Uncle Bud makes the front page on river restoration |
| November 10, 2011 |
| By Bud Larsen |
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“The difference
between genius and stupidity is that genius has
its limits.” -Albert Einstein- |
|
Back in the harness again … while recuperating from one of those old-man medical set backs, I spent the past two weeks reading the “Kootenai River Master Plan” … I should say I scanned the plan, as it is a document almost equal in size to rival Tolstoy’s infamous novel, "War and Peace." Is this long in coming Master Plan worth taking up 13mb of your hard drive space? Yes, because of the plan's size and the reader’s need to cross reference several sections while reading beats going to the expense of printing out this 400 plus page document. Allow me to cover the good news first, then I will summarize with some dead serious heartburn. You’re going to need the rest of this winter to get completely through the master plan, and it will be time well spent, as the author(s) have put together a fascinating document that will give the reader an in-depth look at the Kootenai River's health. The good and bad aspects of our river's current health are well documented with candid reports, supplemented by easy-to-read tables of data. In fact, the entire plan is written in a language easy to understand and the biological and engineering data is presented in simple terms, sans a lot of gobbly-gook. You will be impressed with the author's presentation of factual data and the scoring given to level of ecological health within each unique area of our river. The plan even seems to place less emphasis on the salvation of the sturgeon and burbot while addressing the macro, or big, problems of the river. I really appreciate this change in focus as I, for one, have become pretty well fed up with every report over the past 15 years crying out for the salvation of white sturgeon and burbot. It is the river’s health, and correcting the shortfalls, which will eventually hand us the salvation of the sturgeon and burbot. I hate to leave the kudo phase to all the great people who have worked so hard to put this tremendous master plan together, as over the years I have been privileged to meet several of the principles. I cannot count the number of times when I asked a biologist in the field to educate me on what they were searching for and why. Super people all. Now comes the part I have dreaded … Heartburn: I was just about to crank the old recliner down another notch and called up the costing detail section of the master plan just to satisfy my urge to always follow the money … Phase I. Wham! Combo of lightning and heart attack hits me and the next thing I know I’m on the floor with papers all over the place. • $9 million to develop and write the Kootenai River Master Plan … • $49.7 million estimated to complete the remaining phases ... Now, I hope this several million dollars to complete the master plan covered and/or accounts for studies, etc. that were not paid for in the past, due to lack of funding. Someone said to me the other day … “That is Bonneville Power money…” I asked the person where in the hell did he think BPA got the money from? Yes, good people, it is our money and we sure as heck better scrutinize where it goes and what it will be used for. I really struggle with this one because in spite of my Heartburn, this is truly a great master plan, deserving of your time and effort to read it. I’ll go a step further and state that our Senior students should be required to read it. We have not seen one page of scientific data from the heroic, yes, a truly heroic effort by our local agencies, in support of improvement in the ecology of our river. It is not nice to fool mother nature. Remember that old ad about margarine being marketed as tasting like “my sweet creamery butter?” Well, it is true … it's not nice to mess with Mother Nature. Well, the money has already been spent for the master plan and in spite of it's high cost (which orders on the ridiculous) the plan is a great one and a true noble effort by all the authors. Now, stop any/all work on the next phase and give our biologist elements a couple of years to ascertain if their efforts on this first phase paid off. Going hog wild to complete the remaining phases would simply keep a pipe dream going and … lest we forget it, time nationwide to be prudent with our major expenditures. I sure hope this won’t take away from getting someone to open up a Sushi Bar in Bonners Ferry. Take care out there, ‘cause we need you at the table on Thanksgiving. |