Local News

A dead sturgeon was found floating in Lake Washington over the weekend. (Photo by Keith Magnuson)

This report is by Mark Yuasa, Seattle Times staff reporter

Keith Magnuson who lives in Seattle along the shores of Lake Washington, was waterskiing Saturday when he came across a giant dead fish.

“At first I thought it was a shark, but then we figured out it was a large sturgeon,” Magnuson said.

Magnuson found the sturgeon that he and a friend estimated to be about 8 feet long floating belly up north of Matthews Beach.

The dead sturgeon is now tied to a post, and state Fish and Wildlife planned to send out a biologist to take a look at it in the next couple days.

“It is not a common fish to find in the lake and rather unique,” said Annette Hoffman, a state Fish and Wildlife biologist in Mill Creek. “We recalled another sturgeon was found in the lake (back in 1987 that was 11 feet long and weighed 640 pounds).”

Another 5 ½-foot sturgeon was caught in 2005 by a University of Washington research boat.

According to Hoffman, sturgeon commonly migrate up and down the vast Columbia River. Locally, sport anglers also pursue them near the mouth of the Snohomish River.

“Sturgeon live in deepwater, and are bottom feeders so they’re not easy to spot,” Hoffman said.

Sturgeon are one of the oldest — dating back to the prehistoric times — and largest freshwater fish in the world, growing up to 20 feet long and weighing more than 1,000 pounds.

The new temporary Skagit River Bridge on Interstate 5 will be closed one lane at a time on Saturday night for inspections after a metal joint came loose, state transportation officials said.

Part of an “L” joint that holds the asphalt in place between the temporary bridge and permanent roadway came loose Saturday morning and the right lane of the bridge was closed for about two hours while crews welded the joint back into place and spread new asphalt, Transportation Department spokesman Kris Olsen said.

The rest of the joints will be inspected between 8 p.m. Saturday and 5 a.m. Sunday.

A portion of the Skagit River Bridge collapsed on May 23 after a truck struck some critical steel supports. Two vehicles fell into the river, but no one was seriously injured.

A temporary span was opened about a month later. A new $6.87 million permanent bridge is being constructed over the river.

The 58-year-old bridge carries an average of 71,000 vehicles a day over the Skagit River on I-5, Washington’s major north-south roadway between Oregon and Canada.

The replacement bridge is expected to be in place in early September.

Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman

David Boardman, executive editor and senior vice president of The Seattle Times, has received the national Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics in Journalism Award.

He was honored for his staff’s coverage of the newspaper’s decision to pay for ads supporting the Republican candidate for governor, Rob McKenna, and Referendum 74, a ballot measure to legalize same-sex marriage, in the 2012 election.

“Under Boardman’s direction, The Times’ News Department reported thoroughly and aggressively on the decision, even going so far as to publish a ‘truth squad’ piece pointing (out) the factual errors in the ads,” the organization said in a news release Thursday.

Boardman also wrote a column explaining the newsroom’s independence from the ads and pledging to readers that the newspaper’s campaign coverage would remain fair and impartial, the organization noted.

Boardman’s “courageous actions” generally prevented damage to the credibility of The Times, according to John Michael Kittross, the Seattle-based editor of Media Ethics magazine who nominated Boardman.

Boardman recently announced he is leaving The Times to become the dean of Temple University’s School of Media and Communication.

In a written statement, Seattle Times Co. spokeswoman Jill Mackie said, “We are very proud of the recognition Dave has received. We have always known about his strong sense of ethics and it is good to see it be recognized broadly.

“As for the political advertising experiment, we understood before launching it that it would be controversial. Because of our clear knowledge of and support for the wall between our business efforts to fund journalism and the independence of our newsroom, we were not concerned about the effort compromising our reporting in any way.”

KING 5 news had a story tonight about how a Hanford worker believed that a tank containing some of the nastiest radioactive waste in the country was leaking nearly a year before the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledged the problem.

Reporter Susannah Frame writes:

Why it took DOE and the private company hired to oversee the tank a full year to conduct a thorough investigation into signs of a leak of highly radioactive waste raises a larger question about the cleanup effort at Hanford — a 586-square-mile patch of Central Washington that’s the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere.

The question: How effective is the oversight of the private contractors doing much of the complicated work at Hanford?

The DOE said it takes its oversight role seriously and that the investigation into the suspected leak was handled correctly.

You can see the King 5 report here.

Air quality is still hazardous in the Wenatchee, Pateros and Cashmere area due to smoke from forest fires, the state Department of Ecology reported Sunday.

Wenatchee area residents are urged to continue to stay indoors, limit physical activity, and keep doors and windows shut.

The biggest threat from smoke comes from fine particles that can cause burning eyes, runny nose, bronchitis and other illnesses. Smoky air also can aggravate heart and lung disease.

Police are looking for the driver of a truck they believe struck two pedestrians early this morning in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood and then drove away.

According to police, the pedestrians were standing by their cars on the west side of the road in the 9000 block of Dayton Avenue North when the truck struck them about 1:45 a.m. The truck stopped but then drove off  southbound on Dayton Avenue North.

The pedestrians, both in the 20s, were taken to Harborview Medical Center, although they weren’t as seriously injured as initially thought.

A Sound Transit bus driver was cited for inattentive driving after a woman was struck by a bus in the International District Friday, Seattle Police reported.

A woman in her 50s was crossing 5th Avenue South in the 700 block  in a crosswalk at about 5:30 p.m . when the incident occurred, police said.

The articulated bus was southbound on 5th Avenue South and had maneuvered around a Metro bus that was stopped at the curb near the crosswalk.

The woman was knocked to the ground.

She was transported to Harborview Medical Center with non-life-theatening injuries, police said.

A 17-year-old boy was pulled from 12-feet of water in Steel Lake in Federal Way after he struggled and went under Friday evening.

The accident happened about 8:30 p.m. near the swimming area of Steel Lake Park at 2400 block of South 312th Street.

South King Fire and Rescue responded and quickly brought him to shore, where they began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and managed to restart his heart.

Assistant Chief Gordie Olson estimated the boy had been under water 15 minutes. The boy was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

There was no additional information on his condition Saturday.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and two members of the Nordstrom family are part of the investor group seeking to bring a National Basketball Association franchise to Seattle, San Francisco hedge fund manager Chris Hansen announced today.

In a letter to Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and King County Executive Dow Constantine, Hansen identified Ballmer, who expressed interest in investing in basketball a few years ago, and Peter and Erik Nordstrom as part of his group.

“These three gentlemen, like me, are committed to operating the arena and the NBA franchise in a way that represents and upholds the values of our community. They appreciate the role the Sonics played in this community for more than 40 years and see this project as an opportunity to bring that civic asset back to our community. They also understand the unique ability of professional basketball to positively affect urban youth,” wrote Hansen.

Hansen has been criticized in recent months for a lack of transparency for not naming his local partners. The letter says the investor group is not yet fully assembled but that these individuals agreed to come forward at this time.

Other members of the Nordstrom family had been involved in an previous ownership group of the Seattle Seahawks.

Hansen wants to build a $490 million arena in Sodo, with up to $200 million in public bonds he says would be paid back by arena revenue, to host an NBA team and his ownership group hope to purchase.

McGinn and Constantine support the idea and the Seattle and Metropolitan King County councils are both vetting the proposal.