By Joel Summer

Maggie McHugh of the Lower Rogue Watershed Council asked the Curry County Commissioners for their support of a project by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) that would map the Rogue Watershed from Gold Beach to Grants Pass using a technology called LIDAR.

LIDAR is a fairly new technology that uses laser beams cast from aircraft to map land and water nuances.

The methodology is called Light Detection and Reading and the technology can map everything from the tops of buildings and trees to inventorying carbon footprint.

The mapping will allow DOGAMI to identify filling, dredging, bank armoring and road construction along the banks of the Rogue River as well as commercial activities such as mining and logging throughout the watershed.

This will help identify the impact of these activities on the Rogue and create a baseline for future study and identification.

The mapping will help identify the impact of gravel mining, development, and channel modification.

The LIDAR technology can help identify channel change and bed-material transport to establish gravel movement activity. A similar study was recently completed on the Chetco.

The Board agreed to support the project.

Home telehealth monitoring

A Memorandum of Understanding was approved by the commissioners for telehealth monitoring to be performed by Asante's Three River Hospital in the Rogue Valley and Curry County Home Health & Hospice.

Under this program patients from Curry County travel to Medford or Grants Pass to obtain health care from Asante Health System and return to their homes.

Three Rivers will provide the patients with up to 10 Lifeview Telehealth Monitors that will monitor and transmit the patients' vital signs to nurses in the Rogue Valley.

If information is outside of established parameters the Three Rivers nurse will inform C2H3 case manager who will initiate further action.

Three Rivers will be responsible for maintaining the devices and will hold C2H3 from any loss or damage if the devices are damaged or stolen.

Undersheriff Rector

Bob Rector will now be Curry County Undersheriff instead of Curry County Sheriff's Captain. Sheriff John Bishop said this is a title change only and will have no impact on Rector's compensation or terms of employment.

Bishop said the purpose of the change is to bring the state's Sheriffs' Departments closer to conformity with each other. Bishop said that about 75 percent of the Sheriffs' Departments in the state have undersheriffs instead of captains for the second ranking officer in a Sheriff's Department.