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- J P E .C IA L O R D E R S
What a weekend this was. A dream o f a dream of
a dream. A smile on the face of God. On the long
string of jewels this summer, this was the quintessential
blue-green orb, the "priuy Perle wythouten spotte..."
On days like these the prophets rise from the sands.
Venus ascends from the waves. The moments burst the
spirit's sleep. Rarely has the honeyed air coursed more
alluringly over our headlands and sea.
Today Senior Lifeguard John Rippey and I cruised
the beach and simply savored our special coastside
shingle scoured of sand by this summer's tides. The old
AM truck radio crooned Fifties tunes, Lonnie Mack's
surf guitar single "Memphis" and Eddie Cochran's
"Summer Time Blues." We watched the Surfies, the
lads of summer ("Needle Freaks" my buddy Knox calls
them) working the shore break south of Haystack Rock.
The dark specks on the water looked like flies on rows
o f old green Coke bottles. Twenty-seven o f them on
Sunday afternoon, a local record I'd warrant, sliding to
the eternal rhythms, riding on top of the world on a day
o f days. Small clean peaks shadowed and glistered,
shattered and faceted, streaking mazy swor'- and rips on
the oiled surface.
"Is this a fine day, or what?" John asked me.
I had to concur. I logged this in as a treasure.
Something to exhume from the cellar o f memories this
winter like a jar of peach preserves. I netted the
moments like a fall garden spider, wove strands of
sensibility around them, and stored them inside.
This weekend has been a festival of horizons, a
visual circus, a kaleidoscopic swoon of colors, shapes,
and sounds. Its paired sunrises and sets made my heart
laugh and cry at the same time.
150 A ve . U,
The old voices were in the air, the plaint o f w ild
geese and ravens on the wing.
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It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more
of our imports come from overseas.
- Beaverton, Ore., Sept. 25, 2000
DUANL TOHMSOM
R IA L tS T A T t
Wild bands o f horsetail clouds nickered above the
green coastal mountains, a cirrus dance in strophe and
antistrophe across the heavens. At night the ice clouds
shape-shifted into star rivers in the Milky Way.
I hope you were immersed in its spell. We are truly
blessed in this place. Let us never lose sight of that fact.
ANTHONY STOPPIELLO
...... .
= Architect
Earth friendly architecture
Consultant - Educator
Passive solarWoslgil J
Conscientious material use
Licensed in Oregon and Washington
...
3 1 0 Lake S t • POB 7 2 , Ilwaco, WA 9 6 6 2 4 ( 3 6 0 ) 6 4 2 - 4 2 5 6
F or A ll V our R ial E state N ells
-—
Philip Thompson
I want to take the »in to
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—Oprah, Sept. 19,2000
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" & J Ê S PRESSO
'
Victoria Stopplello
No surprise
I'm not surprised that there are still people
calling for the removal of the four Snake River
dams. Some of us just aren't gamblers; we don't
want to take the chance that Idaho salmon could go
extinct. Some of us don't have faith that man's
technology will outdo nature's ability to produce
fish. Some of us distinguish between some
watersheds' healthy salmon runs and other runs
from Idaho that are not. Some of us see this as a
political situation with well-funded, centrally
organized economic interests (namely corporate
agribusiness irrigators and navigation outfits) pitted
against relatively decentralized, independent small
business people (the fishing industry) and
environmentalists (many of whom don't get a dime
for their activism). O f course, the tribes’ cultural and
spiritual values regarding salmon don't put money in
many people's pockets either, so the political
machinery ignores them too. But the most telling
argument for removing the Lower Snake dams,
some of us believe, is that there are alternatives
which don't risk extinction. Barging isn't the only
way to get wheat from the inland producers: there's
rail. It will take some investment, but so would
habitat improvement, better use of hatcheries, and
better management of the lower Columbia fisheries.
Irrigators face a similar problem. They can continue
irrigating, but if the Lower Snake dams are
removed, they will have to move their pumping
stations lower in the river at considerable expense.
This would be poetic justice for the irrigators,
roughly half of whom have failed to install and
maintain fish screens (costing $2.50 each) on their
pumping stations, according to studies by both
Washington and Oregon.
One aspect of the
argument, however, could be that barge companies
and irrigators are used to using the Columbia for
free or close to it. Investing in improving rail lines
or pumping stations is likely to be a private
endeavor, while fisheries management and
maintaining the dams and hatcheries are public
investments. However, the silliest argument about
keeping the four Lower Snake dams is that we need
the power. Those dams produce about 5% of the
Bonneville Power Administration supply. We can
make up 5% of our energy budget easily via
conservation, while creating jobs at the same time.
Here's our own example: We reduced our electricity
use in our 1895 house by two-thirds using the
following conservation measures: insulating the
floors, ceilings and walls; replacing the windows
with double-pane sashes; installing a solar batch
water heater; using more efficient equipment like
compact fluorescent and the world's most efficient
refrigerator, which uses only half a kilowatt per day.
The PUD has weatherization support programs and
a rebate for solar water heaters, so people don’t have
to finance these projects all alone. I'll say it again:
We not only saved the 5% of electricity generated
by the Snake River dams, we saved 67%.
The
reason we did this was partly economics and partly
sentiment. My dad, my grandfather, and my great-
great uncle were all commercial fishermen from the
port of Ilwaco. It seemed a needless shame to be
living in a historic salmon fishing town and not have
salmon when there was something that could be
done. Being frugal has always been part of my
family's way of life. Being frugal with electricity in
order to help salmon makes sense.
Scaring people
with the threat of brownouts is the one hook to keep
the average person believing we need those dams.
Here's the real fear: If we take down a few relatively
inconsequential dams on the Lower Snake River,
people's thoughts will turn to the dams on the
Columbia's main stem. Perhaps they should.
We know the biggest salmon were the ones that
spawned above Grand Coulee. I heard recently that
at the time there was a plan to build three smaller
dams, which would have generated the same
amount of power as Grand Coulee, but could have
been circumnavigated by the migrating fish'but big
egos demanded we build the world's biggest dam
instead.
Another dam was built down river
just for the aluminum industry, which pays less per
kilowatt hour than households do. Yet the U.S.
aluminum industry still isn't competitive on world
markets, even with this giant subsidy. Then there's
the social, cultural, and spiritual desecration
involved in flooding Celilo Falls.
We've made
some mistakes; at least we can correct some of the
smaller ones. You bet some of us are still calling for
the removal of the four Lower Snake dams.
Victoria Stoppiello is a writer living in Ilwaco at the
lower left comer of Washington State.
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UPPER. LEFT EDGE OCTOBER 2000