Forget ho, ho, ho.
Homes in Eureka would have settled for some good old H20 for Christmas.
Emergency workers were around on Sunday to shut off the line, but repair work didn't begin until the heavy equipment was warmed up late Monday morning. Subzero temperatures and difficulty finding the exact break made the going slow after that, and workers knocked off late Wednesday (Christmas Eve) and all of Christmas Day. They finished on Friday evening.
“We were pushed,” said Roger Butler, director of Eureka Public Works. “We worked 12 hours a day for four days.”
When Barb Cook learned of the break on the scanner, the 69-year-old widow hurried to fill up the bathtub before the city turned off her water. That helped Cook get by, but as the week went on, she notified the fire department, which delivered water to several neighbors in need.
The leaking water bubbled up at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street, just outside the home of Ernie and Jeanie Roo.
“A neighbor came over and he said, ‘You have a fountain and a lake outside your house,' ” Jeanie Roo said. “We had our family all come to stay - and we all packed water. You can't have nine people stay in a house with no bathroom.”
Butler said 200 feet of new street in front of the high school was torn up, and 180 feet of six-inch water line was replaced. He blamed the break on an engineering mistake. When the new road was put in, a new sewer line was installed, but not a new water line.
Alas, the Christmas fix was only temporary. Butler said his crew will have to go in the spring and replace it all.
Puppies from Livingston detected with parvovirus
A litter of puppies released to the Deer Lodge animal shelter from Livingston was detected with canine parvovirus shortly before Christmas.
One of the four puppies died of the highly contagious virus, city animal control officer Heather Gregory told the Silver State Post last week. It was the second litter in three months infected by the disease at the shelter. This one came from someone from Livingston. A previous infection in October came from Hamilton.
Gregory said the latest one came to light after a man who had adopted one of the puppies notified her on Dec. 22 that his puppy was sick. He was told to see a veterinarian, who administered tests that pointed to parvovirus. By that night the three others had the disease, one of which succumbed to it.
The shelter is under a two-week quarantine. “It pretty much shuts us down,” Gregory said.
The virus can live in the feces of a dog for a considerable time, even during the winter. Gregory said anything that comes into contact with the infected feces - a shoe, clothing, water and food bowls, blankets, etc. - can transmit it. Humans can't be infected, but it's a good reason to limit human contact to puppies until the fourth week at least.
Education and vaccination are the best ways to keep parvovirus in check. Gregory said by rights, puppies shouldn't be given up before their first shots, when they're six to eight weeks old. Since the latest case, all dogs that come into the Deer Lodge animal shelter are being vaccinated, whether they've already had their shots or not. The city can't afford to keep having these scares, Gregory said.
Libby district receives $25,000 innovation grant
Northwest Montana can't see an economic future without trees.
“We can't ignore the trees. The resource is right there,” said Jennifer Nelson of the Northwest Montana Economic Development Council. “The timber industry can play an important role in green building products and carbon sequestration.”
The Western News reported that the Libby district recently received a $25,000 grant from the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. It's called a Regional Innovation Grant, and innovation is what's needed to blend the Kootenai's traditional resource identity with a realistic future.
Most of the $25,000 will go to a research firm from Missoula. Camas Creek Associates is charged with examining existing infrastructure and labor forces, incorporating the potential industry into forest restoration and stewardship and compiling its findings in a report by April 30.
The goal of the grant is to “facilitate long-term retention of Š forest-based manufacturing infrastructure and its labor force,” state labor commissioner Keith Kelly said in a Dec. 8 news release.
Paul Rumelhart, executive director of Kootenai River Development Council, suggested energy can be derived from trees in the form of cellulosic ethanol.
Such alternative uses for wood are continuously being developed, but they're nothing new to the Kootenai. In the 1960s, a local man, Mel Knudsen, developed a process for removing sugar from the stumps of larch trees. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it was the first natural gum completely produced and developed in the United States.
“We need to recognize and utilize the forest to retain our remaining infrastructure,” Nelson told the Western News. “The RIG grant is a big step toward a cooperative effort.”
Weeklies Reader is compiled by reporters Vince Devlin and Kim Briggeman.
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