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Opinion

Friends of Grays Harbor warns about Chehalis dam proposal

Friends of Grays Harbor (FOGH) Thursday issued a critique of the Washington Department of Ecology’s Revised Draft Environmental…

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Obituaries

Jane Ann Bacon

Jane Ann Bacon, an 89-year-old resident of Hoquiam, Washington passed away Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025, at Pacific Care…

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Death Notices

Carol Wilson, Debra Anderson-Hall, Louie Burch

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Obituaries

John Bubnick

John Bubnick was born to Donald and Janet (Robertson) Bubnick, on Aug. 10, 1955, in Aberdeen, Washington.

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Obituaries

Juanita “Nita” Johnson

On Nov. 30, 2025, there was a spectacular sunset of bright orange, red and yellow. It was the…

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Obituaries

Rosa (Keuerleber) Bensinger

Rosa (Keuerleber) Bensinger, 88, of Aberdeen Washington, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, aunt and friend, peacefully went…

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Obituaries

Louie Frank Burch Jr.

Louie Frank Burch Jr., 74, of Elma, Washington, passed away Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 at Capital Medical Center…

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Obituaries

Helen ‘Heidi’ Elizabeth Davis

Helen ‘Heidi’ Elizabeth Davis, 76, a longtime resident of Hoquiam, passed away peacefully at her home on Wednesday,…

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Sports

Sports Brief for Friday, Jan. 16, 2026

Elma High School to host second “Pack the Gym” unified basketball game

The Daily World photos McKenzie Cotey performs a flute solo during the Grays Harbor College Jazz Festival on Thursday.

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Smooth vibes only at Grays Harbor College Jazz Festival

The Bishop Center for Performing Arts hosted the 8th Annual Grays Harbor College Jazz Festival Thursday.

The newly minted 2026 Aberdeen City Council (Jerry Knaak / The Daily World)

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Grays Harbor city councils get off to a running start in 2026

Aberdeen

Andrea Watts / The Daily World In summer of 2023, the middle fork Wildcat Creek had three fish passage barrier corrections on Summit Road, Elma Hicklin Road, and County Line Road. Instead of flowing through culverts, the creek now flows under pre-cast concrete bridges. On County Line Road, flooding over the roadway occurred often enough that the county flagged it as needing fixing because of ongoing maintenance issues. A visual sign that a restoration project is achieving its goals is how the water is flowing. Basically, you make sure the water is going through at a slow enough rate for the juveniles and the water is not narrowed up and shooting right through, said Lonnie Crumley, chair of the nonprofit Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force. When the steam flowed through the culverts, the higher stream velocity negatively affected the substrate transport. The narrowed channel passage also caused the water to flood upstream. As a result of the barrier correction, “everything’s getting back into a natural system,” said co-owner of Streamworks Consulting Brett Demond. The section of creek that flows under Summit Road showed signs that the creek overtopped its banks and flooded into the grassy field, but not nearly the extent as it had in previous years. “This whole field here would go underwater ,” Crumley said, and cDemond added, “so it’s really reduced the flooding, but it’s still connected to the floodplain.” Another visual sign that the restoration is successful is that you aren’t seeing any fish moving through, which does seem counter intuitive. “Everybody always complains when they come, they don’t see any fish, but that’s the whole point,” said Crumley. “We don’t want them building up here. We want them going on through.” Crumley points out a section of gravel that appears brighter colored than the surrounding gravel. “That’s probably a redd right in there,” he said. A redd is where a female salmon has laid her eggs, and digging in the gravel cleans it. On County Line Road, the bridge also replaced three pipes, and the stream is “now acting like a normal stream” Demond said. Looking over the edge of the bridge, Crumley observed, “Not too many shiny spots here.” Downstream of the bridge is an active beaver pond.

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Checking in on the Chehalis Basin restoration projects

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force restoration projects in East Grays Harbor County improved fish passage and kept water…

Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau Olympic National Park.

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Olympic National Park had more than 3.6M visitors in ’25

Shortly after Sula Jacobs began working for the National Park Service, she told a friend she wanted to…