Posted on 08/22/2003 1:56:29 PM PDT by mdittmar
President Bush waded deeper into controversy over his environmental policies in the Pacific Northwest on Friday as he rejected calls for hydroelectric dams to be razed to make way for endangered migrating salmon.
Bush viewed water ladders at Washington's Ice Harbor Lock and Dam, meant to help the fish get up and down the Snake River to spawn, after facing several thousand demonstrators angry about issues from the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq to proposed forest thinning in Oregon.
On a break from his August vacation at his Texas ranch to visit states that were problems for the Republicans in the 2000 elections, Bush was also due to speak to key figures in the Washington economy before attending a private fund-raiser at the home of telecommunications billionaire Craig McCaw in a wealthy Seattle suburb.
Bush called for cooperation between environmentalists, farmers and the government to allow both conservation of natural resources as well as preservation of important economic assets such as the dam, which is a key provider of regional hydroelectric power.
"We can have good, clean hydroelectric power and salmon restoration going on at the same time," Bush said at the dam, one of eight that spawning salmon and returning juveniles must navigate along the Snake and Columbia Rivers.
"We've got an energy problem in America. We don't need to be breaching any dams that are providing electricity," he added.
Bush has urged Congress to pass energy legislation to modernize the antiquated electricity grid, which contributed to a historic blackout last week that millions without power in eight U.S. states and Ontario, Canada. He has urged that it include provisions for energy conservation, efficiencies and new technologies for energy exploration.
The administration says a major increase in the salmon runs of the past few years are due to a combination of its own efforts to boost funding for salmon conservation, the previous decade's steady advances in management and cyclical improvement in ocean conditions.
But environmental activists say most of the 1.7 million fish that returned last year are not the prized wild salmon but farm-raised fish.
They add that Bush has implemented less than one third of the measures and allocated just over half of the funding called for in a federal salmon plan for the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
"If your administration continues to encourage destruction of our forests, pollution of our rivers and management of our rivers without considering our fish and wildlife, the salmon will never be restored," Washington state lawmakers wrote to Bush this week, urging him to take stronger action.
Water is a hot political issue across the West, including neighboring Oregon where fights continue to rage over scarce supplies essential for local agriculture, power generation and protected fish promised to local Indian tribes.
Compared to the 2,000 protesters who met Bush in Oregon on Thursday, a mere 50 demonstrators stood on a highway overpass waving "Bush Lied" signs as the motorcade drove to the lock.
But local labor union leaders said several thousand protesters would turn out to demonstrate against administration proposals they said would gut job protections.
Bush lost Oregon in the 2000 presidential election and Democrat Maria Cantwell unseated the incumbent Republican senator in a cliffhanger race in Washington, a state split between Democratic-leaning cities like Seattle and Republican bastions in the rural east.
Salmon in Vodka Cream Sauce with Green Peppercorns
8 tablespoons butter
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 pound spinach
6 6 ounce salmon fliets
salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cup vodka(or more)
2 tablespoons green peppercorns in water, drained and crushed
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/4 cup snipped fresh chives
Preheat oven to 350F. Combine 4 tablespoons butter and onion in large Dutch oven. Cover and bake until onion is golden brown, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes.
Stir spinach into onion and bake until just wilted, about 3 minutes. Remove from oven; keep warm.
Season salmon with salt and pepper. Heat oil in heavy large skillet over high heat. Add salmon in batches and cook about 3 minutes per side for medium. Transfer to platter. Tent with foil to keep warm. Pour off excess oil from skillet. Add cream and vodka and boil until slightly thickened, about 4 minutes. Add green peppercorns and remaining 4 tablespoons butter and stir until butter is just melted. Mix in lime juice, season with salt and pepper.
Divide spinach and onion mixture among plates. Top each with salmon fillet. Spoon sauce over. Sprinkle with snipped fresh chives.
Well, all I can say to those protestors is: if they'd allowed thinning in the area around the B-and-B Fire complex, my family's various property interests in the immediate area wouldn't be in nearly as much danger as they are now.
And he would have announced this policy the day after the 2003 blackout.
Only natural ones. Oh wait a minute. The would probably designate half of them as national monuments to prevent their occupation.
Bad news for the Enviromental Wack-jobs out there.... Once "farmed" fish have been introduced, it's going to be nearly impossible to determine which returning fish are the "native/wild" fish and which are the hatchery fish. Within just a couple of years, the genetics are even hard to differentiate.
Another clue.... If it weren't for the "farmed" fish, the salmon population would have been decimated. Thanks to breeding, stocking, and farming, salmon populations are being preserved and the supply of consumers in still healthy.
I wonder what the tree-huggers would say if Bush had announced that the dams on the Snake river were going to be breached - each one replaced with a nice big coal-fired generation plant?........
Why in the friggin World would ANYONE care whether it's a farmed fish or wild fish? How utterly obsessive these eco-nuts are. I don't here them whining about the raised wolfs being re-introduced, to the detriment of ranchers and family pets. Like geeky virus creating keyboard whackos, these freaks need a life.
This issue really exposes the enviro-nazis' hypocrisy. They call for "renewable resources", yet want to destroy one of the greatest renewable resources ever devised--hydro-electric power. This just proves that enviro-nazis aren't about protecting the environment; they're just anti-capitalist communists.
No. Not yet. And none ever will.
But intelligent adults are now deciding environmental policy, rather than the juvenile brats.
Rather like Al Capp's SWINE: Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything.
That's what I meant, but I didn't say it very well.
They want to breech dams to protect farm raised salmon?
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