http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2003/12/17/viewpoints/letters/letters.txt

Letters to the editor

published Dec. 17, 2003

There's no mystery

Interesting reading in the Dec. 7 Herald and News. It seems the Bureau of Reclamation is wondering why the lake levels have barely risen since the end of the irrigation season.

Well, let's see. The federal government with the help of the Rangeland Trust spent thousands of dollars to various ranches above the lake to not irrigate their ranches.

As a result, thousands of heretofore irrigated acres were dried up for the entire summer.

I don't know how much this increased the lake levels all summer, but I do know that now all the dried-up, spongy, marshy pastures will take every bit of moisture there is available just to bring ground water levels back up to where there will be any runoff at all to go to the lake. Usually by this time in the fall, after the trees stop taking water and irrigation is over, the Four Mile Canal has risen considerably. I don't think it is too hard to figure out why the lake hasn't risen yet.

The early goose hunting season was a folly. With the pastures dried up, there was no green feed for the birds - just dry grass. They opted to move out. We used to ride among the flocks in the fall every year. Not this year. Every year in the spring there were thousands of baby goslings on the canals. "Yellow flotillas," we called them. No more.

With this in mind, we would like to see the mighty mosquito put on the endangered list. When the myriad "experts" from a thousand well-funded agencies take over, the little buggers should be gone directly.

Sandy Brown

Box 652

Chiloquin