Cheney probed over salmon die off

Sacramento Bee Washington Bureau ^ | 11:46 am PDT Thursday, June 28, 2007 | David Whitney

[ElkGroveDan]

WASHINGTON - The House Natural Resources Committee announced Thursday that it will hold hearings into Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement in Klamath River water management that many think led to the die-off of more than 70,000 salmon four years ago.

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Three dozen House Democrats from Oregon and California asked for the hearing in a letter to Rahall after the Washington Post reported on details of Cheney's intervention.

[Ingtar]

. It took the Bush Administration’s good common sense to restore irrigation water to the farms.

That's what I was trying to refer to. It was a big cause here on FR and I thought I would not need to add the details.

[CaptRon]

Late in the afternoon he also sneaks into your office and messes with your stuff.

Oh. Wait. That's Robert Goulet.

[steelie]

I went to the Bucket Brigade.

There was so much water being held hostage in Klamath lake for the Sucker Fish it would blow over the highway in the afternoons when the wind would kick up!

[tubebender]

What would the water flows be in a typical September if there were no dams on the Klamath ? My bet is you couldn’t get a shallow draft drift boat over the riffles. The rivers feeding cool snow melt water are the Shasta, Scott and Salmon Rivers, all below the dams and they barely keep the riffles passable.

We owned a fishing lodge down river from Bluff Creek from 1972 until 1993.

[Grampa Dave]

"What would the water flows be in a typical September if there were no dams on the Klamath ? My bet is you couldn’t get a shallow draft drift boat over the riffles. The rivers feeding cool snow melt water are the Shasta, Scott and Salmon Rivers, all below the dams and they barely keep the riffles passable."

Thanks to Steelie for capturing and saving this Klamath River Flow Chart as it magically disappeared after Freepers started questioning the water flows before and after the kill.

The father of a very good friend was born in the early 1900's. He lived in Willits all of his life and from his early years to his 70's, he and his family hunted coastal deer in the Klamath river area in August and early September. He had early photos of the Klamath during his hunting trips. It was very low, filled with dying moss easy to wade for miles around their camp.

That was the normal flow of the Klamath in late spring, summer and early fall with California's usual dry and hot weather along most of the Klamaths river length. Minimal if any rain falls during those months with very high heat during the days.

Those conditions are why Coho Salmon aren't native salmon in the Klamath and many of N California's rivers and streams.

The fish killed by the damn operators, fish and game and the drug polluters had no more special value to this country and us, than farm raised chickens

The first documented Coho transplant with the DNA genes from Oregon were planted in 1895.

The making of Coho an endangered species in the Klamath is nothing but fraud to put farmers, ranchers, loggers and salmon fishers out of business.

Any Coho killed in the now called Cheney Kill were hatchery fish and are not endangered anymore than the hatchery Kings killed in the same low water incidence. Those Coho's had the same value to this country as farm/hatchery raised chickens re any special value beyond eating value.

[Miss Didi]

Excellent work, Bronze!

[Vision]

lol

[Vision]

I love this.

[Jeff Head]

This is hardly worth replying to. These people are grasping at straws and will do anything to make a lie stick (like throwing bovine excretment against a wall in the hope that some of it, any of it, will stick on the wall rather than sliding off it...knowing that some decent person is going to have to expend energy to clean up the mess in any case).

They made up junk science to get the water turned off to begin with in Klamath. Sadly, that was some government employees working with radical environmentalists and getting their junk before a liberal judge who sided with them. It took a lot of work to get that turned around when everyone with a lick of since in that part of the country knew...and knows...that those sucker fish were not endangered.

They have continued in that fashion ever since, including IMHO, with the Salmon kill. They are still trying to get someone whom they oppose...anyone and the higher the better...stuck with that. There are numerous good explanations on this thread that would be far more worthy of investigation and examination IMHO, then what these blowhards put forward.

But the war on the west continues and you can bet with a democratically controlled congress it will only be worse. It was hard enough when the republicans controlled it...at a time when those representatives could have slam dunked most of this...far too many of them were running scared from the environmental lobby and their friends on both sides of the aisle.

The fact is...there is a lot of lobby money, NGO money, and federal money behind these environmental programs. They fund studies specifically geared towards forgone conclusions. When the data from the study does not back it up...they just do another study with different parameters looking to support the foregone conclusion. I have seen this myself here in Idaho and, of course, in Oregon. If additional studies do not bring data that they can point to...then ultimately, as IMHO with Klamath, they will simply jimmy the data so that it says what they want and then proceed with a legal system rife with judges and lawyers purposely in place to push the agenda into judicial fiat, acts of congress, treaties, or any other way that they can for it to become "law".

I expect we will be fighting this and standing up against it my entire life-long and that of my kids and grand-kids...short of som major train wreck that so shakes our populace so as to wake us up and put an end to this Bravo Sierra so we can be a strong country again...strong in true conservation, strong in true resource management so we are actually producing, strong in energy management for the same reasons, strong in agriculture...and most of all, strong in moral values.

[SierraWasp]

Beautiful essay/lament my good FRiend. I really regret having not met you when the Wasp family took our "Wonder Wagon" (we always wonder when it'll crap-out) up to see what you and Phil V. were up to. Still have my Klamath Tea Party shirt. Can't quite remember all the FR screen names I used to ping, but sure remember a few!!!

I'm pleased to see your summary of the interminable situation as it must help the thousands of lurkers out there to understand "The War On The West" just a little bit better.

I know at the time it was happening, we all couldn't quite grasp the magnitude of the full court press these aggresive GovernMental EnvironMentalists were putting upon those innocent farmers and their productive ways of life.

Thanks Jeff, from one who's done his part in many similar battles in the Republican Schwartzenegger Sierra-Nevada CONservancy!!!

[Grampa Dave]

“I expect we will be fighting this and standing up against it my entire life-long and that of my kids and grand-kids...short of some major train wreck that so shakes our populace so as to wake us up and put an end to this Bravo Sierra so we can be a strong country again...strong in true conservation, strong in true resource management so we are actually producing, strong in energy management for the same reasons, strong in agriculture...and most of all, strong in moral values.”

Hopefully, the Klamath Falls victory will flow over to this travesty for another victory for our side.

[steelie]

I’m off to fish Kokes near Truckee. I hope you can fish/cast the river. Gate # on west side is 1039 if your key don’t work. Not much width this year. They are saving the water for a man made salmon run in Aug. Sept Oct Nov. The Russian pretty much went dry in Historic times. No way any salmon hung out behind my ranch earlier in the century. Want everyone to cut back 15%. Water is short this year anyway. These kings are an artificial run of mainstem spawners. NOAA doesn’t care.

[hosepipe]

The truth is ALL SALMON die after breeding..
DEMOCRATS?... buy them books they eat the pages..

[marsh2]

I believe your hydrograph shows the slug of water released from the Klamath Project after the fish kill started in mid-September. It was to mitigate the situation. The Trinity release would have been much smaller and earlier before the die off.

[Grampa Dave]

You may be right.

[Grampa Dave]

You may be right.

[healy61]

Salmon swim up river, spawn and die. Don’t they all die? Where do the dead fish go? Would that be backdown stream?

[SierraWasp]

Here's some more of the same tripe!!!

They relentless, remorseless and ruthless people!!!

Including your Mike Thompson from St. Helena!!!

[Grampa Dave]

Mike Thompson ain’t mine!

What an anti American clown he is. I told one person who was bragging about Thompson, “Thompson is living proof that democrats should never be in our military or congress! He is a hatriotic.”