ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
PHIL WRIGHT
News Editor
JEFF BUDLONG
Interim Hermiston Editor
THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2021
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
State’s water
challenges need
to be addressed
T
he Oregon Legislature has hit on a
winner with the Irrigation District
Temporary Transfers Pilot Project.
While the name sounds a bit off-putting,
the project is effective. It allows some irriga-
tion districts to internally make temporary
transfers between water users. The project has
been in operation 18 years. During that time it
has been extended and expanded to 15 of the
state’s 40 or so irrigation districts.
The beauty of the project is its simplicity. A
farmer or rancher within an irrigation district
with an unused water allocation can transfer it
temporarily to someone who needs it.
This not only addresses some of the water
shortages that have arisen over the years, but
it helps farmers and ranchers hold onto water
allocations that otherwise might be lost, cour-
tesy of the state’s “use it or lose it” law.
While not perfect — nothing is — the proj-
ect brings out the best in cooperative spirit
among farmers in addition to getting water to
where it’s needed.
It is time for the legislature to expand the
program to all Oregon irrigation districts and
make it permanent.
While they’re tackling water issues, legis-
lators should take a close look at the Oregon
Water Resources Department, which appears
to be chronically underfunded and under-
staffed.
The department has a national reputation
for its sluggish performance. The Daugherty
Water for Food Global Institute at the Univer-
sity of Nebraska has found Oregon has an
unnecessarily complex and bureaucratic water
transfer system.
Year after year, the department also reports
it is behind in its work, in part because of red
tape and in part because the Legislature does
not provide enough money from the general
fund.
Some believe water users should provide
most of the department’s funding, but since the
state owns the water, all citizens should pony
up adequate funding to manage it.
After all, everyone eats the food grown with
that water.
More also needs to be done.
Water issues in Oregon will not go away.
The state needs a flexible game plan for
managing the water that grows our food and
powers our economy. Leaders need to take
a close look at everything from recharging
aquifers in the winter to lake taps to increas-
ing water storage behind dams. Instead of
constantly talking about taking out dams, we
should be looking at ways to increase their
number and capacity. That’s because scien-
tists say the mountain snowpacks that serve as
water storage will continue to shrink.
We should also come up with a statewide
plan to transfer water from locations with
plenty of water to those facing drought and
other shortages. California, for example, has a
massive intrastate water transfer system.
Climate change means Oregonians will
have to be smarter in how they manage water.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily that
of the East Oregonian.
LETTERS
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of 400 words or less on public issues and public
policies for publication in the newspaper and on
our website. The newspaper reserves the right
to withhold letters that address concerns about
individual services and products or letters that
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letters will not be published.
SEND LETTERS TO:
editor@eastoregonian.com,
or via mail to Andrew Cutler,
211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
Books offer insight into historic conflict
BRIGIT
FARLEY
PAST AND PROLOGUE
ugust has come, the traditional
month for vacations and stay-
cations. We are approaching 80
years since Pearl Harbor and the U.S.
entry into World War II. If you are lucky
enough to have some time off to read, I
have two excellent books to recommend
that will deliver some fresh perspective
for the upcoming 80th anniversary.
Especially in this era, when the
COVID-19 emergency has revealed
deep divisions in society, Americans look
longingly to World War II. At that time,
the nation seemed to face a monumen-
tal challenge united and unafraid. Histo-
rian Tracy Campbell takes issue with this
perception in his new book, “The Year of
Peril: America in 1942.”
Having refrained from international
involvement since World War I, Ameri-
cans suddenly found themselves at war in
December 1941 with powerful enemies
that already dominated much of Europe
and the Pacific. The U.S. armed forces
were undermanned and ill-equipped,
training with trucks marked “tank” and
using rifles made in 1903. It seemed
unlikely they could prevail.
The nation was accordingly panicky
and querulous, Campbell asserts. Fears
of enemy attack on the mainland led to
the removal of the original Constitu-
tion and Declaration of Independence
from Washington, D.C., to Fort Knox,
Kentucky, and the issuing of Executive
Order 9066. This order interned — with-
out trial on suspicion of espionage — all
Japanese-American citizens living close
to the Pacific Ocean.
The imposition of rubber and gaso-
line rationing angered car owners whose
freedom to drive was sharply curtailed.
Campbell emphasizes that the war
A
“intruded on a nation in which white
supremacy was deeply ingrained.” As
in World War I, the War Department
decreed that African Americans could
serve only in segregated units, lest inte-
gration upset white soldiers. Even so,
rumors circulated in some quarters that
the government was actually recruit-
ing and arming African Americans to
“subdue the south and impose a Second
Reconstruction.”
If Campbell’s is a ground-eye view
of the war’s first months, Doris Kearns
Goodwin’s “No Ordinary Time: Frank-
lin and Eleanor Roosevelt on the Home
Front in World War II” goes to the top to
chronicle President and Mrs. Roosevelt’s
efforts to unite the nation for the fight and
prepare it for a better future.
In Goodwin’s narrative, the First Lady
emerges determined that the nation try
to make democracy a reality at home as
it fought against dictatorship and milita-
rism overseas. Goodwin uses Mrs. Roos-
evelt’s voluminous correspondence to
underline her outrage at the injustice of
African Americans fighting against Nazi
racism in a segregated army and coun-
try. In one famous letter, she learned of
the humiliation visited upon a group of
African American soldiers traveling
through Louisiana on the way to train-
ing. Their active duty status did not spare
them Jim Crow treatment — they were
refused sit-down service inside the train
station lunchroom.
As they ate their sandwiches outside,
they watched in disbelief as a group
of German POWs was led into the
dining room. Afterward, Mrs. Roos-
evelt successfully lobbied her husband
to desegregate all transport and facili-
ties on U.S. military installations. If the
government could not protect African
American servicemen from discrimi-
nation in private businesses, it certainly
could set things right on its own prop-
erties. The end of segregation on mili-
tary bases became an important first step
towards the complete desegregation of
the U.S. military in 1948.
Another point of emphasis for Good-
win is Mrs. Roosevelt’s support for the
legions of Rosie the Riveters turning out
tanks, planes and ships in the defense
plants. Concerned for the children fend-
ing for themselves while their mothers
worked, Mrs. Roosevelt applauded and
promoted the country’s first daycare
facility at the Kaiser Shipyards in Port-
land. The center provided 24/7 care for
children of all races, staffed by graduates
of prestigious women’s colleges.
These first efforts at easing the
burden for defense workers opened
the door to similar arrangements for
future generations of working women.
Goodwin makes clear that both Roos-
evelts believed the country owed a debt
of gratitude to the servicemen who had
saved the world from Nazism and milita-
rism. President Roosevelt responded by
proposing the G.I. Bill of Rights, which
financed a college education for a gener-
ation of veterans. That investment paid
huge dividends: It fueled the greatest
peacetime economic expansion in Amer-
ican history.
These two books offer compelling
insights into a conflict that many believe
they know well already. One is that,
although President Roosevelt did rally
the country to “win through to absolute
victory,” the Americans we know now
as the greatest generation were initially
shell-shocked, fearful and divided. The
second is an old truth often forgotten:
leadership matters.
I have always felt that the U.S. is
blessed more by geography than God.
But perhaps only God explains the fact
that this country had gifted, farsighted
stewards in Franklin and Eleanor Roos-
evelt during the critical years, where the
Nazi and Imperial Japanese leadership
were charting a course toward the utter
destruction of their nations.
———
Brigit Farley is a Washington State
University professor, student of history,
adventurer and Irish heritage girl living
in Pendleton.
Why? Because too many of you out
there think, “I don’t need no stinking
shots.” Well, you’re in the same group
as the actor in “Treasure of the Sierra
Madre,” saying, “I don’t need no stink-
ing badges.” There is a good chance
you will end up like he did — dead!
COVID-19 is not a joke, it is not a
government conspiracy, there are no
nanobots being injected so they can
track you (there are enough satellites
up above now, they can track anytime
they want, you paranoid fools). What
you are doing is subjecting your
family and friends to a greater risk
of catching this disease and possibly
dying from it, thanks to your being
too self-centered to consider anyone
but yourself. Do you believe that if
you catch it and end up passing it
along and therefore possibly killing a
friend or family member, it’s not your
fault? Good luck on lying to yourself
for the rest of your life. I hope you
can sleep at night knowing you killed
someone because you were so selfish.
Mark Severson
Hermiston
YOUR VIEWS
Don’t be a fool:
Get vaccinated!
I have one word for those of
you that have yet to get a vaccina-
tion: fools! I can also add self-cen-
tered, selfish, sheeple and, Kool-Aid
drinkers to that. If you don’t under-
stand the Kool-Aid drinkers, look up
Jonestown, as you are headed in the
same direction — dead!
Umatilla County, once again, has
the “honor” of being the hotspot when
it comes to COVID-19 for Oregon.