The Nature of Things: American courage spans the centuries

The environmentalists never give up. They don’t need to as long as they have federal judges on their side like District Judge James Redden. This judge has given warning to the fisheries agencies that if they don’t come up with a plan in one year that suits him, he will act to have the four dams on the Lower Snake river breached.

When the fishery people requested two years he said no; not unless the enviros and the tribes needed more time to present their case. This is unbelievable. Here is a guy who sees himself as the High Priest of all of the Northwest’s governing body. He doesn’t even need to bring back Secretary Bruce Babbott with his sledgehammer. He can remove the dams by using his gavel.

He should have his black robe replaced with a solid green one and given a headband complete with an eagle feather. Unlike many of the “tree-hugger” judges who ruled against the timber industry, he is a devoted salmon-hugger. The problem is that a salmon is a very slippery creature to hug, which is symbolic of the slippery slope the judge wants to take us down in order to become the man who saved the salmon from extinction.

Why is he picking on the four Snake River dams? He says they are killing too many salmon smolts. But what about all the other hydro dams on the Columbia River system. They kill fish, too. If returning the salmon runs to pre-settlement levels is the most overriding goal that mankind should achieve as our legacy to future generations, then let’s take out all the dams, stop sport and commercial fishing, irrigation, grazing and take the gillnets out of the river. If salmon are the sacred cows by which our civilization is judged, then let’s return the Columbia and Snake rivers to what they were when Lewis and Clark came through in 1805. What a fitting tribute that would be for the Bicentennial Celebration.

FDR’s visionIn order to understand the importance of the many hydroelectric dams in the inland Northwest, we have to go back to the 1930s and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR was a visionary. He wondered why the Pacific Northwest was lagging behind the rest of the nation in economic development, so he turned the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation loose to construct a network of dams that would harness the power of the rivers for electricity, irrigation, flood control and navigation. Roosevelt’s vision came true as the Northwest quickly utilized the cheap power to drive the engines of industry. In addition to industrial development, irrigation made the desert bloom and navigation reached all the way to Lewiston, Idaho. And it stopped the downstream flooding so there would be no more floods like the one at Vanport in North Portland.

Saviors from the EastSo to appease the environmental extremists, the tribes and EarthFirst!, let’s take out all the dams. For those of you who think the economy will collapse, not to worry! They have always been telling us that tourism will kick in to save us all. There will be “big spenders from the East” who will pour into Orrygone to watch the Indians dip-netting salmon at Cellilo Falls, which will reappear after The Dalles Dam is breached.

And we will still have the multitudes of Yuppies windsurfing in the Columbia Gorge, providing the swift river current doesn’t carry them downstream into another zip code. They can always hitchhike back to where they parked their Toyotas.

I’m not sure where the electric power will come from to light up the neon signs and flashing lights of the tribal casinos at Pendleton and Cascade Locks. I doubt if windmill farms will be allowed on the bluffs above the river as they would offend the memory of what it was like when Lewis and Clark came through.

Of course the ports of Clarkston and Lewiston will dry up when river navigation disappears, but that’s not all bad as it didn’t smell very good in that area anyway. But what about Portland? Its umbilical cord is fastened to Bonneville Dam, so it is doubtful it could survive on roots and berries. After all, it was an old growth forest in 1805. Hmmm…do you suppose we could clearcut Portland again and plant it back to trees? Even the fishwrap Oregonian sometimes calls its fair city “Stumptown.”

Getting back to reality, there are 3.5 million people in Oregon and almost twice that many in Washington. I sincerely have my doubts that there are a very substantial percentage of them whose livelihoods are dependent on the salmon runs.

Only a congenital idiot or a federal judge such as Redden would even consider putting fish ahead of all the other economic and social assets that have brought prosperity to the Pacific Northwest due to our network of hydroelectric dams.

E. H. Van Blaricom is a longtime columnist for the Chieftain, and he can be reached in care of this newspaper.