Letters To The Editor

Thu., Sept. 3, 1998

FIELD BURNING

Now, wheat field burning - incredible

They’re burning wheat stubble now? I couldn’t believe it.

We waited 35 years to get relief from grass burning. It took monumental efforts on the part of citizens and the medical community to finally convince the Department of Ecology that smoke really was making us sick. Now, I read that the 60,000 acres of bluegrass that won’t be burned this year as a result of the DOE’s grass burning ban are being replaced with 158,000 acres of torched wheat stubble. And our air is getting even dirtier.

There’s simply no justification for burning. Our Spokane County farmers produce 120,000 acres of wheat without fire. Yet farms in adjoining counties have returned to this archaic practice. Ten years ago, there was little burning in Whitman County. Last year, 65,000 acres went up in smoke. Spokane is downwind of all this. They burn, we get smoked.

The Department of Ecology should immediately address this new and escalating source of pollution. The DOE determined that the smoke from 60,000 acres of bluegrass was hazardous to our health. How can it ignore 158,000 acres of wheat smoke? Elaine Dobbs Mica, Wash.

This smoke exposes its source

The week of August 24 - the last week of summer for kids returning to school - would have been glorious. But, thanks to the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, it wasn’t.

While grass growers in Washington - a stone’s throw from the reservation - managed their tens of thousands of acres without fire, the Coeur d’Alene’s lit as usual, filling the air with tons of toxic waste. Our beautiful blue skies again disappeared behind a thick veil of suspended particulates.

What is particularly offensive about this is that the Coeur d’Alenes would have us believe they care about the Earth and the environment. They want to see the lead out of the lake but don’t seem to mind covering that same lake, and everything else, with choking smoke.

Even worse, they are not willing to take any responsibility for what they are doing. “It’s not our smoke,” they say. The tribe finger then points to Washington farmers or wildfires.

Those excuses won’t work this time. Washington farmers weren’t burning and there were no wildfires within 300 miles of this area the week of the 24th. The smoke that robbed us of our beautiful summer days was reservation-born.

For the Coeur d’Alenes to publicize their concern for the quality of Lake Coeur d’Alene while using our air as a garbage dump is hypocritical. To deny that they are doing it is dishonest. Thomas A. Smith Medical Lake

Sure enough, dirtier air is here

Karen Dorn Steele’s predictions in her article, “Dirtier air lies ahead” (Spokesman-Review, Aug. 16) have already come true for the thousands of Spokane County residents who are asthmatic, have respiratory or allergy problems, or have looked in dismay for Mount Spokane.

Thousands of acres of bluegrass and wheat stubble fields have been burned in the Columbia Basin over the past two weeks. There have been no reported forest fires during this time. The smoke containing harmful particulate matter and chemicals has been transported 100 to 150 miles by prevailing winds to the Spokane region.

Now, residents of Spokane can understand why the people in Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene and Pullman complained for 30 years about the smoke management practices used by grass seed growers in Spokane and Kootenai counties. The farmers attempted only to burn their fields when the smoke would not blow into Spokane, at the expense of the other parts of the Inland Northwest.

Ironically, the SCAPCA-reported airborne particulate monitors indicated that Spokane’s air quality was good for most of these past two weeks. Those who suffer from the deleterious effects of this smoke would certainly argue with this definition of good air quality!

Indeed, we have become downwinders again as many suffer because of the indifference and greed of a relatively small number of farmers who carry out unnecessary and thoughtless agricultural practices. Jeff A. Corkill Spokane

SPOKANE MATTERS

Halt growth of gambling

Re: “Casinos rake in workers” (Aug. 23).

I cannot believe what is happening in our fair city.

Casinos are rapidly springing up everywhere you turn. Is this what we want here in Spokane? Has anyone given any thought to the criminal element that casino gambling will attract to our city?

The lottery is one thing, but the beginning of card rooms and then slot machines will follow, and before we know it, we’re like every city that has gambling as its major source of revenue.

Please let’s do something to stop this insidious epidemic before it goes any further. Sharon Hunter Spokane

THE ENVIRONMENT

Dam breaching doesn’t mean removal

“Breaching” the dams on the lower Snake River is not some radical, offbeat idea. It’s a common sense alternative to an expensive and unsuccessful attempt to preserve salmon and steelhead runs through barging.

Maybe it would help those alarmed by your splashy headline and lead to understand a few simple facts about the idea.

Breaching does not mean removing. It means creating a channel around the dam that would flow at its natural rate. Reservoirs would be somewhat lowered and power generating capacity reduced, but not eliminated.

The dams in question generate roughly 2 percent of the power available in the BPA system, which currently has sufficient capacity to meet all our projected growth demands while exporting large amounts of power in the non-peak-use season.

The dams in question do not service irrigation systems. They serve only to give Lewiston a seaport, which offers a relatively small number of farmers a questionable savings in shipments that until recently were sent by rail 60 miles down the river to be loaded onto barges and shipped from Wallula.

So the question we ought to be asking is: Which do we value most - our salmon and steelhead runs or a taxpayer-supported, minor transportation subsidy to a few agribusinesses and a lumber mill in Lewiston?

I vote for the fish. Jim Wavada Spokane

Dams vital and of scant harm to fish

Contrary to popular belief, salmon runs in the Snake and Columbia rivers have steadily increased, except at The Dalles, where tribal gillnets take their toll.

Salmon easily navigate to Hell’s Canyon Dam, built without fish ladders for upstream migration. Modified fish-friendly turbines keep mortality below 2 percent - lower than in a wild river - allowing young salmon to remain in-river on their return to the ocean, avoiding deadly bypass systems. High mortality occurs from smolt slamming into extended screens, shooting up from cold water into warm holding tanks and waiting two days for shipment, stressed and confused, to downstream predators.

The salmon recovery industry purports that hydropower generation causes salmon decline, a myth crafted to make ratepayers fund recovery efforts. This extortion threatens destruction of four dams and the economy of southeastern Washington. There is scientific evidence breaching would prevent fish passage, with mud flows destroying existing redds.

Four lower Snake River dams are scheduled for fish-friendly turbine modifications soon, boosting output to 4,000 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity costing under 1 cent per kilowatt-hour, providing revenue for BPA to make its $900 million yearly federal payment.

Dams keep Portland from flooding and save billions of dollars. The inland seaport to Lewiston is vital. Ice Harbor Dam supplies water to the world’s largest farms, creates jobs and adds millions to the economy.

Our focus should be increasing the output of cheap, renewable power and helping farmers produce food for the world. Don’t be fooled by the lunatic fringe salmon recovery frauds that want the dams removed. Del Lathim Franklin County PUD commissioner, Pasco

Fallacious arguments don’t hold water

Opinion editor John Webster opposes dam retirement (“Idea has currency, yet it’s bankrupt” (Our View, Aug. 27) with a mass of reasoning fallacies.

Propositions for dam retirement are “trendy,” Webster claims. What’s so trendy about a long tradition of free-flowing rivers? What’s trendy about an ancient heritage of a salmon-rich Inland Northwest? Above all, who’s better suited to make such calls, fisheries scientists or editorial writers?

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt wants “to attack our economy and our way of life,” Webster cries, by promoting dam retirement. How do dams constitute a “way of life”? This fallacy’s called begging the question. Dams, in fact, destroy the way of life of Native Americans and fishing enthusiasts.

A final fallacy Webster commits is overlooking evidence. The four lower Snake River dams, despite Webster’s assertion, contribute next to nothing in “‘the cheap power, the irrigated farming, the flood control” that other dams contribute.

Check the facts: While grain shippers pay only $1.23 per ton to ship their grain, taxpayers and electric ratepayers absorb an additional $12.66 per ton in costs associated with maintaining the waterway, the ports, etc. Those dams are pork for farmers who barge grain. Those dams benefit a few at the expense of the many.

Economic privileges are only part of complex public policy puzzles. Paul Lindholdt Spokane

Decide on basis of science, not lobbying

I urge Gov. Gary Locke to reject the recent appeal by 13 county commissions to enlist his support for excluding dam breaching as a consideration for salmon recovery in the Columbia River system.

It’s irresponsible of these county commissions to attempt to blind the eye of science to achieve their political agendas. It may be that the people of the Pacific Northwest decide such an option imposes too great a cost, but that’s a decision to be made after thorough scientific evaluations are complete, not before. It’s a decision for the people of Washington state, not the county commissions.

Locke has demonstrated balance on these issues thus far and for that is to be commended. I hope he continues in this manner when dealing with the contentious issue of salmon recovery. If we are serious about recovering our once spectacular fisheries, all scientifically valid options must be considered. That doesn’t mean all options are socially or economically feasible.

Let’s gather the best science available and make informed decisions instead of making ill-informed prejudgments based on pressure from vested special interests. Bob Wilson Richland

More to it than dams harming salmon

There have been several articles in The Spokesman-Review recently on the removal of dams to benefit endangered salmon. Proponents of lower Snake River dam removal are cranking up propaganda to influence public acceptance of dam removal.

I’m not an expert, but I did spend some 28 years on the Columbia and Snake rivers, where part of my job was to accommodate fish. I still have an award from the National Marine Fisheries Service for assistance in their research programs.

When it comes to salmon runs, there is something that people need to understand. The returning runs of salmon have been controlled for some 50 years, that I know of. The ocean fishery has been controlled to allow returns to the river for spawning. If a few fish more than normal return to spawn, commercial season on the lower Columbia and sports fishing seasons on the upper Columbia and Snake have been extended or opened to salvage the excess fish. It seems that any fish more than needed for spawning are a waste.

This control hasn’t been infallible. Sometimes more fish return, sometimes less. Excuses are made for deviation from normal.

Would you readily believe that the salmon runs have anything to do with natural river conditions?

Snake River dams have all of the amenities for fish passage. Their record for passage survival is better than natural conditions on the upper Snake River, where downstream fingerling mortality is something like 40 percent. National Marine Fisheries Service discounts this as a natural loss of weak individual fish that naturally wouldn’t survive migration. Robert G. Kress Newport, Wash.

U.S. AND THE WORLD

Get informed and help curb bad policies

This is not a “hate America” letter but a wake up, America. Thinking people must realize that U.S. policies have brought on the jealousy and hatred that fuels terrorist attacks. From the Monroe Doctrine to former defense secretary Robert McNamara (who now admits that officials knew we could not win in Vietnam), to Ronald Reagan’s misguided campaign to make America proud again, to our recent missile attacks, we have imposed power control.

Our grudging foreign aid includes provisions that U.S. corporations supply food and other products that Latin American countries could supply cheaper while stimulating their economies. We ignore African pleas and Muslim sacred places.

I was taught and believed that the United States was an example of democracy, peaceful and ready to help others.

But we have abandoned moral standards and tolerated gutter language. We have given up on our government, which is not working for us. Instead of improving educational opportunities, securing health care for uninsured people and equal justice for everyone, we donate more to corporate welfare than to needy people. Elected leaders are immersed in jealous rivalry while we are sick of hearing about it, and want action on problems.

If this is not what you want, you can do something: attend candidates’ forums, register, and vote. Important positions will be decided in the Sept. 15 primary. For accurate, unbiased information before the Nov. 3 election, phone Project Vote Smart at 800-622-7627 and get its voter manual free. Write to your county auditor for an absentee ballot and study at home before voting. Mildred Stout Pullman

Meet Our Journalists

Jesse Tinsley

Meet Jesse Tinsley. As a certified drone pilot, this veteran Spokesman-Review photographer often can be seen capturing beautiful aerial photographs of our region. Sometimes though, the job requires getting down with the dogs.
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