"New accomplishments, comrades!"
Posted on 12/30/2004 9:54:32 AM PST by Clint Williams
"The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse--that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it."
H. L. Mencken
Last week, while most Washingtonians were focused on the ongoing effort by Democrats to seize control of the office of governor, Governor Locke last week jumped the gun and released a proposal for new water legislation that gives a preview of life under a Gregoire Administration, where every fervid fantasy of Seattleites can become legislative reality.
The proposed water law amendments, breathtaking in scope and audacity, replace centuries of Western water law with a Communist-style system of rationing designed gradually to grind away private water rights, so as to increase river flows in the mighty Columbia. By way of background, it is important to understand that there is not a shred of evidence that the mainstem Columbia River is over-appropriated; existing law would bar further appropriations if it were. As to effects on fish, for twenty years, untold millions of dollars in federal and state funding has been shoveled into "biologists" in a ceaseless quest to prove some sort of relationship between the river flows in the mainstem Columbia and salmon survival. All these efforts have failed.
Perhaps the nadir came last spring, as the product of yet another massive payment from Washington citizens, this time to the National Academy of Sciences. This supposedly august body concluded that even though it was impossible to document any adverse effects on fish from another million acre feet of growth in Eastern Washington water consumption, there was risk (isn't there always?) that would support limitations on further appropriations. The proposed legislation thus candidly declares that higher stream flows in the Columbia River are "necessary for the preservation of environmental values". Like most modern environmental legislation, the proposal will have no perceptible benefits in the real world. Its most important effects are in the minds of those who attach moral overtones to their peculiar political preferences.
If the new law is adopted, no additional water may be withdrawn from the Columbia River (or the virtually limitless areas deemed to be in hydraulic continuity with it) at all. Anyone who needs water must obtain it by extinguishing rights held by others, and only rights upstream. Thus those furthest upstream, in the most vulnerable rural areas, suffer the most. It is their destiny to close their farms and orchards, and sell their water down the river, returning the land to the wilderness so beloved by the urbanites who never see it.
But the long-term effects of the proposal go far beyond "rural cleansing". For the enemies of Eastern Washington, it is not enough merely to cap water consumption, and thus economic growth. After all, the region has chafed under an illegal moratorium on further appropriations since 1991, and there are still enough voters there to threaten urban hegemony. Thus under the proposed legislation, the hapless farmer who does reach upstream to buy water rights suffers an immediate tax of 50% on those water rights "to benefit streamflows". If a farmer needs two acre-feet of water, he must buy four, for two must go to the State's new "Columbia River Mainstem Account" for permanent dedication to instream flows.
The State would prefer to avoid such private "mitigation" transactions, so an appropriation of $70 million is sought for the Department of Ecology to buy water and put it in the Mainstem Account. Water the State buys must only be allocated two thirds for new uses and one-third for instream flows, not half and half. Applicants who turn to the State for water must make an undefined "require[d] annual payment" for the "Columbia River Mainstem Investment Account", creating yet another off-budget slush fund for any sort of environmental boondoggle that catches the fancy of the bureaucrats and their allies (or personally enriches them). Naturally, there must be an entire new "compliance program", to "sen[d] hither swarms of Officers to harass [the] People, and eat out their substance".
Whether a 50% tax or a 33% tax, each transaction will gradually suck the economic life out of Eastern Washington by diverting water from economically beneficial activity to sacrifice on the altar of environmental irrationality. And because the proposed legislation covers "any new water uses", it will tend to freeze all existing patterns of water use, potentially locking farmers into growing the same crops. As agricultural conditions change, farmers who seek to change with them will be forced to forfeit larger and larger amounts of water for instream flows, with each new transaction shrinking the pool of available water.
The Department of Ecology studiously ignores all these effects, boldly declaring in its "Small Business Economic Impact Statement" that because its bureaucrats have so successfully snarled up existing water rights applications, the new proposal should be viewed as a "cost reducing method". Ecology notes that "[e]xperience from the last 10 Columbia River Mainstem water right applications . . . indicates that the existing rules impose business costs due to long waiting periods and expensive litigation", without mentioning that the only reason the expensive litigation was required (a case I prosecuted) is because Ecology unlawfully refused to process the water rights applications in the first place.
Some hint of how the bureaucrats will stretch the proposed legislation is contained in the proposed rules that accompany it. For them, dedicating one-third of the Mainstem Account for instream flows is not enough; an entire third category of water must be withheld "to offset the estimated future consumptive uses that the department might approve within the Washington portion of the tributary basins to the Columbia River". That estimate (presumably to be prepared only after the legislation is passed) may leave precious little in the Mainstem Account for actual new uses.
Drought permits, most recently issued in 2001, will now be limited so that they may only be issued "when the mainstem account administrator certifies that the portion of the mainstem account dedicated to provide for mitigation for new out-of-stream consumptive uses" is sufficient to cover the permit. All of the rule's provisions are intended to mitigate "potential impacts", yet another subtle admission that the entire scheme addresses only the fears of fools, not real-world problems.
If Washington's Legislature contained a majority other than such fools, the Department of Ecology pests who came up with this nonsense would be sent back to their offices empty-handed, and forcefully told to implement the laws they have, rather than building new empires to "solve" the crises they create. But Washington now faces the specter of one-party government controlling all the agencies, courts and the Legislature, and that party is singularly dedicated to building new empires of government employees. There has seldom been a gubernatorial race with higher stakes for Eastern Washington.
© James Buchal, December 27, 2004
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.
Ping!
By no stretch of the imagination can an election be considered legitimate, when one party is told the precise number of votes it needs to gin up to win the election. No fair person could imagin that votes found after the election could be counted, while absentee votes by U.S. military active duty personnel that arrived after election day would not (from one report I read).
They "Gored" this election the right way, the winning way, and my guess is that this new Democrat governor will soon be headed towards the White House trail. Democrats found one of their own who "knows how to win".
Election certified, governor candiate becomes governor-elect; game over. The Dems will deal with the political consequences during the next (stolen) election. They have a popular "mandate" now, and they'll use it without remorse.
SFS
ping and read later
The thing about desalination is that it takes monstrous amounts of energy, and is very, very expensive. I suspect also that the super-concentrated salty water (leftover from extracted fresh water) that would be piped back into the ocean, would quickly be seen by environmentalists as an ecological disaster-in-the-making for its potential of increasing the salt levels of the world's oceans.
The bottom line is this: if stop-the-world types can pseudo-credibly claim that water supplies are not adequate, they can prevent people and businesses from coming in. This has happened in Cambria, California, where you can buy property -- but have to wait ten years and more for a water permit. Environmentalists will tell you it's because water is not available to support a larger population, but folks who know about drilling say that there are plenty of underground water supplies -- that water is not what is lacking. What's lacking is a will to drill!
We have plenty of water. It rains daily here. This is about power, period.
WA ping
I am familiar with Mr. Buchal. He is an attorney down in the Vancouver, WA - Portland, OR area. He has been involved with several cases that my attorneys have worked on.
Election now "certified"... Rossi's got to fight!!!
Here we go. Now the dims can sell the appropriated water to California and make a bundle. Who knows into what "slush" fund that money will find its way.
There were some on another thread this morning; they're probably who he was referring to.
WA Republicans should just go home for 2 years, so the voters can see what a Dem dictatorship does for (to) them.
Then the voters can clean house of these vermin.
I doubt they will. It's all about control. Just as Seattle has now seized absolute control over 2/3 the private land in rural areas -- we are required to leave it wild, undeveloped. Oh, and no compensation for that, not even a reduction in taxes unless you file a "voluntary" non-development plan with them. (Yes, a legal challenge is being raised.)
I got pinged by the unusual? Life will never be the same. I'll ping the list later today. Thanks for the heads up.
Yup.
Ah. A member in good standing of the "when rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it" crowd.
ping
The liberals are playing hardball. So should we.
As a result of the gutless Republican management crowd, yes.
No courage to expose the fraud.
Unbelievable. Is this really what Christine Gregoire demanded a hand recount for? If I were a farmer in the state of Washington, I would just leave. To hell with these urbanites; let them scavenge for food if it comes to that.
Wouldn't it be better to just sell river access on the free market? That way, the more the river is used, the more it costs to purchase new access. It would seem easier than creating a whole new conservation-oriented bureaucracy.
To heck with the NIMBYs and eco-nuts, man. The Pacific Ocean is vast and practically limitless, compared to our puny rivers and aquifers.
Yah. The Republican parties here have been run by losers for too long. Chris Vance is going for re-election -- I am furious. At least the King, er, Ukraine party chair Pat Herbold had the sense to step down; after what she did here it would be wisest if she never showed her face again.
No courage to expose the fraud.
Some of us, at least, think that that's part of Rossi's strategy.
Wacko-environmentalism's intent, along with liberal dems, is to shut down capitalism.
Think like a totalitarian. The bureaucracy is exactly the point of this.
Restarting from zero is a difficult proposition.
If they're doing this just to create a bureaucracy to boss people around, then they're about as mature as a bunch of elementary schoolchildren playing Simon Says or Follow the Leader...
Bingo!! But they're schoolchildren with real power, and that's frightening.
You're right, but out of the 4 declared candidates for state head which one is a viable candidate?
Bookmarked for later study. Now that the Dims control every aspect of Washington State (legislative and judicial) they are free to complete their own dream of total socialism. Looks like they're determined to send all the agri-business out of the state, following on the heels of Boeing and all the small businesses that have moved 30 miles across the border to Idaho. With fewer businesses to extort, they'll have to make it up from taxpayers. I don't know what's to become of us.
"New accomplishments, comrades!"
Over here in Maryland, scientists are feverishly working to clone Governor Ehrlich in order to farm him out to Washington after kidnapping Gregoire, of course.
Actually, if the system were set up correctly, the minerals obtained from desalinizing the water could be mined. There are many valuable minerals in salt water and they could be mined, but it would take planning and nuclear power and saying nuclear to a greenie is like lighting a fuse. It would take some research to set something like this up, and it should have already been happening, but this is the last thing people want to do because right now it isn't economically feasible, it could become that way, but, what the heck, we will wait until we are all starving because of the greenies before we do anything about it.
King County is designing and moving forward to building a huge wastewater treatment plant not in King County, but in neighboring Snohomish County....cute! One of the issues that has been raised in the environmental impact statement was one of lack of King County water rights.
Specifically, most sewage treatment pipelines have leakage into them from both ground water and surface water. This is called inflow and infiltration in the jargon of the business. The problem that King County has and all wastetreatment facilities is that they are "accidentally taking" ground water and surface water without permits to do such. In the past they have argued that it is an unintentional act. However, since they know it happens, they can no longer say it is unintentional.
Furthermore, under Washington State water laws, there is a CATCH-22 problem. To gain a water right to "take water" it must be put to a "beneficial use." The Dept. of Ecology can not issue a water right to King County (or others) for the purpose of allowing leakage into pipelines that will be treated with sewage or dumped into Puget Sound, bypassing threatened species habitat steams in urban Puget Sound areas.
During the Brightwater EIS process, this was noted by King County and the Dept. of Ecology entered some language into the Brightwater EIS such that King County has a problem.
King County knows it has a problem in this area and has gone to great lengths to try to reduced the magnitude of the leakage, but the watersheds through wish the pipelines will go are closed to any new water permits and so they have a problem if they are ever called on it.
Eastern Washington interests, if they wish to open the Pandora's box of water rights leakage issues, could perhaps stick it to King County in regards to water rights. It could be interesting to see King County and Snohomish County struggling with being environmentally bad when it comes to water rights.
Things may have changed in desal technology since then (this was 15 years ago and this plant was one of the two largest desal plants in the U.S.), but at that time, counting the energy expenses, the costs of the membranes (not cheap -- this plant had about $1 million in membranes, and a membrane would last for about 5 years), and discharging the brine, it cost $1000 to $1500 per acre foot of water. He didn't say anything about mining other minerals -- wish I'd have thought to ask him!
The short answer to your question is that King County, or more precisely its bureaucrats, would welcome the lawsuit (if indeed they did not capitulate in advance), because they could spend more money. Consider what they did to themselves with the municipal water bill in 2003 on the relinquishment issue.
Let me say this again, they could spend many millions of dollars more, but unless they fundamentally changed the pipeline to steel, which would have some real fabrication problems, Brightwater collection and treated sewage pipelines can not be done without leakage and taking of ground water.
Is it okay to raise your taxes to pay for these massively expensive desalinization plants? Don't ask me to pay for this!
There is NO plan to sell Washington water to California. Unfortunately, baseless remarks like this are all too typical of the unthinking right wing.
One thing lots of folks don't realize is that wars have been fought more over water than anything else. Liberals carp on and on about the war in Iraq being about oil. But if we were there for a #2 reason other than liberating the people it would be water. All of the Middle East's major rivers go thru Iraq,and in an arid region, he who rules the water rules the region.
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