News

COOS BAY, Ore. -- An engineering study found that a rail line between Coos Bay and Eugene needs about $100 million worth of work before it can handle heavier train traffic. The study was paid for by anonymous investors interested in exporting coal from Coos Bay. Amelia Templeton reports.

The Port of Coos Bay bought the line in 2009, after it was shut down by a Florida company.

It’s been back in service for less than a year, moving small amounts of freight for sawmills and timber companies.

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington Republican candidate for governor Rob McKenna is injecting himself into the ongoing turmoil over how to rebalance the state budget. At a news conference , McKenna went after Democratic Speaker of the House Frank Chopp.

An international research panel recommends cutting in half the global harvest of small, schooling fish like sardines, anchovy and herring.

Crews will break ground this week on a new high school in Waldport on the Oregon coast. The existing school is in a tsunami zone. The new location will be on higher ground.

   
A scientist at Spokane’s Riverpoint campus has received a large grant to study one question: why do humans sleep? 

Six ports in the Northwest are now considering building export terminals to bring American coal to Asian markets. One of those ports is Grays Harbor – west of Olympia. 5 million tons of coal could move through that port each year. If that coal is burned in places like China that would be the same as putting about two and a half million new cars on the road. But the new terminal represents much-needed jobs in this county – and that has people talking.

A year after the devastating earthquake in Japan, up to 100,000 tons of tsunami generated debris is posing an urgent threat to coastal economies in the western U.S. That’s according to Senators Maria Cantwell and Mark Begich, who have written a letter to President Barack Obama, asking that emergency research funds from the National Science Foundation be mobilized to help scientists hone in on what needs to be done to prepare for the arrival of the debris.

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Washington Governor Chris Gregoire says she has put a compromise budget balancing proposal on the table in hopes of breaking the stalemate at the state capital. Speaking to reporters Friday, she indicated bipartisan negotiations are making some progress, but calls the talks "tenuous." Gregoire declined to reveal any details about what is included in her spending blueprint.

SALEM, Ore. - Corrections officials in Olympia and Salem are bracing for an expected increase in prisoners. The Washington Department of Corrections is predicting a need for 900 more beds in the next four years. And a new report issued Friday confirms an earlier forecast that Oregon will need housing for 2,000 more inmates by the end of the decade.