As we enter the dialogue, the participants are starting to discuss the wetlands and issues of water and the environment.....
Q - What ever happened to the pledge George Bush made in his 1988 campaign "No net loss of wetlands"?
A - The President has waivered back and forth over the definition of wetlands and just how restrictive policy should be. Attempts to satisfy environmentalists sometimes backfire on the economy. Donald Schaefer, Governor of Maryland said one county in his state was designated as a wetland and all development stopped.
Q - I've heard that it is even hard to get agreement on the number of wetlands. They seem to come and go like Tinkerbell.
A - I assure you it's really not magic. There are lots of ways wetlands can simply disappear.
Q - For instance?
A - Some are lost to water. Ponds are no longer classified as wetlands. Also when they are transferred from private to government ownership they lose their wetlands status and of course this skews the statistics.
Q - Wouldn't you say there is pretty much universal agreement that wetlands are important and need to be preserved?
A - I would. The argument centers around the definition of wetlands. Four federal agencies spent more than three years on the problem. The trick is to protect true wetlands while preserving property rights.
Q - Just what is the official definition of a wetland?
A - A wetland is any depression where water accumulates for seven consecutive days during the growing season, where certain water-loving plants are found and where the soil is saturated enough with water that anaerobic bacterial activity can take place.
In the summer of 1991 Bush proposed a more liberal definition; 15 days during a growing season or 21 days in which the soil is saturated with water up to the surface. The "growing season" is now shorter. There is a more extensive "mitigation banking" which forces landowners to restore lost wetlands or create new ones in exchange for destroying an existing site.
Proponents say the new rules bring some common sense back to wetland policy, but environmentalists say it opens the way for profiteers. The administration can't win.
Q - And neither can private citizens, or so it must seem to Bill Lyons. Bill Lyons, a California farmer, irrigated (his land was dry, not wet!) and his cattle walked through a narrow gate and dragged mud out on their hoofs, which understandably eroded the land in that narrow area. He then, also understandably, brought in a couple yards of dirt to fill the hole under the gate and got cited for filling a wetland.
A - What kind of country are we creating when some farmers are afraid to give their names because of fear of government retaliation. Farm land comes under the control of four different agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Corp of Engineers, the bureaucracy for Soil Conservation and the Fish And Wildlife Bureau. They all interpret laws differently.
Q - I asked you about definitions because as far as farmers and ranchers are concerned the definition of wetlands is extremely ambiguous.
A farmer had a 10 by 10 foot plot in the middle of a field which couldn't be plowed because it was used by ducks. Ducks landed on it even though it was dry. Nevertheless, use by the ducks justified the designation of "wetlands".
A - Amendments to the Clean Water Act have tightened standards for water quality, forcing expensive and sometimes impractical alterations to conventional treatment plants. This is one more example where the last dollar is not cost-effective. These new EPA standards are estimated to cost the nation (taxpayers again) $88 million every year. In some areas water bills may increase as much as $800 a year, and for what?
Q - If you're talking about safer water standards, estimates are that 75 cases of cancer may be prevented every year by the more stringent regulations. It's certainly worth the higher water bill if you or someone you know and love falls into that group of 75.
A - A totally emotional appeal, and I would agree. But do we want to pay what it costs to have the "safest drinking water in the world" and limit 38 possible contaminants? It is the last percentage of purity, the last margin of new standards that have the highest price tag and the lowest return. It's important---it's good, but we have to be realistic and we have to prioritize! We simply cannot take all the risk out of life without dire consequences to our freedom and standard of living.
Q - Well, on this issue you are in good company. At the beginning of 1991 Doctor Fredrick Stare, who founded the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard University School of Public Health wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal congratulating the paper for "standing up to the scaremongers" who he suggested were exaggerating the situation with their alarms about what he called "the presumed risks to human health from minute amounts of pesticide, insecticide and other chemical residues on many of our foods."
A - There are plenty of good creative minds out there working on our problems. In fact in Providence, Rhode Island in July 1989, someone came up with an innovative way to transform raw sewage into clean drinking water.
Waste, flowing from one tank to another, is broken down in stages by bacteria and algae into nutrients that are digested by aquatic plants. . . By the time the waste water reaches the final tanks, it's crystal clear. The sun powers the system--hence the name: solar aquatic waste-water treatment.
Q - That sounds like an interesting alternative. Treating sewage with chlorine and aluminum salts makes the water unacceptable for drinking and poisons the earth when you put the solid wastes in a landfill.
A - San Diego, where 90 percent of the water is imported, is a pioneer in alternative waste-water technologies that yield potable water. It has been experimenting with a solar aquatic system that uses ponds instead of greenhouses. It cost San Diego $15 million to treat one half of one percent of its water. It is estimated to cost only about 10 percent less than conventional systems.
Q - But a greenhouse to treat the water would cost $3 million to build--one quarter the cost of conventional facilities but would require $25,000 a year to operate.
A - For years the federal government has channeled underpriced water from public lands to agribusiness by damming hundreds of rivers. The resultant water-distribution systems cost taxpayers billions of dollars, but the water is sold to these business people for a fraction of its true cost.
Q - California congressman George Miller is chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives and is trying to enact legislation to reform the water contracting process in California.
A - That's right. California has almost 300 federal water service contracts coming up for renewal during the 1990s. Most of the contracts were made in the 1940s when California was considered to be an agricultural state. Today agriculture accounts for only about three percent of the state's economy and yet agriculture has been using close to four-fifths of the state's water at subsidized rates.
Q - The problem is that the Secretary of the Interior, Manuel Lujan, Jr., claims the terms of the federal government's water contracts cannot be changed. The quantity of water delivered under the contracts is supposedly non-negotiable.
A - Ridiculous! Nationwide the federal Bureau of Reclamation recovers only 17 percent of the cost of its irrigation projects, which comes to a taxpayer subsidy of more than a billion dollars every year.
Q - This may cause taxpayers to consider who is the largest recipient of welfare in this country!
A - Speaking of the largest recipient of welfare . . .As a job-creating measure in the 1950s the Forest Service gave two pulp companies 50-year contracts at ridiculously low timber prices and proceeded to build them roads costing $150,000 a mile.
It has been determined that each job costs the federal government $36,000 a year meaning taxpayers pay more for this boondoggle program than timber companies pay for the wood. The Forest service has been losing over $50 million a year on this project, as well as trees.
Q - Not to mention the harm caused to small independent private timber producers who have to compete with those receiving these large government subsidies. It sounds like the U. S. Forest Service has been running a lose-lose operation.
A - The main danger to our forests today comes from federal lands (national parks, national forests, and wilderness areas), where no management is allowed, because "nature knows best."
Q - How much land are we talking about?
A - The national forests contain 142 million acres located in 40 states with up to 90 million of these acres holding enough timber to qualify as commercial forest lands.
Q - It's rather ironic that in a supposedly capitalist nation so much land is owned by the state. How in the world did this come about?
A - As one of my sons is always reminding me, laws, rules, regulations and government policies in general are legitimate responses to perceived problems.
Q - So what was the "perceived problem" here?
A - In the beginning the timber business was more of a mining operation rather than a farming enterprise. Policy makers felt deforestation would continue to be the norm and somehow discounted the notion that people act in their own self interest and that they might figure out for themselves that replanting and careful tending of an asset would produce benefits in the future for new generations.
Under the centrally controlled environment of the Bureau of Forestry, timber production was kept constant and supply did not keep up with demand as it would have in a market system.
Q - How much marketable timber could the government possibly own?
A - I think you'll be surprised to know the government owns over half (63%) of the nation's softwood, saw-timber inventory, the raw-material base for the plywood and lumber that is essential to housing. As I said, bureaucratic timber-marketing policies kept these timber supplies constant, a condition which artificially kept the price of wood products at a level higher than it would have been under free-market conditions.
Q - This is something that obviously affected home prices and never is included in the discussions about affordable housing.
A - You better believe it! Softwood-lumber prices jumped more than 60 percent between 1967 and 1979, naturally raising the costs of wood products for consumers, and housing for home buyers, a phenomenon attributable in large measure to federal unwillingness to increase harvests in government forests.
Q - In other words the government created artificial timber shortages.
A - I like your style! Federal timberland is valued at more than $100 billion making the capital costs of these timber resources about $10.4 billion a year, costs not accounted for anywhere on the government's books. The U.S. Forest Service runs a negative cash flow of about $1 billion a year.
Nevertheless, according to a distinguished Washington University Forestry Professor, these costs have to be weighed against any benefits produced by the national forests and in fact cost the average American at least $50 a year.
Q - My question is, why is the government in the timber producing business, especially since there is evidence that it doesn't do very well at it? Spending more on the sale process than is gained in sale revenues is not a sign of business acumen. And on top of that I understand that the private industry utilizes more advanced technologies to increase the forests' health and growth.
A - That's true. Forests in this country continue to increase in size, even while supplying a substantial portion of the world's timber needs.
The Pacific has a timber inventory three times greater than the South, but most of it is in public ownership while most of the South is privately held. Better forest management, improved seedlings, and informed use of fertilizers and pesticides have made this possible. With 32 percent of the land in this country in forest or woodlots the annual wood growth is three and a half times larger than it was in 1920.
Q - I understand that the Senate voted 81-17 on April 24, 1990 to allow Western states to restrict exports of unprocessed timber from Western federal lands. The states lacked the authority to restrict exports in matters of international commerce and Japan, South Korea and China had been limiting imports of U.S. finished lumber but were anxious to import our uncut logs. The legislation was an effort to put American mill workers back to work.
A - Not that I see anything wrong with exporting finished lumber as opposed to uncut logs, but central management is evident everywhere. In June 1990 the Senate compromised a House bill that would have set aside 1.3 million acres of the Tongass National Forest as protected wilderness and banned all logging with its own version which set aside only 673,000 acres and allowed some logging.
Past injunctions have banned the sale of some 3 billion board feet of timber from Northwest federal forests, half the wood normally cut from them each year. This is the primary supply for most independent lumber mills which amounts to about 65 percent of western wood production. In 1989 tight supplies and high log prices closed 39 plants and cost 3,345 jobs.
Q - This doesn't help affordable housing! I remember hearing awhile back, that if the 1989 timber-sale bans were to become permanent. it was estimated that over 10 percent of the indirect forest jobs would vanish in the Northwest by 1991. Those figures were supposed to be 50 percent higher if the spotted owl was permanently listed as a threatened species. What happened?
A - The last I heard at the end of 1991 the Endangered Species Act was still in the drafting stage. Washington's Senator Slade Gorton was fighting the proposed legislation claiming
"The Act essentially considers only a single value. If, under the Act, a species is determined to be threatened, the species must not only be saved, but its numbers must be expanded at the expense of all other values---human, economic, and social."
Q - That's a pretty strong indictment.
A - Don't forget the Forest Service's timber sale program in the state of Washington was already cut from five billion board feet of timber per year to only one billion board feet. Senator Slade pointed out that 800 million of the one billion board feet would come from areas that have nothing to do with the spotted owl.
Q - Of course the real issue is the lost jobs for the Senator's constituents.
A - Absolutely. There is a rule of thumb that says one billion board feet equates to 18,000 jobs. When the Forest Service removed four billion board feet of timber from the market they supposedly destroyed 72,000 jobs.
Q - Are you telling me holding all that timber off the market and the loss of jobs is in order to preserve the spotted owl?
A - All I know for sure is that the long-range plan of the Forest Service is to allocate more federal land to wildlife and other purposes, and in an attempt to implement that overall plan just in 1990 it cut timber sales by 20 percent.
Q - Ozone is supposed to bear responsibility for the destruction of acres of white pine forest in the East and Jeffrey pine and ponderosa in California.
A - The evidence in those cases is shaky at best. There are so many forces at work that as Professor Paul Mannion of the State University of New York said in a 1982 address, it is difficult to accept the hypothesis that air pollutants are the basis of our tree decline problems. And he went on to say such pollutants cannot be discounted either.
Ten years later the reason for the decline is still unknown. Drought, insects, disease, countless things have led to the decline of certain species of trees in our forests. Between 1870 and 1890 the red spruce was almost wiped out in the Eastern region of the country and it wasn't from CFCs as by-products of refrigeration and aerosol sprays.
Q - I guess conservation is one area where private industry is ahead of the pack. Wood preservatives are widely used in lumber used for fences, decks, porches and in all aspects of construction. Their use has been estimated to save "a forest of trees two times the size of New England."
A - Do you realize the federal government owns 170 million semi-arid acres of range-land in eleven states? Range-lands which are larger than all of New England. Taxpayers should be incensed about the $100 million annual negative cash flow which translates into a $5 management fee for every $1 collected in grazing fees from the 31,000 ranchers who own grazing permits on these range-lands.
Q - I read somewhere that Thomas Jefferson warned the federal government to avoid ownership of the means of production by selling these vast tracts to insure they would "never again. . .revert to the United States."
A - Land disposal was federal policy until 1934, when the Taylor Grazing Act became law. Since then bureaucratic administration and continued federal ownership has become the unquestionably accepted standard . Because grazing fees are minimal, anywhere from one-third to one-seventh of the cost of fees charged by private landowners, it is only natural that most ranchers would prefer to lease, rather than own grazing land.
Q - And since they aren't landowners, they avoid paying property taxes, which are pretty high in some places.
A - Even the Wilderness Society concluded in one of its studies that users of the range-lands have no economic incentives to conserve the resources, therefore overgrazing is commonplace and has damaged a large portion of these lands.
Q - I thought some Senator or Representative recently suggested hiking the fees charged ranchers for grazing permits on federal lands as a budget trimming measure.
A - Congressman Mike Synar of Oklahoma sponsored a bill to quadruple, by 1995, the 1991 federal grazing fee for livestock from $1.97 to $8.70 per cow or five sheep, for one month's use of federal land. He argued successfully the point about the government losing more than $100 million a year due to its below market grazing fees.
Q - He will find no allies in industry. Industrialists are generally more interested in free subsidies than free enterprise.
A - That's not surprising. If you plan to ask for something for yourself its best not to spoil it for the other guy. The argument can be made now that ranchers or the lumber industry gets such and such so to be fair how about giving us . . .
Q - Private mining companies already have the message. Why should they pay for exploration as long as the U.S. Geological Survey will do the job and charge the taxpayers? Now all the mining companies have to do is pay a few dollars to file a mining claim. It's a sweet deal. The mining companies don't want to rock the boat or have anyone else rock it. Like I said, a lot of industrialists like things the way they are.
A - Lumbermen, ranchers, miners anyone using public lands have a short-term bias with decisions being based on the necessity for high immediate gains. Since they will not have access to any benefits that might be derived in the long term, there is little incentive to conserve these leased assets.
In 1925 the Department of Agriculture studied 111 ranches in the Southwest. In Texas where 28 ranches were observed, 73 percent of the acreage was in private hands and 27 percent was leased from the government.
In New Mexico and Arizona 83 ranches were studied with 92 percent of them on government owned open range and 8 percent were situated on privately owned lands. The size of the ranches, the amount of cattle and the climate were all comparable. It was found that 47 percent more calves were born on ranches with secure property rights, deaths were cut in half, the average cow weighed 15 percent more and the marketable price per cow was 43 percent higher.
Q - It sounds like whatever was saved on lower rent was lost in the long run by those who chose to lease government owned range-land.
A - That's because those ranchers didn't want to invest dollars in improving leased land, even on long leases.
Q - Why should they? After all the land wasn't going to pass on to their heirs.
A - This behavior can be clearly seen if we look at the study. Texas ranchers with secure land rights invested $7.3 per head of cattle in water wells, whereas New Mexico ranchers invested only $2.85 per head for the cattle that grazed on public lands. It seems obvious that secure property rights are necessary for the efficient use of range land. Privatization would help end overgrazing and the depletion of land quality.
Q - How would you go about privatizing range-lands with both the bureaucrats and the ranchers dead set against it and nobody else caring?
A - The key is to get people angry over the neglect of the ideals that this country was founded upon---to publicize Jefferson's warning and to remind ordinary citizens---the non-ranchers and non-bureaucrats---that this is not a socialist country. In a capitalist nation the government should not own property. This idea coupled with the desire of most people to see our national debt trimmed, would make the sale of government land and other assets not only palatable, but necessary.
Q - I'd want to see the first right of refusal given to those with grazing permits when range-land was offered for sale.
A - As Professor M. Bruce Johnson, past president of the Western Economic Association once said,
Whether the government-held land is auctioned off, or simply given away, is of far less consequence in the long run than the improved efficiencies that will surely result.
Q - Another alternative might be to obey the law which requires the government to charge fair market value for those permits. The Reagan administration attempted to comply with the law when the fees came up for renewal in 1986. If I remember correctly, the going rate for grazing rights on private land at that time was about $7 per animal per month. The federal government was charging only $1.35 per animal per month.
A - Sure I remember. Under pressure from Western Senators the administration backed down and in another show of hypocrisy turned its back on the hollow ideology expressed in its presentation of the 1987 budget which clearly stated "those who benefit directly from a specific federal service should pay the cost of providing that service."
But Synar's 1991 legislation, HR 2686, that we discussed earlier, is a step in the right direction. I'm only surprised the vote was so close; 232 to 192 with only 47 Republicans voting in favor of getting a fair market value for grazing fees.
Q - Talk about representing special interests!
A- I'd like to get back to talking about privatization. Not only is private property an American ideal, it is a practical answer to a good number of our problems.
In 1924 big game hunter Paul Rainey bequeathed 27,000 acres situated on Vermilion Bay, not far from New Orleans, to the Audubon Society to be used for a wildlife preserve.
In 1940 oil and natural gas were discovered on the property. Certain fields were leased and put into limited production with all sorts of restrictions imposed on the commercial operations.
Consequently Audubon has received millions of dollars of income over the years enabling it to help purchase other environmentally sensitive properties. Hypocritically it opposes any commercial exploitation of these other properties even though Audubon literature praises its own experience with the oil companies, citing the fact that over decades oil has been extracted from the Rainey Preserves without ecological damage and that precautions taken to prevent pollution have proven to be effective.
In fact at one point Audubon's vice president gave the oil companies credit for improving the capacity of certain areas of the marshes to sustain wildlife.
Q - The key is to rearrange economic incentives so that people don't find polluting or depleting resources easier and cheaper than not doing so. The Audubon Society allows oil drilling in its Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary and Zimbabwe sells permits to hunt elephants and trade in ivory. Revenue from Rainey funds other conservation efforts and elephant herds have grown by one-third in Zimbabwe since 1986.
A - The Welder Wildlife Foundation Refuge in Texas is another example where an oil and gas field has operated for almost 60 years without disturbing wildlife. These examples, where a private use has been the instrument to attain a public good, may make us reconsider whether it is necessary to exclude human beings from nature in order to save the wilderness.
Q - Most people would probably favor extracting oil and minerals from public lands if the environment would not be harmed.
A - Environmentalist, John Baden, co-founder of the Political Economy Research Center, a group that believes free markets solve environmental problems better than governments, has suggested that when resources are owned in common, ecologically damaging behavior might be considered the norm rather than the exception.
Q - It could well be that the single largest cause of pollution is lack of accountability. The Wilderness Society is trying to influence Congress to declare more than a million acres of New Mexico land federally protected wilderness, including about a quarter-million acres of state-owned land that is surrounded by federal holdings.
A - Protecting the environment may mean getting it away from bureaucrats and into private hands. It's been shown by example that there needn't be a conflict between maintaining the quality of the environment and developing commercial resources. More and more people are beginning to understand that in fact private ownership may be the best way of protecting wilderness areas.
Q -The Nature Conservancy of Arlington, Virginia has more than 200,000 members and has saved close to 3 million ecologically significant acres over its more than forty years existence by purchasing the properties. They believe if the land is in private ownership it will stay protected and not be left to the whims of congress.
A - At the end of 1990 the California Coastal Conservancy staff recommended that $2.2 million in public funds be granted to the Nature Conservancy to help acquire the 343-acre Blohm Ranch near Elkhorn Slough. The Nature Conservancy only planned to put up $200,000. In 1988 it got matching funds from the public to buy 44.7 acres of marsh.
Q - How do you feel about the public funds?
A - I'm against this use of public funds and wish the private conservancy groups would purchase property from the government rather than from private owners.
But in general I'm in favor of private voluntarily funded groups like the Nature Conservancy buying property, provided there is a willing seller. Mrs. Blohm was not a willing seller. She had intended to subdivide a portion of the property she has owned for more than fifty years to build fifty ranchettes. She was twice denied permission in applications to Monterey County planners.
"Those rules out here," she said, "you can't do what you want to do. . .I've been through the mill. It's a wonderful education, but a very expensive one."
Q - Isn't it true that under the North Monterey County Local Coastal Plan Blohm's 65-acre marsh area is designated as a resource conservation area and the 153 acres of upland native vegetation is considered an environmentally sensitive habitat area?
A - It sounds like you do your homework. Her land is also designated as a critical erosion area due to 129 acres of steep strawberry fields with highly erodible types of soil. The public would get ridge-top hiking trails. (For more money and then continuous upkeep, no doubt.) Already there are plans for a full time manager to restore native vegetation on the property, a project which is estimated to take about five years.
Q - Senator Steve Symms of Idaho proposed the Private Property Act of 1990 in September. It failed by 2 votes. It was part of an executive order issued by President Reagan and reissued by President Bush and would require agencies attempting to put environmental restrictions on private property to first research potential losses to property owners. Environmental activists claim the bill "would chill agency action to protect public health, safety and the environment."
A - A similar amendment to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was defeated in the House on June 26, 1990 by a 93 to 323 vote. It would have required the prior consent of the owner for the taking of any land along or near a river designated as scenic before it could be acquired by the Department of the Interior. Congressman Kostmayer claimed the amendment would have denied the federal government "the right it has always had to condemn property" as long as it paid a fair price.
Q - I'll tell you the person I most admired during that fight on the floor of the House; Alaska's Representative Don Young. Congressman Young admonished his colleagues saying "If you do not vote for this amendment then you have kissed America good-bye, . . .because you do not believe in individual rights any more."
A - A few years ago a Gallup poll showed 95 percent of those asked which federal agency they most trusted, named the National Park Service. However a 1987 article in the Atlantic Monthly presented evidence that animals that were disappearing in the parks were thriving outside the boundaries.
Q - No wonder. We've eliminated natural cleansers like wild fires and predators inadvertently throwing national parks into an ecological disequilibrium that has destroyed the ecosystem's capacity to restore itself. Even officials in the Department of Interior have suggested that the private sector might do a better job of operating and managing the park system.
A - I don't know why the private sector can't meet the demand for campgrounds and outdoor recreation? There are a lot of privately owned recreation facilities in the Big Sur area and they are for the most part wonderfully maintained.
Q - And you'll find privately managed facilities on the East Coast too.
A - Absolutely. In his highly recommended book, When Government Goes Private, journalist Randall Fitzgerald writes on page 198 about this very thing :
In Maine an association of private landowners has pooled 2.8 million acres of forest for camping, hunting, fishing and other recreation. North Maine Woods, Inc. a nonprofit group, charges its visitors lower fees than a nearby state park. . . State parks nationwide occupy nearly 11 million acres, just one-seventh of the acreage of federal parks, yet host nearly twice the number of visitors.
Q - Yet, if you dare to suggest that the government sell public lands, whether forests, range-lands, parks, wildlife refuges---it doesn't matter---it is considered sacrilege. You could almost be considered a traitor!
A - The Kesterson Wildlife Refuge, near Fresno, California is one of the best examples of government bungling. I was especially interested in the story when I came across it in Mr. Fitzgerald's book, because, at the time, two of my sons were working in that area. One with the Fresno Fire Department and the other as a paramedic.
The Friant Dam diverted the San Joaquin River around Fresno to what is known as the Westlands at a cost to taxpayers in 1968 of about $100 an acre-foot. The main beneficiaries of this largesse were corporations like Standard Oil, Southern Pacific Railroad and J. G. Boswell, California's largest grower.
The Bureau of Reclamation charged these corporations low rentals on 40 year leases. The taxpayer water subsidy amounted to about $217 per acre and since most of the land was planted with cotton, Boswell was able to reap another $10 million in cotton subsidies in 1986, this time from the Department of Agriculture.
Q - Those kinds of subsidies must have pushed land values sky high!
A - Randall Fitzgerald equated it with an Alice In Wonderland scenario with "Corporate farmers reaping subsidized water to grow subsidized crops that are in surplus".
All that would be bad enough but Fitzgerald goes on to talk about the dangerous levels of selenium in the Westlands soils which had been known to the U. S. Geological Survey agency since 1939 and had been documented in over 325 separate medical and scientific studies. These were apparently ignored by the Bureau of Reclamation when it erected its huge irrigation project.
Q - I thought the Bureau built a concrete master drain 82 miles long to carry wastewater, known to contain selenium and other toxins, away from the fields after irrigation.
A - True, but to shorten a long, sad story the Bureau also constructed 12 huge evaporation ponds to receive the agricultural wastewater on what had formerly been the Kesterson ranch. During construction the clay layer under the top soil was scooped out, even though a 1966 feasibility study of the area warned about seepage if this were done. Apparently the Bureau figured seepage would allow greater capacity for wastewater. To ensure congressional funding, the project was billed as a joint wildlife refuge for migratory birds as well as a wastewater-disposal site.
Q - Why not? Dual purpose projects have been successful in other areas of the country.
A - By 1981 the damage had been done. Tests showed arsenic, boron and selenium in concentrations known to be harmful to life throughout the 82 mile drain and in the evaporation ponds. Tests in 1982 showed that 60 percent of the wastewater flowing in to Kesterson was seeping out and invading the adjoining property. Apparently to make the Westlands happy, the Bureau waited until 1984 to warn of any of these environmental dangers.
Q - That's because in 1984 Fish and Wildlife Service environmental-assessment specialist, Felix Smith had gone to the state capital with evidence.
A - The eventual cost to taxpayers for cleaning up the Kesterson and Westland has been estimated at $13 billion.
I just want to show taxpayers what they are getting for their money by leaving land in the hands of bureaucrats. First, water and power was sold for a fraction of its development cost
(subsidy #1), secondly there is the surplus crops subsidy accompanied by the nationwide loss from depressed cotton prices
(subsidy #2) and the cost of draining the wastewater which the payments by farmers didn't begin to cover
(subsidy #3) and then there is the loss of fish and wildlife and the necessary expense involved in cleaning up the fouled environment.
Now who is going to claim our nation's resources are in better hands when government is in charge than when tended by the private sector?
Q - The greatest good for the greatest number is the issue here. You can't have school children choking from dirty air and old folks unable to walk outside because they aren't strong enough to withstand the air pollution.
And what about the planet itself? Can we afford to wait until all the available data is in? Aren't the greenhouse effect, global warming, acid rain and ozone depletion large enough threats so that any sane person must realize that the risk of making a wrong choice cannot be tolerated. Better safe than sorry, even if it means reducing the standard of living around the world.
A - High-minded altruism make the participants feel good. I know, in the seventies I went door to door in Berkeley with my kids trying to convince people that we couldn't afford to take a risk on nuclear power, we couldn't afford to wait for all the data to come in. Radioactive nuclear waste might leak over centuries.
That possibility, no matter how remote, was enough for me. I bought the scare commercials, pamphlets, slogans and signs and said since no one knows for sure "better safe than sorry"--"for our kids"--"for the future"--"for the planet". G-d, I remember the feeling of camaraderie and how emotionally satisfying it felt to be on the "politically correct" end of things.
Q - It's not too late.
A - I became wiser and more disciplined. I began taking time to study the issues and do the hard work of evaluating and weighing evidence and determining cost-effectiveness---all with the hope of weighing in on the side that will result in the greatest good for my children, the economy, the world's standard of living, and optimistically the very progress of mankind. But there are few of us who can afford to or have the will to take this kind of time. And besides, there is little emotional satisfaction in having common sense. In the preface to Trashing The Planet, Dixy Lee Ray's very first words are
This book was written because I believe too many people are losing touch with common sense.
I like to think that over the years I have developed common sense.
Today too many of my fellow citizens are fearful and constantly looking for a risk-free, secure environment. Our greatest attribute as Americans has always been our buoyant nature and unbounded faith in our ability to make the future better.
I think what the world today needs is more long-range thinkers, more philosophers, more people with a historical perspective who are able to understand and appreciate the contributions mankind has made to life on this planet and the ability to convey this appreciation to others. Man has made mistakes, but overall, by using his brain and his innate impulse for good he has made the world a better place.
I want to leave you with an admonition that is probably meant to warn you against technology and drive you back to nature. I see it differently. I love it because it reminds me that we will have to answer to future generations if we now turn our backs on the achievements of man and discourage the fullest use of technology.
Ask, as the American Indian does, "What will be the outcome of this decision on the seventh generation?"