Capital Press, Oct. 22, on Klamath Basin aid being a small start:
Klamath Basin irrigators got a little help last week from Congress - $10 million tucked into a $6 billion bill to improve the nation’s ports, dams, harbors and other infrastructure.
It won’t correct the problems facing the basin, but it’s a start.
The Klamath Project provides water to 200,000 acres in the basin. The federal government began building the system in 1906. It is a massive feat of engineering consisting of six dams, 185 miles of canals and 490 miles of lateral ditches. It spans roughly 200,000 acres of farmland, including 18 irrigation districts.
After World War I the government used the project to lure veterans to begin farming in the basin. Agriculture boomed.
But over the last century, the demand for water has increased while the supply of water has not. Snowpacks have become less reliable. The Endangered Species Act requires more and more water be dedicated to support endangered salmon in the basin’s rivers and suckers in Klamath Lake.
Farmers have come up short.
The provisions of “America’s Water and Infrastructure Act of 2018” won’t relieve farmers from the impacts of the ESA, but it will provide money that can be used to make the system more efficient, such as building more storage and lining canals to prevent water loss. It can also be used to pump more groundwater.
Provisions in the act will make it easier for irrigators to convey that groundwater - and any other water obtained from non-project sources - through the system. That could prove a lifesaver when surface water runs short.
Another provision requires the Bureau of Reclamation to come up with a plan to reduce electricity costs in the basin.
Affordable power is tied directly to project efficiency. The more electricity costs, the less farmers may use technology designed to conserve water, such as center pivots versus flood irrigation.
We’ve long said that the federal government, which lured farmers to the basin with the promise of cheap land and plentiful water, should be obligated to do whatever it can to help preserve the farmers and ranchers now endangered in no small part by the impacts of environmental policy instituted by that government.
As we said, this is a start. The farmers of the basin look forward to more.
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Medford Mail Tribune, Oct. 21, on not endorsing a candidate for Governor:
In the race for governor of our state, neither the incumbent nor contender has demonstrated the leadership to win our endorsement.
We are not discouraging anyone from voting. We urge you to vote.
We are putting the eventual winner on notice: You will be held accountable by one of the oldest news organizations in the state, and we expect you to lead us to our potential.
We are weary of the lack of leadership we see through the fog of wildfire smoke ruining our summers, damaging local businesses, and most importantly, impacting our health.
We’re using our front page to hold power accountable.
Our message is not one of endorsement this time around, it is one of warning: We are putting our elected leaders on notice. We want, we deserve, better.
Kate Brown, as a Democrat, has had the opportunity to make a national nuisance of herself against a Republican president that fully understands nuisance and how to get his way. In retrospect and going forward, what better contrast than calling Trump and the feds out to marshal support and expertise to quell the wildfires in a more grand and unprecedented way? What better way to practice politics than to take on Donald Trump, demanding he use the might of the federal government to abate stubborn wildfires? We see a huge missed opportunity the past two seasons. And we do not hear enough about combating next season, which is 223 days away. We do not see Brown becoming more assertive in a second term.
Two-term State Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend, shows no sign of taking on Republicans in Washington, D.C., in a meaningful way, yet assails Brown for what he calls failures of leadership, and says he would get better results for public education, achieve state pension reform and eliminate homelessness. Those are lofty goals, and we doubt he can deliver on them quite as easily as he claims, especially with a Democratic-controlled Legislature.
Neither candidate demonstrates the urgency or zeal to make things happen. We reject “incremental” as a goal. We want a leader who inspires. And we want a leader who gets results.
We believe Oregonians are overwhelmingly in agreement:
Our elected leaders don’t seem to understand the urgency.
Only we the people - not those in power - are as mad as hell and don’t want to take it anymore.
So get out and vote. And stay involved. We are resolved to keep our Clean Air series of reports going until the wildfires and smoke are minimal. That might take years at this rate. But we’ll be one day more stubborn than those fires. The winner on Nov. 6 better hear our voices in Southern Oregon loud and clear about the smoke and other pressing issues.
We are fed up with watching state tax dollars and leaders not produce one of the best public school systems in the nation, and we believe we deserve better. Can either candidate manage big systems and ensure voters that government spending is done wisely, without waste? We do not have confidence that either candidate will adequately tackle the tough issues of bringing a manageable compromise to the soaring costs of the Public Employee Retirement System. Democrats rarely have shown fiscal responsibility to taxpayers in this area, and Buehler won’t be in a position of strength to make the several changes he recommends that would require agreement at the bargaining table.
Brown and Buehler are not far apart on most of the big issues, such as the need to boost funding for education, address the unfunded state pension liability and grapple with homelessness. They differ on how to get there. Neither paint a grand vision or a road map to making Oregon a top-ranked state in all the categories we all know we deserve to be ours.
Brown has drawn considerable criticism for her neutral stance on the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas export terminal and the pipeline proposed to run through Southern Oregon to deliver gas to Coos Bay. Voters want her to take a stance, and many of her supporters are frustrated. She says she will make sure state agencies hold the project responsible for meeting all applicable environmental safeguards.
Buehler unabashedly supports the Jordan Cove project - putting him at odds with many landowners in Southern Oregon who don’t want to see the pipeline snake across their properties.
Again, we encourage you to get out and vote.
Regardless the winner, we pledge to hold the governor of Oregon accountable. In four years, we hope a leader emerges who once again can earn our endorsement.
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The Bend Bulletin, Oct. 20, on Oregon’s super-secret gas tax:
The Secretary of State’s Office recently released a summary of lessons learned from Oregon’s disastrous Business Energy Tax Credit (BETC) program. Thanks to a combination of lax oversight, complex and easily manipulated rules, even illegal activity, the well-intended environmental effort cost taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars before the Legislature finally pulled the plug on it.
One lesson lawmakers and state officials have yet to learn, unfortunately, involves the importance of transparency in ensuring accountability. Given the central role the state’s newspapers played in exposing some of the BETC program’s worst abuses, you’d think lawmakers would make similar programs easy for reporters, or any member of the public, to scrutinize. Sunshine, as they say, is a powerful disinfectant.
Instead, the state on Thursday refused to share crucial information about a relatively new, expensive and even more complex state program. Call it Baby BETC.
Better known as the Clean Fuels Program, Baby BETC is designed to reduce the “carbon intensity” of Oregon’s motor fuels by 10 percent between 2015 and 2025. Lawmakers passed the underlying legislation back in 2009, but the program wasn’t fully implemented until the beginning of 2016 thanks in large part to its bewildering complexity.
Carbon intensity, the heart of the program, is a measure not only of the global-warming gases produced by a fuel’s consumption, but also of those released during its production, transportation and storage. Thus, two gallons of gasoline, ethanol or whatever may have different carbon intensities depending upon their heritage.
The law gradually reduces the acceptable carbon intensity of road fuels. As it does, importers of the fossil fuels most of us put in our cars and trucks will find themselves increasingly on the wrong side of the state’s global warming ledger. To maintain compliance with the clean fuels law, they’ll have to buy more and more credits generated by businesses and other entities that produce and sell low-carbon fuels, most notably electricity. The cost of buying the credits is passed along at the pump.
This is, of course, a gas and diesel tax by another name. Instead of using the proceeds to pay for roads, though, Baby BETC transfers the money to low carbon-fuels industries and other “credit generators,” including public transit districts and even state agencies such as the Department of Administrative Services.
Since 2016, more than $17 million worth of credits have been sold through the fuels program, which means that Oregon’s gas and diesel users have overpaid a like amount at the pump in order to subsidize low-carbon fuels. The state Department of Environmental Quality’s website features a rolling tally of credits sold, and for what price.
What it doesn’t tell you, importantly, is which companies bought the credits, and in what amount, and which sold them, thereby hoovering up a sizable government subsidy. When we asked DEQ to provide that missing information, the department refused, arguing that the information is exempt from public disclosure. The reason for the secrecy? Telling taxpayers whom they’re subsidizing and to what degree might reveal “trade secrets” of the entities involved.
Let’s get this straight. Oregon’s BETC program scandalously distributed millions of public dollars by means of a complex and laxly managed credit scheme. Now, Baby BETC is distributing millions of dollars by means of a complex credit scheme whose workings are deliberately hidden from the public. What could go wrong?
Particularly absurd is the application of trade-secrets protection to government entities that might be selling clean-fuels credits. How on earth can public bodies, which are supposed to operate in the open, hide their wheeling and dealing with taxpayer money as a “trade secret?” Dana Huddleston, DEQ’s public record requests coordinator, said she didn’t know. We wish we could say we were surprised.
Did lawmakers really intend the law to prohibit the sharing of this information, as DEQ officials claim?
That’s a question legislators should answer during next year’s session. If lawmakers value transparency, as they should, they should amend the law to require the sharing of complete credit-transaction information. In fact, they should insist that such information be posted on DEQ’s website in an easy-to-use fashion.
If, on the other hand, lawmakers do intend to hide subsidy transactions completely from the people providing the subsidies, they should have the courage to say so. They also should explain to taxpayers why Oregon, especially in the wake of the BETC disaster, should tolerate a subsidy scheme whose operation requires secrecy.
It will be useful to have their views on the record if Baby BETC grows up to resemble Big BETC, as history suggests that it will.
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