VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, August 13, 2022
East Oregonian
A5
YANCY
LIND
OTHER VIEWS
Snake
River
dams
must be
removed
D
espite the claim that dams
are a form of clean, renew-
able energy, they are being
removed in many places across the
country due to their lack of cost-ef-
fectiveness and dramatic negative
impacts on ecosystems.
Four power-generating dams on
the Klamath River are slated to be
removed next year, the largest dam
removal project in U.S. history.
The Columbia River and its trib-
utaries once held one of the world’s
greatest runs of anadromous fish,
including multiple species of salmon,
steelhead and pacific lamprey. The
Snake River, which joins the Colum-
bia, and its tributaries were the spawn-
ing grounds for many of these fish.
Today, these runs are threatened with
local extinction.
There are many reasons for the
dire outlook for Snake River anadro-
mous fish. Poor ocean conditions due
to global warming, pollution, exces-
sive harvest and genetic degradation
from breeding with hatchery fish all
play a role. The independent scientific
consensus, however, is that the lower
four dams on the Snake River are the
primary issue and they must come out
to avoid losing these fish.
It is true that interests vested in the
operation of the dams have produced
reports purporting to show the dams
are not the issue. For decades, the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps
of Engineers and the utility industry
have released studies and plans for
addressing the collapse of Snake River
Basin salmon and steelhead. The
courts have repeatedly stated these are
flawed and ordered corrections, orders
that have largely been ignored, lead-
ing to a cycle of constant litigation.
In 2020, the state of Washing-
ton released a report stating, “Today,
Washingtonians stand at a fork in the
road with a clear choice: Continue
with current practices and gradually
lose salmon, orcas and a way of life
that has sustained the Pacific North-
west for eons. Or, change course and
put Washington on a path to recov-
ery that recognizes salmon and other
natural resources as vital to the state’s
economy, growth and prosperity.”
In May of this year, a study co-au-
thored by scientists from the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife, the
Idaho Department of Fish and Game,
the National Marine Fisheries Service,
Oregon State University and U.S. Fish
and Wildlife, among others, stated the
dams must be breached to save these
fish.
Last month, the White House
announced the release of two new
interagency draft reports stating
at least some of the dams must be
removed along with other actions to
“restore the health and abundance of
Pacific Northwest salmon.” These
reports also detail steps that must be
taken to offset the loss of power gener-
ation from the dams while meeting
state and federal clean energy goals.
These reports are drafts and the util-
ity industry is lobbying to have their
conclusions changed. Doing so would
make them political, not scientific
documents.
Breaching dams will require
changes for many. It will require
investments in a variety of areas
and collaboration by a wide range of
stakeholders. As the White House
report states, however, “the region can
continue to reshape its future through
strategic investments, ongoing science
and related actions that help ensure
a sustainable and resilient basin that
better serves all communities in the
basin.”
We need to ask ourselves some
fundamental questions. Do we value
a healthy Columbia River ecosystem?
Do we value anadromous fish and the
many benefits they provide to humans
and the animals that rely on them as
a source of food? What legacy do we
want to leave to future generations?
Do we want to witness the final
collapse of what once was a marvel of
the natural world? We know we can
make a positive change and include
everyone in its benefits. Will we?
———
Yancy Lind lives in Tumalo
and blogs about water and fish at
www.coinformedangler.org.
Tick, tick, tick
J.D.
SMITH
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
O
K, you just spent the afternoon adding
to your guess-what-bird-I-saw-today
list by walking a mile though the brush
along the river.
It was a hot day, so you are changing out of
your sweaty duds and admiring your image in a
mirror when you notice a new mole just below
your belly button. You move a little closer to
the mirror, stand on your tippy toes, and realize
that the mole has a silver-brown sheen and, aw
Jeez, legs. The temple of your body has been
invaded by a parasite and it is dining on your
vital fluids.
Tick alert. Quick, get the critter off your
skin, but how?
First, a bit of soft science. There are roughly
800 types of ticks on this planet. A hundred of
these can carry disease to warm-blooded crit-
ters, including humans. Not every tick carries
a disease. Of the hundred types, five species
will be found in the Pacific Northwest. These
are the Rocky Mountain tick, the American
dog tick, the brown dog tick, the western black-
legged tick and the relapsing fever tick.
Ticks are not insects, they are arachnids,
eight-legged, like spiders. They go through
four stages of life — egg, larva, nymph and
adult. It takes about two years for a tick to hatch
from the egg, go through the other three stages,
reproduce, then die.
Eggs hatch into six-legged larvae called
seed ticks, about the size of the period at the
end of this sentence. A larva finds blood, dines,
drops to the ground, molts and becomes an
eight-legged being without sex organs called a
nymph. The nymph also finds a host and sucks
blood, sometimes morphs into yet another kind
of nymph, and eventually changes into the
adult that ended up on your belly. Adult females
are larger and more colorful than males.
Females find a blood feast then mate, lay eggs
and die. Males live to mate several times.
The tick found your temple of flesh because,
like mosquitoes, they gravitate toward carbon
dioxide, which is given off as a waste product
in mammalian sweat and respiration. Wacky
arachnologists collect ticks by setting out
chunks of dry ice that are pretty much solid
carbon dioxide. If you have ever carried dry ice
into the woods to freeze your trophy trout, you
have probably come home with ticks.
Ticks do not jump or fly, but they can crawl
ten yards to a blood source. Their usual busi-
ness model is to hang on brush in a state of
slumber, sometimes for weeks, until the carbon
dioxide sensors in their front pair of legs trigger
them to hitch a ride on a warm-blooded pass-
erby.
The business end of a tick consists of two
pincer-type mouthparts, one on each side of a
little harpoon thingy with recurved teeth on
it, like on a fishhook. The harpoon is called
a hypostome. The tick grabs onto your belly
with its feet and pincers long enough to force
the harpoon through a couple of layers of tissue
until it hits blood.
An anticoagulant lubricant is secreted, the
little pump mechanisms in the tick’s body are
switched on and the blood is drawn through
a straw-like mechanism in the hypostome. A
fully gorged female tick can hold 50 times its
dry weight in blood.
Ticks do not manufacture the toxins that
cause disease in humans. They are unwitting
hosts to other life forms that they contracted
while nymphs. It is those little life forms that
hitch a ride in the anticoagulant juice and into
your bod.
My license as junior tick scientist does not
allow me to explore the complexities of how
these critters can cause fevers, rashes, chills,
paralysis and even death. That is for others, like
medical professionals, up the pay scale. Suffice
it to say that North American ticks could be
carriers of Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain
spotted fever, tularemia, relapsing fever and
tick paralysis.
Now, back to the tick on your belly. Don’t
fry it with a match or smother it with petroleum
jelly. If you have blunt tweezers, find them.
If you intend to use your fingers, it is proba-
bly best to cover the tick with a chunk of toilet
paper or plastic wrap because some tick fluids
can permeate human skin. If you didn’t catch
the fevers from tick spit while it was dining on
you, you could possibly absorb disease-causing
bacteria through your finger skin.
Grasp the tick as close to the skin as possi-
ble, then pull the critter steadily away from the
skin.
Remember, you are trying to pull a tiny
harpoon/horseshoe rasp out of your skin.
A steady, careful pull has been shown to be
the best way to retrieve the hypostome with-
out breaking it off in your skin. Once the tick
is removed, apply an antiseptic like rubbing
alcohol or whiskey to the bitten area, both of
which can also be used to pickle the tick, if that
is the way you want to send it to the grave. My
preferred method of tick disposal involves an
ashtray and a cigarette lighter turned up high
enough to weld.
Only you can prevent tick bites. Here are a
few ways. Stay out of the woods, grasslands or
near any shrubbery. Avoid nudist weddings.
Check your dog for ticks so it doesn’t bring
them home in its fur. Wear light-colored clothes
so you can spot a tick before it finds your skin.
Walk in the center of the trail. Use DEET,
which has its own health hazards.
Or, if you are of the tree-hugging shade-
grown persuasion, try citronella, eucalyp-
tus, peppermint, lavender, cedar oil, canola,
rosemary or pennyroyal, all of which mask
the carbon dioxide your skin emits, but leave
room in your pack for a 50-gallon drum of the
essential oils, because they must be applied
every 30 minutes to be minimally effective.
———
J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and
jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena.
Community should care how Port of Morrow
fulfills role as environmental steward
BRIAN
MAAG
OTHER VIEWS
hose who are in charge at the
Port of Morrow need to stand up
and publicly respond to what was
an apparent decade-long plan to ignore state
rules.”
— East Oregonian editorial July 12, 2022
“T
Since 1986, when the Port of Morrow began
using industrial wastewater for farm irrigation,
there has been constant and consistent improve-
ment. The port hasn’t ignored state rules, which
incidentally promote wastewater reuse. Instead,
the port has sought to follow science in support
of responsible farming practices.
To comply with environmental and health
regulations, the port installed networks of moni-
toring wells at the three farms irrigated with
wastewater, including municipal wastewater
from the city of Boardman. In coordination with
ag experts and partner farmers, port-supplied
irrigation water has been used in innovative
ways to cultivate higher-value crops and avoid
use of commercial fertilizers.
Since 2007, the port has invested over $45
million in capital improvements to maintain
compliance with state rules.
• In 1994, the port constructed a
196-million-gallon pond to store water
during the winter.
• In 2007, East beach wastewater line exten-
sions.
• In 2010-2013, the port upgraded piping
so all industrial wastewater would be
processed through the storage pond,
allowing for greater consistency in water
applied as irrigation.
• In 2011, the pond was reconfigured into
large and small sections. The smaller section
is used as a surge basin to aerate wastewater.
The larger section enables water storage for
critical times in the growing season.
• In 2012, the storage pond was further
expanded.
• In 2015, ConAgra Wastewater Pretreatment.
• In 2014 and 2015, more than 1,000 acres of
additional farmland was piped to receive
processed wastewater from the port, with
an eye toward reaching cropland that could
absorb processed wastewater without
contaminating groundwater.
• In 2017, expansion at the Madison Ranch
added a new 350-million-gallon winter stor-
age pond and 2,822 acres for land applica-
tion.
• In 2018 to current, digester in construction.
• In 2021, land application was added at the
Mader-Rust farms with an additional 1,600
acres.
• In 2021, wastewater piping extension and
replacement.
The Department of Environmental Qual-
ity’s decision in 2017 to modify the port’s
permit to apply industrial wastewater for irri-
gation changed a fundamental dynamic of the
program — distributing wastewater year-round
to support crop rotation. Suddenly, the port
needed to find a way to store 1.3 billion gallons
of winter wastewater in a pond with a 256
million-gallon capacity.
With port support, Oregon State University
has undertaken an independent five-year study
to determine the sustainable use of irrigation
in the Lower Umatilla Basin, which includes
Morrow, Umatilla and Gilliam counties. This
is in the context of a water quality problem
caused by the drawdown of groundwater for
public drinking supplies and farmland irriga-
tion dating back decades. The study is looking
at farmland irrigation generally and specifically
examining how to make the port’s wastewater
reuse program for irrigation more sustainable.
This is not the port’s study. But port officials
are paying close attention to its informed find-
ings to shape their further actions. Meanwhile,
the port’s strategic plan calls for expansion of
its anaerobic digester, larger storage capacity,
capture and reuse of methane from processing
wastewater and other innovative strategies. The
port is self-financing these investments while
seeking federal and state funding to cover their
full cost.
It’s worth remembering what else the port
does in our community. The port continues
to expand its role as a regional trade hub that
supports and benefits local farming, industry,
and workers. Port and port-related businesses
have brought in over 8,000 jobs to our area.
It is the second-largest port in Oregon behind
the Port of Portland with an annual economic
output of more than $2.5 billion.
Finally, the port continues to join with
community partners to address housing needs,
commercial development, local services and
other improvements that enhance the region’s
quality of life.
The community should care how the
port fulfills its role as environmental stew-
ard. Asking questions and getting answers
is constructive. Solving the region’s serious,
decades-old water contamination problem is
imperative.
Cooperation and collective action is the path
to the solution. Science should be its guide. The
port will be its willing partner.
———
Brian Maag is the president and co-founder
of Boardman Foods, a tenant and member of
the Port of Morrow business community since
1992. Boardman Foods processes ingredients
for some of the largest food companies and
relies heavily on the production of the agricul-
tural community in the Columbia Basin.