News from the Front #80:
As
the old folks are beginning to die from hypothermia
because they can't pay their electric bills, it
seems worth re-emphasizing that the Lunatic Left is
out sharpening its knives for a new round of
"ecosystem restoration". Insofar as Pacific
Northwest salmon are concerned, "ecosystem
restoration" mostly means extorting money from
hydroelectric dams, resulting in higher electric
rates, the death of large quantities of natural
resource industry jobs, and an ever-growing loyal
cadre of high-paid Leftist eco-bureaucrats.
Following up on his
"State of the State" address, Governor
Kulongoski now wants to waste much more of the power
of the Columbia River, including wasting 64% of the
river flow at The Dalles Dam from April through
August. We can be sure this action is not about
saving fish, because they did tests at The Dalles,
and found that
a lot more fish survived at 32% waste than 64% waste.
It turns out that spilling most of the river over
the top of the Dam advantages predators, who are
able to eat more tasty smolts when spill rates are
high.
The last Lying Leftist Lunatic Governor, John
Kitzhaber, was so eager to waste more water at the
dams that he ordered the Oregon's Environmental
Quality Commission to waive water quality standards
that prevented excessive spill. Too much spill is
the only operational screw-up that has caused big
piles of dead fish to show up at the dams, dead from
gas bubble disease caused by excessive spill.
(Sometimes the gillnetters cause piles of dead fish
to show up at the dams, because the prices drop so
low it's cheaper to dump the fish dead in the river
than haul them back to shore.) But if excessive
spill doesn't kill enough fish, they won't pile up
faster than the predators can eat them, and the
Lunatic Left will be happy. After all, it is more
"natural" to spill water over the top of dams than
run it through the turbines.
Governor Kulongoski also wants to lower the level
of John Day reservoir by 17 feet or more, leaving
400,000 acres of irrigated land high and dry (not to
mention rendering the fish ladders and navigation
locks unworkable). The Governor does generously
allow that the federal government should go print
some more money to pay for new irrigation intakes
and pumps to help the farmers.
The Lunatic Leftists are equal opportunity
destroyers up and down the river. We can't dredge
to the sea, so the container barge lines are leaving
Portland. We can't dredge at the top, so the
farmers and mills around Lewiston, Idaho may not be
able to ship their lproducts downriver. And now
we'll be draining the reservoir in middle, and
spilling so fast that it literally wears out the
dams. It's all part of the
Governor's Secret Plan (99Kb MS Word document).
On January 28, 2005, having failed to sell the
federal dam operators on his secret plan, the
Governor told his lawyers to intervene in the
long-running salmon litigation in federal court
before United States District Judge James Redden
(appropriately enough, it was the 666th document
filed in the case). According to the intervention
papers, the reason so many salmon runs are listed as
threatened or endangered is "largely as a result of
massive annual mortality at the hands of the Federal
Columbia River Power System". In fact, salmon runs
are listed everywhere, including in rivers with no
dams. In fact, the fish ladders and the smolt
transportation barges probably give the fish higher
survival up and down the Columbia than they would
experience in a natural river without dams (but with
rapids and waterfalls).
Over the last decade, the lies of the Lunatic
Left, often presented in Court by Oregon's Attorney
General and his designees, have required the
Bonneville Power Administration to charge some of
the highest electric rates in the country, despite
having fuel costs of essentially zero. And the
Lunatic Leftists have more tools at hand than
lawyers to raise the rates. Prodded by the
Governor's appointees, the Northwest Power &
Conservation Council has evolved into
the old Soviet Gosplan, and its massive "subbasin
planning" has now reached its foul fruition.
Based upon the subbasin plans, the Lunatics are this
month proposing to add roughly $460 million a year
to BPA rates. [Ed. note: this hyperlink no
longer works because once I and others publicized
this document, found at a taxpayer-funded website,
the eco-bureaucrats took the site down.]
Governor Kulongoski and his crowd seem to like
nothing more than kicking business interests in the
nuts (other than the businesses of his buddies, like
former Governor Neil
"Short Eyes" Goldschmidt). One would think that
just one of the many industry groups whose sock
puppets fill endless government meetings would deign
to object to all this nonsense, but this being
Oregon, the prevailing view seems to be
"thank you sir, may I have another". Things
won't change until a lot more old ladies die, I
guess.
© James Buchal, February 1, 2005
You have permission to reprint this article, and
are encouraged to do so. The sooner people figure
out what's going on, the quicker we'll have more
fish in the rivers.
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