6
CapitalPress.com
Editorials are written by or
approved by members of the
Capital Press Editorial Board.
Friday, June 10, 2022
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
not necessarily this newspaper.
Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Bring on the plague of lawyers
rom the days of Moses, the
image of a plague of locusts
has been well established in the
human psyche.
After losing 10 million acres to
insects last year, Eastern Oregon farm-
ers and ranchers are bracing for another
damaging infestation of grasshoppers
and Mormon crickets.
What could be worse than ravenous
insects rolling across the range? Raven-
ous insects with lawyers.
Grasshoppers are voracious eaters,
and having eight or more per square
yard is considered enough to cause eco-
nomic damage on rangeland.
According to the Oregon Depart-
ment of Agriculture, 15 to 20 grasshop-
pers per square yard spread out over a
40-acre field of alfalfa will eat 1 ton of
hay per day, and seven grasshoppers per
square yard over 10 acres can eat the
equivalent of one cow feeding through-
out the season.
Todd Adams, survey coordinator for
ODA’s Eastern Oregon Field Office in
F
Capital Press File
Some lawyers claim controlling grass-
hoppers damages the environment.
Hermiston, said the agency is starting to
receive reports of grasshoppers hatch-
ing, including at higher elevations near
Jordan Valley along the Oregon-Idaho
border.
“In Jordan Valley, the only thing left
was sagebrush,” Adams said of last
year’s outbreak.
The Oregon legislature approved
a one-time $5 million allocation for
grasshopper and Mormon cricket
suppression.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service uses
diflubenzuron, a growth-inhibiting pes-
ticide, to keep the pests in check. APHIS
works not only in Oregon, but through-
out the West.
Enter counsel for the grasshoppers.
Two environmental nonprofits — the
Xerces Society for Invertebrate Con-
servation and the Center for Biological
Diversity — have filed a lawsuit claim-
ing the USDA’s rangeland pesticides
program violates the National Environ-
mental Policy Act.
The complaint has asked a federal
judge to overturn the agency’s authori-
zation of the insecticide program in Ore-
gon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and
to potentially prohibit spraying while the
environmental impacts are reconsidered.
“APHIS’s widespread, routine appli-
cation of pesticides on public and pri-
vate rangelands to manage grasshop-
pers — many of which never reach
economic infestation levels — harms
not just grasshoppers but also numerous
non-target insect species critical to eco-
system functioning and productivity,”
Working together, we
can have healthy rivers
and a healthy economy
Our View
S
Idaho Power Co.
Idaho Power Co. crews maintain a cloud seeding generator in the mountains above Garden Valley, Idaho.
The utility’s effort adds about 1 million acre-feet to the state’s water supply.
The seed of an idea
to get more water
U
tilities, irrigation districts and state
governments in parts of the West
have for years been supplementing
their water supplies. They’ve done it by seed-
ing the clouds. Where the conditions are right,
they have generated upward of 15% more
snowmelt, helping to fill streams and rivers,
irrigate fields and replenish aquifers.
Cloud seeding is a complicated process. It
involves studying the weather patterns to deter-
mine whether more water can be coaxed from
the clouds by “seeding” them with substances
such as silver iodide. Mountain-based genera-
tors and airplanes are used for the seeding.
Doing that is not without controversy.
Some experts sniff that in Oregon experiments
decades ago the additional snow generated by
cloud seeding was less than impressive and not
statistically significant. What’s 10% more snow
when so much snow and rain inundates much
of the region? they concluded at the time.
That was before drought and climate change
became a part of the weather lexicon. In an era
when farmers and ranchers — and everyone
else — are grasping for every drop of water,
some people say 10% more water runoff can
sound pretty good.
Mike Britton is one of those people. As the
executive manager of the North Unit Irrigation
District in Central Oregon, he has seen agri-
culture in his region drying up the past sev-
eral years. Less snow and rain in the winter
have failed to fill reservoirs and left farms and
ranches parched in the summer. This year, they
will receive 25% of the water they need.
Britton is asking a simple question: Could
the lawsuit alleges. “This, in turn, has
repercussions for birds, mammals, and
plants that rely on these insects for food
or pollination.”
Killing billions of grasshoppers
affects rangeland ecosystems but the
USDA hasn’t considered long-term ben-
efits from the species, whose outbreaks
serve valuable environmental func-
tions while causing “short-term dam-
age” to crops and forage, according to
the plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs seek to rob the agency —
and the farmers and ranchers it serves
— of a flexible platform for controlling
grasshoppers and Mormon crickets in
real time.
In the Book of Exodus, God
unleashes 10 plagues — including
locusts — upon Egypt to convince the
pharaoh to free the Israelites. Far be it
from us to second guess the Almighty,
but we can’t help but wonder how
quickly the Hebrews would have been
on their way to the promised land had
the first plague been of lawyers bearing
lawsuits.
his irrigation district in particular and Ore-
gon farmers in general benefit from seeding
clouds as they roll across the Cascade Range all
winter?
His is a legitimate question that deserves
an answer. Scientists could set up experiments
using the latest technology to determine what
benefit, if any, could be derived from cloud
seeding.
After all, cloud seeding is routinely done in
Idaho, California, Nevada and Colorado. In
Idaho, for example, cloud seeding adds 1 mil-
lion acre-feet of water a year to the overall
supply.
In this space, we have also commented on
the need to consider other means of managing
the state’s water supply. The Columbia River,
one of the great rivers of North America, bor-
ders the state on the north. It certainly could
supply water to Central Oregon and other parts
of the West.
Mountain lake taps could be created that
would add to the water supply in the summer
and replenish themselves naturally in the win-
ter. As an added benefit, they could generate
clean hydropower.
Now is the time to study these and other
tools that we in Oregon and other states will
need to rebuild and maintain the region’s water
supply.
There will be no single silver bullet for the
region’s water supply problems. It will take an
array of technology and management tactics.
But until we take a thoughtful, science-based
look at all of them, including cloud seeding, we
won’t know the answer to which techniques are
most effective.
even years ago,
when the ocean tem-
peratures in the
Pacific were in a periodic
cooler cycle, NOAA Fish-
eries reported the most
productive decade of fish
runs since recordkeeping
began at Bonneville Dam
in 1938.
“The success of this
fall chinook run reflects
the region’s commitment
and the collaborative spirit
that has made it possible,”
said Paul Lumley, execu-
tive director of the Colum-
bia River Inter-Tribal Fish
Commission.
Warmer ocean tem-
peratures and discouraging
returns followed. Cooler
waters recently have
brought some improve-
ment. The collaborative
spirit and commitment
remain vital. Breaching the
dams won’t get us there
with consequences dire for
our farms, our communi-
ties, and our ability to pro-
vide bountiful crops to
feed a hungry nation and
the world.
Farmers have worked
hard to meet the chal-
lenge of producing boun-
tiful crops while reducing
water-borne soil erosion
85% and helping improve
air quality, too — reducing
wind-blown dust six-fold
and reducing stubble burn-
ing 22-fold.
Moving what we now
move by the Snake River
waterway would require
5 million more gallons
of diesel fuel. Expensive,
to be sure, but even more
costly to our environment.
The EPA Emissions Lab
reports that tugs produce
80-85% less hydrocarbons
than trains or trucks, far
less carbon monoxide and
nitrous oxide, too.
Railroads cannot handle
the load they have today,
much less several million
more tons of crops and
nutrients to nourish them.
We’d be asking that of
our rail system should the
lower Snake River dams
be breached. Deputy
Agriculture Secretary Dr.
Jewel Bronaugh describes
a system currently in dis-
array: “Increasingly unre-
liable railway service is
pushing American farmers
and ranchers to the break-
ing point. … When rail-
roads charge unreasonable
rates and provide poor ser-
vice, farmers struggle to
make ends meet, consum-
ers pay higher prices at
the grocery store and the
GUEST
VIEW
Alex
McGregor
United States becomes less
competitive on the global
market.”
Scientists at the NOAA
Fisheries Science Center,
in a peer-reviewed 2021
study, warn of the biggest
challenge salmon face —
potential future losses of
90% of the fish at sea from
long-term warming of the
ocean.
“It’s horrendous,” lead
author Lisa Crozier stated.
“I wish I had a magic
answer … but it’s the real-
ity of where we are right
now with the amount of
CO2 we have pumped into
the atmosphere.” We can,
and must, do better than
that.
The substantial invest-
ment Congress made in
its infrastructure package
for salmon offers hope —
$2.8 billion for habitat res-
toration, hatcheries, cul-
vert replacement, and most
importantly, research.
With survival through
the hydro-system already
high, fisheries ecologist
Crozier puts “more faith
in actions like improv-
ing coastal habitat, reduc-
ing species that both prey
on chinook and those that
compete with them for
resources, including more
abundant hatchery salmon
and steelhead, and slowing
climate change.”
We agree with her that
“the goal is for people to
come together and look
at holistic solutions.” By
doing so, we can make real
progress through science,
hard work and a shared
goal to help our iconic
Northwest fish while keep-
ing our economy strong.
Working together we can
build upon a shared com-
mitment and collaborative
spirit, as Paul Lumley of
the Inter-Tribal Fish Com-
mission put it several years
ago. As I noted at the out-
set, we can have healthy
rivers and a healthy econ-
omy. We should accept
nothing less.
Alex McGregor is a
rancher, wheat grower,
former college professor
(Whitman and Washing-
ton State University) and
chairman of The McGre-
gor Company. He is
based in Colfax, Wash.