Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER in /home/stparch/public_html/headmid_temp_main.php on line 4394
Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
April 26, 2012     Shelton Mason County Journal
PAGE 1     (1 of 18 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
 
PAGE 1     (1 of 18 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
April 26, 2012
 
Newspaper Archive of Shelton Mason County Journal produced by SmallTownPapers, Inc.
Website © 2025. All content copyrighted. Copyright Information
Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Request Content Removal | About / FAQ | Get Acrobat Reader




SM~LL TOW~ PAPERS [~17 I~.) COTA ST M,I,A ,ll,,-ih Thursday, April 26, 2012 Week 17 -- The Voice of Mason County since 1886 -- Published for Mason County and Mike Leitch of Union -- $1 Not guilty pl a Hoodsport man admits to killing wife By NATALIE JOHNSON natatie@masoncounty.eom Christopher D. Thorson, who admitted to shooting his wife with a 12-guage shotgun last week, was ar- raigned in Mason County Superior Court on Monday. Thorson plod not guilty at the arraignment to the charge of first-degree mur- der with a domestic violence enhancement. Authorities say Thorson, 64, admitted to killing his wife, Vanessa Thorson, 55, in their home near Lake Cushman on April 12, after an argument. He originally told Mason County Sheriffs Deputies that he shot his wife as an assisted suicide. The Thorsons recently moved to the Lake Cush- man area from Steila- coom. Thorson's next appear- ance will be at an omnibus hearing on May 7. "It's basically a hearing where the court yerifies that information is being exchanged between the par- ties," Mason County Pros- ecutor Mike Dorcy said. "It's pretty routine." A pro-trial hearing on May 29 has been set with a trial set for June 12. Journal photo by Natalie Johnson The new PUD 3 operations center on Johns Prairie Road is open to customers this month. In the lobby, customers can use a touch screen interactive display to see how much power the PUD's solar array puts out .............. PUD completes move By NATALIE JOHNSON nc~talie@masoncountyoeOm On April 2, Mason County PUD 3 completed its first day of full operations at its new Johns Prairie offices. "The move was phased over the last month so we had departments moving in shifts," said Joel Myer, public information and government relations manager for PUD 3. Since then, employees of the utility have noticed sev- eral improvements. "We're already seeing improvement in commu- nications and coordination between and among depart- ments," PUD 3 Manager Wyla Wood said. "We're all enjoying it." Myer said having most of the PUD departments in one complex, rather than spread out in several locations, also helps communications at the utility. "Right off one of the things I've noticed where I'm located I have access to every depart- ment," Myer said. "That's the• whole value of being in the same facility and building." Last week Rushforth Con- struction, the general con- tractor in charge of the $34.5 million project to build the new PUD 3 operations center on Johns Prairie Road, was putting finishing touches on the main office building. Myer plans on organiza- tion open houses and tours of the new PUD complex in mid-May, but gave the Shel- ton-Mason County Journal an early look inside the office. Much of the new office building is lit with natural light, with help from inter- nal lights. "Light walls" let in sunlight from outside, and dividers between offices are IIIIU!!1!!11!!!!!11112 frosted glass, rather than solid walls. '~/hen you have natural light it's a better working en- vironment," Myer said. The PUD's interior lights are also sensitive to the sun- light outside, and will dim as exterior light increases, and vice versa. "Both of those are good en- ergy savers," Myer said. Now that the building is open to customers and mem- bers of the public, the PUD has installed a touch screen display showing output from the solar array atop the com- plex's Building D. In the PUD's old adminis- trative building on West Cota Street, community groups regularly used the auditori- um for community functions and meetings. Wood said the new complex also offers an auditorium for use by the public, which is more than twice the size of the old one, and available more often. The new PUD 3 audito- rium's primary function is to host PUD commission meet- ings. The room can be split into two separate meeting rooms, which can each hold up to 123 people, Wood said. "There are really two good sized rooms in there," she said. '~,Ve think it's going to be a great community resource for a long time --that's how we designed it." While the downtown audi- torium was often only avail- able on weekends or before or after business hours because it was the PUD's primary meeting space, the new build- ing offers about eight meeting spaces just for PUD person- nel, which frees up the large meeting rooms for public use. The spacious administra- tive building at the new con- ference also includes a full kitchen to use to feed staff during responses to power outages, expanded crew areas, open offices, and more than 30 miles of computer cables. Journal photo by Will Adams Members of the fire dancing troupe Dragon Steps headlined the Dragonfest event last weekend at the Shelton fairgrounds. The event was created to raise funds and awareness for the Mason Area Fair. nge coming in commun Mason County seeks input with online survey By NATALIE JOHNSON The Mason County Parks and Trails Department wants your in- put as it updates the county's six- year parks master plan. Monday night, the parks and trails department hosted the first of two public workshops in Shelton to ask what members of the commu- nity want from their county park system. The parks and trails department decided to hold public forums so the county could gather input from resi- dents while answering questions about county parks. "One of the challenges when we do a park plan, especially last time, when we did our survey, a lot of folks don't know that Lake Isabella is a state park ... Huff and Puff is a city park," said John Keates, Mason County director of parks and trails. Journal photo by Natalie Johnson John Keates, Mason County director of parks and trails speaks at a recent public forum for the county's six- year parks master plan. The second workshop is sched- uled for 6:30 p.m. April 30 at the North Mason Timberland Library in Belfair. The survey asks several ques- tions of community members through multiple-choice questions. For example, respondents are asked to pick which benefits of a county park system are most important to them, and rate the existing park system. Respondents are also invited to suggest new ideas for county park facilities or properties, or new loca- tions for water access or boat ramps. Mason County has 21 park prop- erties, Keates said. The county also recently acquired a 22nd park -- Sunset BluffPark on Oakland Bay. The Mason County Recreation Area (MCRA) and Sand Hill sports parks are the county's "flagship parks," Keates said. "They also take the lion share of our attention and maintenance," he said. " At MCRA, we're just in the final phases of doing infield renova- tions of two fields there, we have more work to do there." Community input helped shape the last Mason County park mas- See Parks on page A-6 Conservation district awards good stewards By NATALIE JOHNSON natalie@m(~soncouniy,com Many people recycle their paper and plastic. Others work to improve their land. Not many, however, go above and beyond. In an effort to recog- nize these good stewards of Mason County, the Mason Conservation Dis- trict gave its Conserva- tion Steward of the Year award to two local orga- nizations this month. Wilson Recycling and Skokomish Farms both received the honor for ef- forts to preserve Mason County. "We took nominations from the community and we ended up with two who were above and be- yond," said Stephanie Bishop, education and outreach coordinator at Mason Conservation. Bishop said the district has given out awards for conservation in the past, but changed the award this year. "Last year we had the Conservation Farmer of the Year," she said. "We kind of expanded it this year because we wanted to be able to recognize more people in the com- munity who weren't nec- essarily farmers." Wilson Recycling prides itself on being able to recycle virtually anything, or send it to a company that can, and David Baker, director of Wilson Recycling, said the company received the stewardship award part- ly because of its efforts to recycle agrigultural plas- tics. "We focused a lot in 2011 in supporting the agricultural community," he said. "Agricultural plastics --really they're a burden on the agricul- tural community." Agrigultural plastics include everything from bailing twine to hay wrap to flower pots from nurs- eries, Baker said. Many of these products can be recycled to not only keep such plastic out of land- fills, but also to reduce the need for new plastic, and its root material -- oil. "For us to be able to give more life to this product reduces the need around that have a park bench that's like plastic wood and that's most- ly where• that's coming from," Baker said. The conservation recognized a farm this year as well. Bishop said Skokomish Farms, for the origi- owned by Alann nal natural re-~We took and Mali Kriv- source," he said. or, has done ex- Agricultural ~O~iF~atioF~$ tensive work in plastic can be reused in sever- al applications, Baker said. For example, nursery ~ pots are often shred- ded, melted and reused to make things like laun- dry detergent bottles. Bailing twine can be re- used to make plastic fab- rics and plastic film used for feed bags and hay wrap can be recycled into things like plastic park benches, or plastic lum- ber, sometimes used in decking. "There's a few places from the the past several years to pre- CO~F~it~ serve their land and we in the Skokom- ish Valley. ended up oo9, ~/itb t~/O they enrolled 42 acres of their who were property into a above and program called Emergency Wa- beyond o" tershed Protec- tion Program," Bishop said. As part of that pro- gram, the Krivors plant- ed 21,000 trees and in- stalled 2,000 feet of fenc- ing on that 42 acres of land. See Awards on page A-6