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Airport Wages, Major Road Closure & More News

The top Seattle news stories you should be reading today

By Danny Calkins August 20, 2015

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Working at the airport just became an even better gig. The Washington Supreme Court ruled that a voter-approved initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 in the city of SeaTac should apply to workers at the airport, reports KOMO News. Residents of SeaTac voted last November for the increased wage, but a month later a King County Superior Court judge ruled that the airport is controlled by the Port of Seattle—not the city of SeaTac—thereby nullifying any benefits airport workers would receive from the new law. That all changed Thursday with the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling, noting that there is no indication the new law will interfere with airport operations.

A grocery warehouse fire Tuesday in Winlock had devastating effects on fish in a nearby creek, KING 5 News reports. The fire burned nearly 1,100 gallons of vegetable and canola oil, some of which ended up escaping through a storm drain, emptying in Olequa Creek and killing 100 percent of the fish for nearly four miles downstream. “Where it starts getting deep there, you couldn’t even see the bottom,” Winlock resident Rich Rouska told KING 5. The Department of Ecology responded swiftly with vacuums and special pads to soak up the oil, an effort expected to last for several days.

A major closure on State Route 99 is scheduled for this weekend, so plan your routes accordingly. Beginning Friday night, both directions of SR99 will close between the south end of the Battery Street Tunnel and Valley Street, says KIRO 7 News. The southbound lanes close at 10 p.m. and northbound lanes close two hours after the end of the Mariners game (which begins at 7:10 p.m.), although the Alaskan Way Viaduct will remain open. The closure is due to construction as part of the State Route 99 project, an effort to build roadway connections between the future tunnel and Aurora Avenue. “We’re asking folks to give themselves extra time, use alternate routes and just be aware that Aurora is closed in that section,” Dave Sowers, deputy project administrator for the Washington State Department of Transportation, told KIRO News.

WSU Cougar Football leads the nation. Unfortunately, it’s for a pretty bad reason: America’s most arrested college football program, KOMO News reports. Former San Jose Mercury News reporter Mike Rosenberg found that there were 918 reported arrests (and criminal citations) of Division I college football players in the last five years, about one every other day. With 31 arrests during that span, Washington State University football leads the pack, just ahead of the University of Florida (24 arrests) and the University of Georgia (22 arrests). The numbers do not reflect the severity of the crimes, however, meaning that some of the arrests could be for minor offenses. (And full disclosure, I am still a proud alum of Washington State University and always will be, so Go Cougs.) 

 

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