Open Gorge: The Skamania Dispatch & Klickitattler
Welcome to Open Gorge, your audio bridge to local government, infrastructure, and community news in the Columbia River Gorge.
Hosted by the founder of Open Gorge, Kate Bertash, this podcast brings the in-depth, civic-minded reporting of The Skamania Dispatch and The Klickitattler newsletters straight to your headphones. We break down the public meetings you didn't have time to attend, track local infrastructure projects, and decode the regional policy decisions that directly impact your daily life.
Whether you are a Columbia Gorge resident commuting across the river, following local elections, or tracking where your tax dollars are going, we provide clear, factual summaries of what’s changing and what’s coming next.
Our unified feed covers the entire Gorge. Check the title of each episode to see if we are covering Skamania County, Klickitat County, or regional issues that impact us all. Listen to what matters most to your neighborhood, or stay tuned for the full regional picture.
Subscribe to the written newsletters and join the community at SkamaniaDispatch.com.
Episodes
71 episodes
[Skamania] 🗺 Who Actually Plans the City? - August '26 Stevenson Round-up
Stevenson's county planner counted the city's apartment-zoned land and reported back that in his opinion Stevenson does not need more of it. The Planning Commission recommended a rezone anyway, then asked to be put to work on a comprehensive pl...
[Klickitat] 🎨 A Door Through the Mural - Bingen August '26 Round-Up
Bingen's city attorney is leaving at the end of the year for two judgeships, and nobody outside City Hall has reported it. The Bingen City Council also filed a breach-of-contract complaint over a door cut through a community mural, caught a sta...
[Skamania] 🧾 A City w/o a Water Operator - North Bonneville August '26
North Bonneville lost its only certified water and wastewater operator at the end of July, with what staff called less than twenty-four hours of notice. The mayor declared an emergency and signed a six-month contract that the City Council never...
[Klickitat] 🥬 The Dollar Store Showdown - White Salmon August '26
White Salmon spent August getting three big decisions ready and making none of them. The City Council pulled a dollar store moratorium off its own agenda before anyone spoke, the Tree Board decided what a mature oak is actually worth, and a sto...
[All-Gorge] 🧭 "One of the Two Purposes," Debates Inside the Gorge Commission - August '26
The federal signature the Columbia River Gorge Commission has waited on since January finally landed, and it arrived as a footnote in a scheduling discussion. Post-fire rebuilding rules take effect around October 1, which matters to every house...
[Skamania] 🔌 The Utility We Create: A Field Guide to Skamania PUD
Public Utility District No. 1 of Skamania County runs three separate systems, and this year they went in opposite directions. Underwood closed to new commercial water while Carson sits six hundred hookups under its ceiling. We walk through what...
[Klickitat] 🖥 The County That Didn't Pause Data Centers - Klickitat BOCC 7/28 to 8/18
Three Washington counties hit pause on data centers this month. The Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners took up a moratorium request of its own... and chose a different tool entirely. We get into why that decision is harder than it l...
[Skamania] 🧁 A Spider Called Sparkle Muffin - Skamania BOCC, PUD, & Weed Board 7/28 - 8/4
Skamania County's PUD just froze new commercial water hookups in Underwood, and its own paperwork gives three different answers about when they start again. Meanwhile the county divided a federal pot that came up seventy-four thousand dollars s...
[Klickitat] 🚱The Flood They Can't Discuss - Bingen July 2026
Bingen City Council spent thirty minutes in July listening to its own residents and legally could not answer a single question. Four downtown businesses have been closed since a contractor struck a water main in April, one of them is now closed...
[Klickitat] 🏘 Rules for Backyard Homes - Goldendale July 2025
Goldendale's City Council spent both July meetings fighting over one sentence in its new backyard-homes rule: whether somebody has to actually live on the property. It passed anyway. Also this month, a five-year airport engineering deal, an awa...
[Skamania] 💸 An Equipment Fund Run Dry - North Bonneville July ‘26
The North Bonneville City Council filled its last empty seat in a single evening, then spent the rest of the month finding problems. A typo in a five year old planning document nearly sank a grant application. The city's equipment fund turned o...
[Klickitat] ☀️ Balcony Solar and a Postponed Store - White Salmon July '26
White Salmon's biggest land-use hearing of the summer was over in minutes, before it ever opened. Sixty-nine people had already written in about a proposed convenience store across from Rheingarten Park, staff had recommended denial, and then t...
[Skamania] 🏘 Ten Units or One? - Stevenson July 2026
Stevenson's Planning Commission spent an evening on half an acre, and ended up asking a question the city cannot currently answer. Meanwhile the City Council's long sewer rewrite finally got the escape hatch septic owners have been asking for s...
[Klickitat] 🗳 The Last Forum - Klickitat Primary Special - 7/21
Klickitat County's third and last candidate forum before the August 4 primary (vote by tonight!) happened July 21 in Goldendale, and the questions were the bluntest of the three. Three sheriff candidates were asked when they last worked patrol ...
[All-Gorge] ⚖️ Bridge Liability Untangled - HRWS Bridge Authority July '26
Overnight bridge closures are coming in August, and we've got the full schedule. Plus the Hood River-White Salmon Bridge Authority spent July untangling three separate insurance headaches at once, while the Port of Hood River made a real ...
[Skamania] ⛏ A Quarry on the Clock - Skamania BOCC 7/7 - 7/21
July was quiet in the room at the Skamania County Board of Commissioners, and busy underneath. Commissioners closed the books on the county's old budget system, seated a batch of new volunteers, and watched two long-running fights inch forward:...
[All-Gorge] ⚡ Who Permits the River Line? - EFSEC July Round-Up
Join us for the July round-up of the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, the board that decides where the Gorge's big energy projects go. A Skamania County councilmember asks who actually permits the underwater power line ...
[Skamania] 🪨 The 1872 Rule Hiding Under Skamania's Mining Fights
Skamania County has two mining fights going at once. A Canadian company wants to drill toward an open-pit copper mine near Mount St. Helens, and a gravel quarry on the west end could put five hundred truck trips a day onto Highway 14. But under...
[Klickitat] 🖥 Data Centers Come Knocking - Klickitat BOCC 6/30 - 7/21
Four summer meetings of the Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners, in one sitting. The Board maps out how a data center would actually get approved, weighs shrinking where solar can be built, gets its first real short-term-rental numbe...
[All-Gorge] ⚖️ New Rules & a Fire-Year Reckoning - Gorge Commission 6/18 - 7/14
The Columbia River Gorge Commission just rewrote its own open-government rulebook, over a protest from Friends of the Columbia Gorge and a lone no vote. This episode covers what the new rules actually give you, the one-year Burdoin fire rebuild...
[All-Gorge] 🍽️ Splitting the Dinner Check - a Property Tax Explainer
Every spring, reassessment notices land in mailboxes across Skamania and Klickitat, and every spring they get misread as a bill. This episode explains what your assessment actually is: your share of a fixed check, capped by Washington's one per...
[Klickitat] 🚔 Life After Sheriff Songer - Klickitat Primary Round-Up
Klickitat County is picking a new sheriff for the first time in a decade. Longtime Sheriff Bob Songer is retiring, and three career lawmen (John Bruce, Tony Warren, and Dwayne Matulovich) are running to replace him. We walk through two ca...
[Klickitat] 🚦 A Green Light for the Quiet Zone - Bingen June '26
Bingen City Council had a packed June. The new Hood River-White Salmon Bridge reached sixty-percent design, the city hired an engineer to push its long-awaited railroad Quiet Zone forward, and Olympia's latest housing rules landed on the counci...
[Skamania] 🗳 Meet the Candidates 7/14 - Primary Preview
Your 2026 primary ballot is about to arrive, and the Skamania County Chamber and both county parties put the contested candidates on one stage in Stevenson to preview it. In this special edition we walk the whole ballot: the nine-way race for C...
[Klickitat] 🔥 Smoke, Weeds & Fireworks - Goldendale June '26
It was a packed June for the Goldendale City Council, the county seat of Klickitat County. In two meetings, the council rescued a stalled housing rule by standing up a temporary planning commission, locked in a $221,000 grant to replace the his...