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Oregon State Senator Doug Whitsett is a strong conservative who is fighting dam removals on the Klamath River against a throng of environmental lunatics. Now the local paper is trying to run a "poll" to undermine his efforts. Let's fix that! http://www.heraldandnews.com/#vmix_media_id=103574561

SNIPPET: "LOWELL, Ore. -- The FBI wants to know the identity of a man who climbed a barbed wire fence and entered Lookout Point Dam, southeast of Eugene, on March 2. Surveillance cameras caught the intruder on tape just before 2 a.m." SNIPPET: "The Army Corps is offering $1000.00 reward for information leading to the man. Anyone with tips is asked to call: 1-866-413-7970."

Dear All: The local enviro-nazis in the Klamath Basin (southern OR, northern CA) are attempting to tear down 4 perfectly good dams on the Klamath River and have the power generation replaced with solar, simply because dams are displeasing to these folks. The local news is running a poll at http://www.localnewscomesfirst.com (lower right-hand corner of the screen) and the enviro side is winning. PLEASE PLEASE help turn the numbers our direction. Please vote against dam removal. It will destroy this region. Thanks.

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia – Two carloads of assailants attacked a hydroelectric station in southern Russia early Wednesday, killing two workers and setting off bombs. The attack took place in Kabardino-Balkariya, one of the republics in Russia's restive Caucasus region where clashes with insurgents are frequent...

Abigail Thernstrom is wrong to belittle this shocking episode. Forget about the New Black Panther Party case,” writes Abigail Thernstrom. It’s “very small potatoes.” She is suddenly upset over the “overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges” about the case that she grudgingly admits may “perhaps” have been a civil-rights violation. So she has explained in an NRO op-ed. Naturally, her “conservative dissent” has been seized on by the “nothing to see here” Left, which can now get back to its preferred big-potatoes-diet of Bristol Palin, Karl Rove subpoenas, and leaking classified information. It was just a year ago,...

PHOTO CAPTION: "Correspondents say the deal is part of Washington's attempts to counter anti-US sentiment in Pakistan" SNIPPET: "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced aid projects worth $7.5bn (£5bn) for Pakistan at the start of talks in the capital Islamabad. The package, agreed by Congress last year, is part of Washington's attempts to counter anti-American sentiment in the country, correspondents say. The five-year deal includes projects for two hydro-electric dams and renewable energy sources."

RALEIGH — At a press conference Tuesday, environmental activist and celebrity Erin Brockovich offered a rambling defense of the state’s efforts to take control of four central North Carolina hydroelectric dams between Salisbury and Badin owned and operated by Alcoa Power Generating Inc. “My job here today is not to sit here and bash Alcoa,” Brockovich said at a briefing that took place before an invitation-only event for state lawmakers at the exclusive Capitol City Club. “Agencies, industries, and attorneys need to get together collectively and do what’s right by people,” she added. “It’s time to … give back, and...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama, who is due to visit Indonesia in June, was one of several suspected targets of Indonesian militants captured in police raids recently, an expert on militants said on Friday.

In what is being touted as the world's biggest dam-removal project, an agreement was reached Tuesday to remove four dams on the Klamath River and restore a 300-mile migratory route for California's beleaguered salmon. The tentative agreement was reached after a decade of negotiations among 28 parties, including American Indian tribes, farmers, fishermen and the hydroelectric company that operates the dams and distributes the water. The plan would set in motion one of the most ambitious efforts in U.S. history to restore the habitat of a federally protected species if it receives final approval by the parties in December, as...

Portland, Ore. - Calling it an "insurance policy" for Pacific Northwest salmon, the Obama administration on Tuesday offered up a tougher conservation plan for the fish that includes climate-change monitoring and the "last-resort" possibility of removing dams. The plan submitted to a federal judge for approval was a revised version of a Bush administration plan that had been in the works for years, but which was rejected. Reaction to the new plan was sharply divided, echoing a debate that stretches back decades over balancing Columbia River Basin fish survival and hydroelectric dams: It either goes too far or not far...

The Obama administration said Tuesday the federal government's salmon and dam plan for the Columbia and Snake rivers, with modifications, will not jeopardize endangered salmon and steelhead. A drop in the populations of the endangered salmon and steelhead in the region would trigger a new review of the recovery efforts and a consideration of alternatives including breaching four dams on the lower Snake River. But the administration said that the so called biological opinion, "combined with the implementation plan, is legally and biologically sound and based on the best available science." It would order the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers...

For decades, most of the nation’s renewable power has come from dams, which supplied cheap electricity without requiring fossil fuels. But the federal agencies running the dams often compiled woeful track records on other environmental issues. Now, with the focus in Washington on clean power, some dam agencies are starting to go green, embracing wind power and energy conservation. The most aggressive is the Bonneville Power Administration, whose power lines carry much of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest. The agency also provides a third of the region’s power supply, drawn mostly from generators inside big dams. The amount of...

Note: The following text is a quote: Ali Al-Marri Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Al-Qaeda Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 43, a dual national of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda. Al-Marri entered his guilty plea at a hearing this afternoon before Judge Michael M. Mihm in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois. In so doing, al-Marri admitted that he agreed with others to provide material support or resources to al-Qaeda in the form of personnel, including himself, to work under al-Qaeda’s...

The United States will need $1.6 trillion to repair damage to its infrastructure from a massive influx of immigrants, a new report reveals. In his report titled, "The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure," prominent researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein examines 15 categories of infrastructure: airports, border security, bridges, dams and levees, electricity (the power grids), hazardous waste removal , hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation facilities, ports and navigable waterways, public schools, railroads, roads and highways, solid waste and trash, and water and sewer systems. Rubenstein, a financial analyst and former contributing editor of Forbes and economics editor of National Review,...

NEVADA CITY, California, November 19, 2008 (ENS) - Four dams on the Klamath River that have blocked salmon runs upstream to their spawning areas may be removed in the year 2020 under an historic agreement among federal, state and corporate parties. Dam removal will re-open over 300 miles of habitat for the Klamath's salmon and steelhead populations and eliminate water quality problems such as toxic algae blooms caused by the reservoirs. The federal government, the state of California, the state of Oregon and the PacifiCorp electric utility Thursday announced an Agreement in Principle to remove the four dams as part...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Cracks run on the top of a dam in Wenchuan, China's southwest Sichuan Province May 20, 2008. CHENGDU, China – Nearly 70 dams scarred by the force of China's most powerful earthquake in three decades were in danger of bursting, the government said Sunday, while looming rains added to worries about relief efforts for millions of homeless survivors. The confirmed death toll from the May 12 quake rose to 62,664, with another 23,775 people missing, Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin said. Premier Wen Jiabao has said the number of dead could surpass 80,000. A magnitude 5.8 aftershock rattled the quake area...

HARRISBURG -- With a section of a Pittsburgh bridge dropping 8 inches and an Interstate 95 support pillar cracking in Philadelphia, Gov. Ed Rendell is turning up the heat under the Legislature to provide infrastructure repair funds more quickly. Mr. Rendell sent a letter to all 253 legislators yesterday urging quick passage of a $240 million "supplemental debt authorization." His program of borrowing would enable state officials to fast-track repairs on some of the state's 6,000 bridges classified as structurally deficient, along with fixing ailing highways, repairing "state-owned, high-hazard dams" and beginning flood mitigation projects. Also yesterday, Mr. Rendell called...

1976 Teton Dam disaster is just one hurdle facing any project to store more water and make more electricity. While Gov. Butch Otter and the Idaho Legislature talk about ways to build new dams and enlarge existing ones, the discussions are framed by two floods - one that some fear could happen at any minute, and another more than three decades ago that still hangs over the part of the state once devastated by its power. Weiser residents are watching the weather closely as above-average snowpack threatens to swell the Weiser River, which has no dam, to flood stage this...

The agreement announced Tuesday on the future of the Klamath River offers reason for cautious hope that the troubled waterway can recover from years of human intervention and abuse while meeting the conflicting needs of fish and farms. The agreement � forged by the farmers, fishermen, American Indians, government agencies and conservation groups whose views on the Klamath’s future long have clashed � achieves the seemingly impossible: a broadly supported plan to allocate the free-flowing waters of the river without dams. Therein lies the hope. And therein lies the caution. That these longtime adversaries, who for years battled over a...

BANGKOK, Thailand - Six proposed dams on the Mekong River could displace up to 75,000 villagers and harm hundreds of species like the endangered giant catfish and Irrawaddy dolphin, conservationists warned Tuesday. Premrudee Daoroung, director of the Bangkok-based environmental group TERRA, said 13-year-old plans to build four dams in Laos and one each in Thailand and Cambodia have been revived as part of efforts — mostly by China, Thailand and Vietnam — to find new energy sources for their growing economies. "The natural flow of the river will all be completely changed," Premrudee said. "Of course, it will affect all...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- California Energy Commission analysts urged Oregon, California and Washington to deny any requests from PacifiCorp to increase electricity rates to help pay for upgrading Klamath dams. A Monday letter signed by California Energy Commission executive director B.B. Blevins asks the public utility commissions in each of the three states to authorize cost recovery only for decommissioning the four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. Indian tribes, fishermen and conservation groups want the dams removed to open up spawning habitat for struggling salmon runs. "The Energy Commission has a responsibility not only to provide reliable energy supplies,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday proposed a $9 billion water bond measure that would earmark more than half the money for dams opposed by most of the Democrats who dominate the Legislature. The proposal eclipses the governor's previous $5.9 billion bond plan, in large part by adding a third dam project in Contra Costa County. Whether the lawmakers will go along with dams - and how much they are willing to pay for them - will be a key part of the negotiations in the Legislature's upcoming special session on water projects. Senate President Pro Tem. Don Perata, D-Oakland, has...

The Schwarzenegger administration on Wednesday dusted off a failed dam proposal as a way to shore up California water supplies in light of a federal judge's ruling limiting shipments from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But it seemed doubtful that the Democrat-controlled Legislature - long-opposed to new dams - would go along in the waning days of its 2007 session. At a Capitol news conference flanked by city water leaders, farm and building industry representatives, Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman said an Aug. 31 ruling by a federal judge in Fresno could cut water flows out of the delta by about a...

SACRAMENTO – California voters could decide as early as February whether to spend billions of dollars to build dams and a canal to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday. His statement, made during a news conference at a shrinking federal reservoir, shows the governor wants to accelerate the timeframe to devise a far-reaching water plan. It also sets the stage for a summer of negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Legislature. If the sides can reach a deal, Schwarzenegger said a bond measure could be added to the ballot for the Feb. 5 presidential primary. That...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A group of Klamath River Native Americans kicked off a road trip today from San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf to demand removal of several salmon-killing dams on the Klamath River. Members from the the Yurok, Karok and Hoopa tribes plan to tow hand-carved redwood canoes to Omaha, Neb., to a Berkshire Hathaway stockholders' meeting. The company, headed by billionaire and philanthropist Warren Buffett, owns PacifiCorp, the firm which holds the four hydropower dams on the Klamath River blamed for decimating local salmon runs. "We hope to meet with Mr. Buffett and convince him to do the right thin

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday promoted a $6 billion plan for increased water storage and protecting fresh water supplies, calling for two new dams and better management of the delta. "Our state's population is increasing rapidly. We also have earthquakes and major storms that could really destroy our levee system," the governor said, speaking against the backdrop of Friant Dam at Millerton Lake, in the Sierra foothills east of Fresno. Two-thirds of Californians depend on the Sierra Nevada snowmelt for drinking water while Central Valley growers use it to irrigate their fields. Schwarzenegger said the state's expected growth - to...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - A Pacific Northwest utility must build new fish ladders and take other steps to help salmon swim freely past four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River if it wants to renew its license to produce electricity, federal fisheries agencies said Tuesday. The cost of the ladders, turbine screens and fish bypasses was estimated at nearly $300 million. The high cost could boost pressure on the utility, PacifiCorp, to remove the dams altogether — something environmentalists have been pushing for. Removing the dams would open access to 350 miles of salmon spawning habitat that have been blocked...

Democrats in the state Senate on Thursday said California does not need to build new reservoirs as it tries to cope with the expected consequences of global warming. Instead, the state should rely on conservation, underground storage and boosting the height of existing dams. Their plan, outlined in a series bills, runs counter to Republicans’ desire for new reservoirs to help California address the changes anticipated from global climate change. It sets up a potential clash in the coming months with Republicans and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who proposed $4.5 billion for two new reservoirs and underground water storage in his...

Democrats in the state Senate on Thursday said California does not need to build new reservoirs as it tries to cope with the expected consequences of global warming. Instead, the state should rely on conservation, underground storage and boosting the height of existing dams. Their plan, outlined in a series bills, runs counter to Republicans' desire for new reservoirs to help California address the changes anticipated from global climate change. It sets up a potential clash in the coming months with Republicans and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who proposed $4.5 billion for two new reservoirs and underground water storage in his...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday proposed another huge round of borrowing to build prisons, schools and dams in a state of the state speech that also called for cleaner fuels to help curb global warming. The borrowing proposals, which add up to $43.3 billion, are similar to ideas that were cut out of the enormous borrowing plan the governor put forth last year. The Legislature changed it and cut it in half, and voters eventually approved $42.7 billion in bonds in November. Addressing a joint session of the Legislature, Schwarzenegger said he was bringing the ideas back because,...

Arnold Suffers Not Only From Broken Leg But a Case of "Dam-nesia?" Damnesia - damn amnesia, e.g., "What's Arnold's problem? Oh, he's suffering from damnesia again." - Pseudodictionary.com Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is using the environmentalists own "Global Warming" rhetoric as a reason to build new dams in California which they have opposed (see here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070107/news_1n7dams.html). Even worse for environmentalists, he proposes to free up the long-standing political log jam on the infamous "Peripheral Canal" which would send water, which is dangerously backing up behind flood levees in Sacramento, around the Delta to Southern California. With shrewd ideological co-opting tactics like...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to draw on his popular campaign against global warming to promote something not so popular among environmentalists – building new dams in California. His strategy will attempt to capitalize on fears that climatic disruptions linked to global warming could take a toll on fish and wildlife, as well as increase flood risks and reduce overall water supplies for a growing state. To guard against those threats, Schwarzenegger will aggressively pursue at least one, and possibly two new reservoirs as part of his 2007 agenda. The combined price tag could be as much as $3.7...

California Governor Schwarzenegger and Oregon Governor Kulongoski today directed their respective state agencies to organize a Klamath Summit to be held before the year ends. The governors have joined forces and are holding the summit to resolve a multitude of complex issues related to the health of the river that impact salmon fishermen, tribes, hydroelectric power and a host of environmental and habitat concerns. “We have the problems of water quality, water supply, listed species, energy generation, and agricultural sustainability expressed in countless ways in the Klamath Basin,” Governor Kulongoski said. “We must forge a consensus on a sustainable approach...

Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes. And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the...

June 24— The Qatari man designated an enemy combatant by the Bush administration was planning another Sept. 11 attack, sources told ABCNEWS. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, 37, was deemed an enemy combatant by the Bush administration on Monday after officials said he was positively identified by an al Qaeda detainee as being part of a planned second wave of terror attacks on the United States. Government officials said they believed al Qaeda's top leadership sent Al-Marri to the United States to coordinate a new round of attacks. "Al-Marri was sent to the United States as a facilitator for other al...

Revelations in the Peoria Journal Star earlier this week that the Peoria/Champaign area is one of seven in the United States on a terrorist “circuit” were frightening. “Terrorists enter the United States in San Francisco and Los Angeles, then move to Phoenix, then Denver," reported Phil Luciano of the PJS. "From there some head to Peoria and Champaign. Some terrorists remain in those communities, while others head on to New York City" (emphasis added). Luciano was provided this information by Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy, who received it at a recent FBI conference held in Springfield. Names of larger cities...

COIHAIQUE, Chile · With Chile trying to manage both Latin America's most dynamic economy and a looming energy squeeze, the government has embraced a plan to build a series of dams here in the rugged, pristine heart of Patagonia that would flood thousands of acres. The plan, proposed by a Spanish-owned electricity company, would harness the rushing rivers of the sparsely populated region known as Aisen, which is dotted with national parks and nature reserves. But environmental groups have condemned the proposal, which they say will damage ranching and tourism. They have mounted an international campaign to block construction. LocalLinks...

MILLINGTON, Md. - American eels are crafty fish, able to slither up rocks and around branches in just a tiny bit of water. But it turns out they're not the strongest swimmers — and dams throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed may be blocking their natural migration patterns and contributing to a sharp population decline. Maryland biologists are hoping to boost the fortunes of the American eel, which is found across the Atlantic coast but is most abundant in the Chesapeake and its tributaries. Even in the Chesapeake, though, eels aren't doing so great. Scientists believe they're being stymied in part...

A busy beaver's dam work is felt downstream in a major way, a new study suggests. Beavers are well known for creating large pond-like areas upstream from their dams, but scientists have found that the construction projects also spread water downstream with the efficiency of a massive once-every-200-years flood. Researchers spent three years in the Rocky Mountain National Park examining downstream valley ecosystems in the Colorado River.

CONCORD, N.H. --In 1936, when the Merrimack River overflowed its banks and swept away roads, bridges and buildings from central New Hampshire to the Massachusetts coast, the Army Corps of Engineers took action. The agency built five dams and several reservoirs, seizing thousands of acres of private property in more than a dozen New Hampshire towns. The project, finished in 1963, protected residents downstream, including parts of Massachusetts. In the 1950s, Massachusetts and New Hampshire entered into a deal to compensate those towns each year for lost property taxes. Because Massachusetts received more of the benefit from the dams, that...

Tucked into the folds of the gigantic state infrastructure bond lawmakers were grappling with into the evening Monday is money aimed at buying and removing dams on the Klamath River. It is the first sign that money would be available from the state to grease the skids in negotiations between the dam owner and the fleet of sometimes conflicting parties that have a stake in using the river or restoring its debilitated fish runs. Tribes, environmental groups, fishermen, farmers and agencies have been meeting every two weeks to hash out a settlement that could involve decommissioning Pacificorp's dams and removing...

Broken ice dam blamed for 300-year chill 14:21 10 January 2006 NewScientist.com news service Kurt Kleiner A three-century-long cold spell that chilled Europe 8200 years ago was probably caused by the bursting of a Canadian ice dam, which released a colossal flood of glacial meltwater into the Atlantic Ocean. Two new papers, using different computer models, show that the massive freshwater flood accounts for evidence of the sudden climate change, which cooled Greenland by an average of 7.4°C, and Europe by about 1°C. It was the most abrupt and widespread cool spell in the last 10,000 years. Evidence for the...

GIVEN THE PASTING PRESIDENT BUSH has taken over the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, one might have assumed the president's critics were in agreement about how to prevent such disasters. But for years now, the left has been deeply ambivalent about the most logical and time-tested mitigator against the threat of city-wide and regional floods: dams.How could dams, embraced by everyone from beavers to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, be a source of contention? Ask the environmentalists. Their campaign against dams has gained influence and stalled, decommissioned, or otherwise limited the construction of many dams and levees, including one project that could...

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Fish advocates see the plan to demolish Condit Dam on the White Salmon River as good news for salmon everywhere, but the state Ecology Department says the project could hurt fish downstream and might violate the federal Endangered Species Act. Demolition of the 125-foot-high hydroelectric dam, owned by Portland-based PacifiCorp, is proposed for October 2008. The project would open 33 miles of steelhead habitat and 14 miles of salmon habitat in the area of the river blocked by the dam since 1913. The river forms a portion of the boundary between Klickitat and Skamania counties along the...

My engineering training kicked in when I saw the NASA photographs from space of New Orleans, and of the whole Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. There is an obvious solution to the New Orleans problem. The Dutch have already demonstrated it. Take New Orleans as the first and worst example. The pumps, levees and canals intended to protect New Orleans have been controlled by local authorities. They left three of the four pumping stations dependent on the local power grid. Hellooo. The precise time those pumps are most needed is during a storm when the local power grid...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - A federal court ruling that rejects the Bush administration's latest effort to balance Columbia Basin salmon recovery against hydroelectric dams has fish conservationists pressing anew for breaching four dams on the lower Snake River. "What the law requires is an honest analysis of how we configure the hydro system so we can get salmon back in our rivers," said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the National Wildlife Federation. "What all the scientists tell us is such an honest analysis would call for breaching the lower four Snake River dams." But with President Bush and the Republican-led Congress...

Years ago when I had a full head of hair, I worked for the New Jersey Institute of Technology and gained a great respect for engineers and architects. Without them, nothing gets built, nothing works, and we would all be back rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. In early March, my local daily newspaper ran a story that was four paragraphs long and buried at the bottom of the page. Engineers see U.S. Infrastructure Sinking. It was one of those stories deemed newsworthy enough to include since it cited a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers,...

INTELLIGENCEMan Is Held After Police Seize Tapes of Buildings and a DamBy ERIC LICHTBLAUPublished: August 11, 2004 ASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - The federal authorities, on heightened alert over the prospect of another Al Qaeda attack, are conducting a terrorism investigation into an illegal immigrant from Pakistan found with videotapes of downtown buildings and transit systems in four Southern states and of a dam in Texas, officials said on Tuesday.Officials acknowledged that they had no direct evidence linking the suspect, a former Queens resident named Kamran Shaikh, to terrorism. But they said they remained keenly interested in determining why he made...

August 11, 2004 -- A Pakistani who lives in Queens is being held in Charlotte, N.C., after videotaping skyscrapers in six major U.S. cities and making mysterious money transfers totaling $120,000, prosecutors said yesterday. Kamran Shaikh, 35, a father of three who lives in Elmhurst, also videotaped mass-transit systems in four of the cities and a dam in Texas, prosecutors said. Shaikh, who has lived in the United States for 13 years and has used the alias Kamran Akhtar, is being held without bail on immigration charges. He was busted in Charlotte on July 20 after Police Officer Anthony Maglione...