Zed?

The difficult part of the CheneyRove seemingly mundane rewarding of the reclamation district tillers of soil on the northern borderlands served in the Klamath watershed is, now, six years later, because of similar Republican ploys in the delta of the San Joaquin and Sacramento where agriculture combines with developers wishing to export water 400 miles south to LA, a neighboring anadromous fishery has collapsed, resulting in a certain blueDog’s having to sponsor financial subsidies to now unemployeed independent fishing persons. A roboCall one evening while at work put me in an audio assemblage a few months ago to listen to the blueDog announcement checks were in the mail to coast salmon fishing professionals because of the continuing collapse of the Klamath run. There is a cycle several years in duration, whereby snuffing the returning spawning adults appears as a collapsed fishery a year and more after the initial event, the species maturation cycle taking about 2-3 years, so, it is that long before the ocean phase is complete and fish are old enough to spawn in fresh water riverbeds. Evidently the Klamath run recovered for a few seasons, but other complex factors ensued. Water issues are heated politics in the region. The erstwhile script reading governor in CA sought political rewards for urging maximization of time delta water export pumps would be permitted to operate last year; currently the suspicion is, even with oversight, the pumps sending Sacramento water to LA and San Joaquin farms and nearby metropolises was excessive, and destroyed too many juvenile salmon for the key salmon run of the Sacramento system, the state’s largest salmon regeneration source, to remain at its historic levels, now collapsed in continuity in 2008 by recent reports. So now there are two formerly prime sources of salmon near extinction, at least until federal and states’ oversight examines all the causes and moves to implement a no-fish interegnum so the population might recover. I have some sources on the Arctic icemelt this past summer, to which I might link later, as well; as I recall, this too factors into the salmon disaster which basically began with Republican ag politics in 2002 and appears as if it will continue thru at least 2009-2010.

The Republican Health Commissioner in Minnesota lost her job early last fall for holding back a finished study that is part of this Great Lakes study. Report indicated we had an epidemic of Mesophylaomia (sp??) a type of cancer caused by Asbestos on the north shore of Lake Superior, a product of waste water from Taconite processing. The study was done jointly with CDC and the U of Minn, plus the Health Department. Someone in the group dropped a draft of the report to the media, and all hell broke loose. It is interesting because more than 20 years ago we had a very lengthy Federal Law Suit tried here on just this issue, and the Taconite Company was forced to stop putting the waste water in the lake, and pipe it to setteling ponds on land. Apparently the current problem is that some of the Asbestos doesn’t settle, but when the ponds dry up a bit, the stuff flies around in the wind — and the stuff in the lake from before the Lawsuit, well that’s still in the lake. Duluth drinks that water as do most of the North Shore towns. Part of the settlement was that the EPA was supposed to test Lake Superior water, but they defunded that in the first Bush II budget.