OPINION
Wallowa County Chieftain
A4
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
AND SO IT BEGINS
VOICE of the
CHIEFTAIN
whole lot of us have
endured what seems a
chilly, wet spring and
a July that so far has felt all-
too-little like summer. That
fi rst cutting of hay was dis-
mal and diffi cult, held hos-
tage by drizzly and unpredicted
rains. While that fi rst cutting is
always a challenge to put up,
this year vacillated between
frustrating and heartbreaking.
Long-time stockman Mack
Birkmaier bemoaned June
weather. “We just can’t get the
hay in,” he said. “I don’t quite
remember it ever being this
bad.”
You don’t have to be a
rancher or farmer to have been
stricken with depression over
the balky arrival of summer.
Eighty degrees—the gold stan-
dard for summer temperatures
to many here — seemed unat-
tainable. Hikers donned—
and then shed — rain gear at a
record pace. On some days it
seemed you got wetter sitting
on the beach at Wallowa Lake
than you did if you actually
went into the water. April and
May were especially gener-
ous with precipitation, uncork-
ing nearly twice the rainfall of
2018, according to our very
own josephoregonweather.
com. Temperatures may have
seemed cool amid all this drip-
iness, but in fact, they hovered
around the 30-year average for
most of the spring and early
summer.
But as summer rounds the
fi rst turn and heads into Chief
Joseph Days, things are chang-
ing. This past weekend saw the
fi rst lightning-besotted thun-
derstorms of the summer—
A
josephoregonweather.com
Joseph’s precipitation for April and May, 2019 was almost double the amounts received in 2018.
with the exception of the rag-
ing early-bird storm in April.
Their more than 100 strikes,
total for the weekend’s celes-
tial fi reworks, sparked small
fi res near Lostine and Flora.
They abolished the Chief-
tain’s access to the Internet for
an entire day. And they are the
harbingers of things likely to
come.
The weather for the coming
week is forecast to be warm,
venturing into the high 80s
by Monday and Tuesday. No
rain. A pattern typical of sum-
mer. The high eighty’s in fact
are a pretty normal to cool
temperature for Joseph in late
July. Back in 1949 tempera-
tures reached into the high 90’s
and fl irted with 100 during
Chief Joseph Days. As then-
court-member Marian Birk-
maier remembered—“It was
just so hot during the day that
sometimes you almost couldn’t
breathe.” Fact is The National
Weather Service’s three month
forecast predicts a 50 to 60 per-
cent chance of warmer than
normal temperatures across the
northwest, with below normal
precipitation for July, August,
and September. Below normal
precipitation here is not very
much.
We all know that as tem-
peratures climb and forests and
grasslands dry out, the threat
of wildfi re increases expo-
tentially. The National Inter-
agency Fire Center (NIFC) has
issued a tempered warning for
the inland northwest, including
Wallowa County:
“The above average pre-
cipitation expected over the
Rocky Mountains and Great
Basin may extend into eastern
Oregon and Washington. West
of the Cascades, especially in
Washington, the most likely
scenario favors less summer
rain than usual.
At the end of June, fi re dan-
ger indices have not stayed
at levels capable of support-
ing large fi res in timber. With
warmer than average tempera-
tures expected in July, fi re dan-
ger will rise and will likely
quickly achieve values required
for large costly fi res during
the fi rst 10 days of the month.
Instances of large fi res will
likely depend on concentration
of lightning storms.”
We might also add ‘and on
the caution or fecklessness of
humans in the back-country.”
We can’t control either of those
factors, unfortunately.
And so it’s time to take a
deep seat in the saddle and hold
tight to the lead rope. Nature is
about to open the arena chute’s
gate to summer. We have many
A thumb in the dike
Our leaky southern border will
not be fi xed with a stronger or higher
or more technologically sophisti-
cated wall. The fact is that the whole
big world is undergoing a period of
mass migrations—people are leaving
farms and cities across the globe for
other places in their own countries or
for other countries. And that includes
our good old US of A, where seawa-
ter is gulping up parts of the south-
east and people are being forced to
move to higher ground, where fi re
and fl ood sent residents scurrying
from Paradise in Northern California
last year and high temperatures and
fi res are disturbing chunks of South-
ern California this year.
In the public conversations about
our southern border crisis, there
is far too little talk about the rea-
sons for mass migration. When peo-
ple are hungry and thirsty, too hot
or too cold without protection, or
plagued by violence and corruption,
they move. Even when the odds of
successful migration are low, they
move. In Syria, where the pre-war
population was 22 million, six and
a half million have left the coun-
try, almost four million are in Tur-
key alone! An additional six mil-
lion are “internally displaced,” i.e.
not in their original towns, cities,
and farms. Over a million have tried
to return—and their situation is not
good.
War displaces people—our last
major world migration crisis was
during and after World War II. And
violence short of war is a major fac-
tor in world migration today. Over
two million have left South Sudan,
which is in often violent political
upheaval, and over a million have
left Myanmar, where religious vio-
lence is a major cause.
In India, where farming and
MAIN
STREET
Rich Wandschneider
drinking have always depended on
monsoon rains, erratic weather has
left entire cities dry for months. In
the New York Times today, we learn
that “Chennai [a city of 8 million]
went without rain for 200 days. As
winter passed into spring and the
temperature rose to 108° F, its four
water reservoirs turned into puddles
of cracked mud… On June 20, the
delayed summer monsoon arrived as
a disappointing light shower.” Peo-
ple are dependent on water trucks
from outside—or they move! And,
according to the Times report,
“These water crises are now global
and perennial [in] cities from Cape
Town to Mexico City to São Paulo,
Brazil. Nearly half of the human
population is living with water scar-
city, inhabiting places unable to fully
meet their drinking, cooking and
sanitation needs.”
My relatives in Southern Cal-
ifornia are banking on desaliniza-
tion plants; my son in Phoenix won-
ders when hotter will be too much.
In other words, in our own coun-
try the changes in water, fi re, and
weather are moving people. And
when they fl ee places like California,
Arizona, and Texas, they’ll be look-
ing for water and green grass. If Ore-
gon fi res don’t scare them off, hous-
ing prices here will continue to fl y
high too.
Yet, the President and many in
our country see the infl ux from Mex-
ico and Central America as our
major migration problem. There too,
drought is playing a role, and a dis-
ease in coffee is causing economic
havoc. But the gang activity in Cen-
tral America and the drug cartels in
Mexico get the most mention at our
southern border.
And there too, the fi rst thing is to
look at the root causes—drugs, vio-
lence, climate, agriculture, water, etc.
and then to look for ways to address
them. The President of Mexico, Mr.
López Obrador, is calling for “a new
Marshall Plan,” in Central America,
with a $30 billion initiative to invest
in the region and support migrants in
Mexico. Mexico has already com-
mitted $30 million to a reforestation
project in El Salvador, which will
plant over 100,000 acres of trees and
create 20,000 jobs. (Meanwhile, the
US has cut our aid to these places.)
And we might look to curbing
some of OUR exports to Mexico and
Central America. American guns—
exported legally and smuggled—
are involved in half the homicides
in Mexico, which leads the world in
that ignoble category. And I remem-
ber reading years ago that chem-
icals used in creating the cocaine
that American drug users want is
exported wholesale and without
restriction to manufacturers in Mex-
ico and Central America. Finally,
while curbing our own exports of
these dangerous products, we might
look at curbing our appetites for the
drugs that cross the border this way
and fuel the violence and displace-
ment their manufacture breeds.
Building a wall is like throw-
ing a handful of sandbags in front
of a fl ooding river, or putting a fi n-
ger in a dike. There are better ways
to spend our money—and to help
manage a crisis that extends from
the Turkey-Syrian border to borders
between Mexico and the US and
California and Oregon.
Legality of walk-out
fi nes questioned
By Aubrey Wieber and Claire
Withycombe
Oregon Capital Bureau
When Republican senators
fl ed the state in June to avoid vot-
ing on controversial legislation,
they were gone for nine days.
They drove or fl ew out of
state, stayed in hotels or cabins,
and otherwise lived out of sight.
Most went to Idaho, though
Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stayton, told
the Oregon Capital Bureau he
was in Texas. A spokesman for
Sen. Dennis Linthicum, R-Klam-
ath Falls, said he was on the East
Coast attending a conservative
conference.
Some legislators and lobbyists
remaining in the Capitol specu-
lated that the 11 senators would tap
their political campaign accounts
to cover their travel costs.
That doesn’t appear to be the
case.
And they also so far hav-
en’t faced the $500-a-day fi nes
threatened by Senate Democrats
that would likely total $3,500
for each. Senate President Peter
Courtney’s staff said Friday he
still intended to bill the absent
senators, but shared no fi rm plan
for doing so.
Senate Republican spokes-
woman Kate Gillem said the
threat of fi nes now “looks like a
bluff.”
Sen. Herman Baertschiger, the
Senate Republican leader, ques-
tioned the legality of imposing
fi nes. He said outside attorneys
have been hired to look into it.
“I have a feeling this is going
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forested areas that are over-
stocked and highly fl amma-
ble, some of which, including
the Lostine Corridor and the
forests above Alder Slope, are
chock full of grand fi r that are
dying from the higher spikes in
summer temperatures during
the past century, according to
OSU Extension Forester John
Punches.
Let’s hope that this summer,
the Wallowas remain a clearly
visible part of our landscape,
rather than a range obscured by
smoke. And let’s also ensure
we avoid being culpable for
ignition, whether it’s care with
campfi res and hot exhaust
pipes or thinning whatever por-
tion of the woods we might
oversee.
The lightning, however,
is something we just have to
watch in awe, and with crossed
fi ngers.
to get complicated,” Baertschiger
said.
There was talk about the fi nes
being deducted from senators’
pay.
“The fi nes shall be collected
by forfeiture of any sum that
becomes due and payable to the
absent member, including salary
and per diem,” Sen. Ginny Bur-
dick, D-Portland, said on the Sen-
ate fl oor June 20.
But now Senate Demo-
crat leaders say they will send
invoices.
The Oregon Capital Bureau
reached out to the 11 senators
by email and phone, and fi ve
responded: Baertschiger, and
Sens. Cliff Bentz, Alan Olsen,
Bill Hansell and Kim Thatcher.
Bentz said, if he ever gets a
bill, he will decide what to do.
Olsen said, if he gets one, he’s
not paying it.
When the Legislature is in ses-
sion, lawmakers receive $149 a
day for living expenses. The trav-
eling Republicans still collected
that money while they were
absent, according to Legislative
Administration.
All said they used their own
money to pay for travel and con-
fi rmed they haven’t been fi ned
yet.
Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dal-
las, did voluntarily pay $3,500
in fi nes and said he did so to
set up a legal challenge to such
punishment.
Baertschiger said he never
advised the caucus to use per-
sonal funds but believes each
senator did so on their own.
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