More needed to know for Idaho joint resolution

In Idaho we love our public lands; however, we should ask our state senators to vote “no” on Senate Joint Resolution 103, a proposed constitutional amendment that seeks to transfer land from its current federal protection to the state through a constitutional amendment.

The bill is framed as protecting public lands from privatization or transfer. Sounds good but it was alarming to hear the House cosponsor, Rep. Redman, say when he was talking about public lands that he “would love to have all of it back in ownership of the state right away.”

Let’s be careful before amending our Constitution to make sure we have it right. There could be some unexpected consequences if the resolution were to pass. For example, it would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars by undercutting the existing funding for rural counties and schools and possibly jeopardize access to our public lands for regular folks who enjoy hunting, fishing, camping and hiking.

Is this amendment a backdoor attempt to open our federally managed public lands to more mining, timber harvest and grazing resulting in more of the land being closed off to the general public? There are too many unanswered questions to get behind Senate Joint Resolution 103.

Let’s take the time we need to fully understand this bill before we lose our access to our lands.

Kayla Dodson

Boise

Year of the Fire Horse defense

My previous letter, Year of the Fire Horse, called for breaching the four Lower Snake River dams. Since its publication, several letters have said my position is incorrect. All but one were written by people with financial ties to utilities. I note that none of the letters attempted to dispute these two facts that I had provided:

1. More than $26 billion in mitigation efforts have failed to recover even one of the endangered salmon runs on the Snake River.

Yes, numbers have increased since mitigation efforts began, but all remaining stocks of Snake River salmon remain listed as threatened or endangered. It’s the equivalent of helping someone hanging off a cliff by one finger to the point that they are hanging by two fingers and saying the person has now been successfully recovered. The Bonneville Power Administration is far from its 1980s goal of 5 million returning fish by 2025, achieving less than 2.5 million (and that is largely hatchery returns – wild fish returns are likely less than 10% of that total). Historical numbers were 10 million to 16 million wild fish.

2. The four Lower Snake dams, combined, constitute less than 4% of our Northwest grid. A recent letter to the editor, published Feb. 6, pinpoints that number now at 2.6%.

The science says that breaching the dams is the critical element in any fish recovery plan that has any chance of succeeding. Everything short of breaching has been tried and has failed, costing ratepayers billions. Enough is enough. Breach the dams.

Marjorie Millner

Vancouver, Washington

Proposed “emergency ban” on detention facilities

With the support of Councilman Paul Dillon, who is a former executive of Planned Parenthood Greater Washington and North Idaho, Mayor Brown is proposing an “emergency ban” that would forbid private property owners from “leasing buildings for incarceration facilities” because she believes these detention facilities are problematic “regarding lack of care and the detention of children.”

I’ll make a deal with Mr. Dillon and Mayor Brown. I will support passage of this ordinance if you promise to extend the same considerations to those property owners that are complicit with the deaths of hundreds of babies in Spokane each year, such as Planned Parenthood.

Eric Johnson

Spokane