Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
As you sit at home watching video footage of the wildfires currently burning in California, it makes you wonder could happen here.
Well, yes, it could.
As California goes, so goes Washington. Our state politicians and bureaucrats in Olympia have a long history of copying California. Our politicos have gotten so lazy, they’ve even sponsored, supported, pushed and/or passed laws that say if California enacts a policy, Washington state will follow (cap and trade, vehicle emissions, gas-powered vehicle ban, to name a few).
“Washington set in law a goal for all new car sales to be zero emissions by 2030 and we’re ready to adopt California’s regs by end of this year,” outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee said two years ago on Twitter.
It’s about time our lawmakers realize we should not follow California into failure.
Here in Eastern Washington, wildfires are normal from May through October. And we’ve had some big fires in recent years — Carlton Complex in 2014, Tunk Block and Okanogan Complex in 2015, Range 12 and Chelan Complex in 2016, Cold Spring Canyon/Pearl Hill in 2020 to name a few.
Some recent devastating fires we think of as large — the Gray, Oregon Road, Babb Road, Winona and others — don’t even come close to our largest fires, or those in California.
Luckily, the push by Westside politicians and tribes to remove dams on our side of the state have thus far failed, leaving fire crews the reservoirs needed to draw water for fighting fires. But if liberal politicians and tribes have their way and our dams are breached, what you’re seeing on the evening news from California may come to pass here.
California politicians and tribes were quick to breach dams whenever and wherever they could. In Orange County alone from 2014-18, more than 80 small dams created for fisheries and water storage for fire suppression were breached as part of the Trabuco District Dam Removal Project.
Politicians were convinced by tribes and environmental extremists that removal of the small dams was necessary for fish. I bet today they are rethinking those breachings, as a lack of water storage is among the issues cited as factors in the devastating fires raging there now.
Unfortunately for Californians, that state is poised to remove six large dams in the next 10 years, the smallest of which is 63-feet tall.
No dams means no reservoirs, and little or no water to fight wildfires or to keep gravity water systems pushing water to hydrants.
No dams means no power to pump water uphill to fire hydrants and no electricity to send water to sprinkler and other suppression systems.
There’s more. California politicians have also been quick to order lawn-watering restrictions, limit water to farmers, restrict timber harvests, barricade or berm forest roads, curtail grazing, draw down reservoirs and allow developers to build large in rural areas that should be devoid of houses.
Sound familiar?
It should. Washington state politicians and environmental extremists are using California as a blueprint for water use and management here.
In our state, some dams have already been removed, including Condit, Elwha and Glines Canyon. And environmental extremists and Western Washington Democrats are pushing for the removal of many more, including Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite on the Snake River. There’s even been talk about breaching bigger dams on the Columbia River.
And they’re pulling out all the stops. For example, Gov. Jay Inslee’s administration entered into a secret backroom deal he calls the “Six Sovereigns” agreement to set a court precedent that could lead to breaching Snake River dams.
Let’s be clear: If it hadn’t been for dams and the reservoirs above them, our state’s largest fires would have been much larger. And many of the smaller fires would’ve reached catastrophic sizes.
As the Legislature gets underway in Olympia, our lawmakers need to take a hard look at what policies have contributed to California fires. Lawmakers need to enact policies to reopen forest roads and encourage timber harvests, keep reservoirs full, end talk of dam breaching and improve opportunities for grazing and farming.
Our communities, indeed our lives, may depend on changing the direction we’re headed here in Washington state.
— Roger Harnack is the owner/publisher of Free Press Publishing. Email him at Roger@cheneyfreepress.com.
Roger Harnack is the owner/publisher of Free Press Publishing. Having grown up Benton City, Roger is an award-winning journalist, photographer, editor and publisher. He's one of only two editorial/commentary writers from Washington state to ever receive the international Golden Quill. Roger is dedicated to the preservation of local media, and the voice it retains for Eastern Washington.
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