County supports Elochoman conservation plan

Wahkiakum County commissioners addressed issues ranging from habitat conservation to speed limits at their meeting Tuesday.

With Commissioner Lisa Marsyla out of town, colleagues Dan Cothren and Blair Brady gave initial support for Columbia Land Trust to convert Elochoman Valley timberland into a habitat conservation area.

The land trust, a private, non-profit group with a goal of preserving natural habitat, wants to buy a stretch of timberland in the upper Elochoman Valley, roughly lying between the river and the county road.

The land trust wants to apply for grant funding to buy the land and wants to make sure the county has no objection for making its application.

"This would be a conservation project," said Nadia Gardner, coast and estuary conservation lead for the land trust. "I don't anticipate there being any large restoration projects, just taking care of some failing culverts."

As the land trust is doing for other of its holdings in Wahkiakum County, the group would pay property tax on the land, she said, even though it's not required to do so.

Commissioner Cothren said he was familiar with the area.

"These lands are no good for the timber company," he said. "I don't have any objection. There are some bad culverts out there."

The commissioners authorized Public Works Director Pete Ringen to install traffic lane guides at a Puget Island road intersection.

Several weeks ago, a North Welcome Slough Road resident, Dennis Gordon, asked commissioners to take steps to slow speeding traffic in the area. The commissioners asked Ringen to study road conditions and make recommendations.

Ringen presented the report Tuesday. He said traffic is going faster than posted speed limits on School House and North Welcome Slough roads, and drivers are cutting across lanes when they turn from North Welcome to School House Road.

He said the board would be justified in raising the speed limit, now 30 miles per hour on Island roads, to 35 mph on School House Road, but because of the many driveways on North Welcome Slough Road, he wouldn't recommend any speed increase there.

However, he recommended installing large raised buttons to mark the lanes at the intersection of the two roads to keep drivers in their lanes and slow them down.

Commissioners said they didn't want to increase speed limits because of increasing numbers of access roads, but they authorized Ringen to proceed with the lane buttons.