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If the new law is adopted, no additional water may be withdrawn from the Columbia River (or the virtually limitless areas deemed to be in hydraulic continuity with it) at all.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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.