon — forcing some of the state’s largest school districts to close due to staffing shortages last week — a letter from three dozen nurses at the Portland Public School District circulated over the weekend, in which they question the relative health and safety in school buildings. In the letter, nurses described the scenes in schools “as crowded” with closed windows and where “masking is not of medical grade, children are testing positive at a rate that is too fast to track, the tests provided are expired, and staffing in every department is stretched too thin.”

The U-S Army Corps is continuing its investigation into the deaths of steelhead trout near a dam in Idaho. [Correspondent Courtney Flatt has more. “Anglers first noticed dead and injured fish near the dam and alerted biologists with Idaho Fish and Game, who went to assess the situation at Dworshak [duh-wore-shack] Dam. Idaho Fish and Game then alerted the Army Corps to the approximately 30 dead steelhead and other injured trout in the tailrace of the dam, which is the channel of water moving downstream of a dam. Biologists with Idaho Fish and Game say the location of the dead fish likely means the dam caused the fish to die. The Army Corps of Engineers says that’s possible. Corps officials say the fish also could have died of natural causes and were flushed to the surface as the turbine started up. The Army Corps says no major fish deaths have happened at the dam since it changed turbine start-up procedures in 20-16.  To help reduce fish mortalities at the dam, Idaho Fish and Game wants the Army Corps to limit unnecessary turbine switches until it knows exactly why fish are injured and killed at the dam.”

In Sports: NFL Playoff action concluded yesterday in the last day of the Super Wild Card Weekend. The Only team on the road to win was the San Francisco 49ers, who upset the Dallas Cowboys 23-17. The LA Rams hosted Monday night action as the Arizona Cardinals came in to town and couldn’t put up much of a fight as they fell to the Rams 34-11 and Quarterback Matthew Stafford got his first playoff  victory of his career. Coming up this weekend the Cincinnati Bengals travel to Tennessee to take on the Titans in the Divisional round and the 49ers travel to Green Bay to take on the #1 seed Packers. Sunday starts off with the Rams traveling to Tampa Bay to take on the Buccaneers and then finishing with the Buffalo Bills on the road against Kansas City.

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