Rockne has proven to be one of the best.

One of the questions was “Which blogs should Republicans read?” (Duh, the Tigard Rotary…)

My recommendation: The Oregon Commentator.

For what it’s worth… (not much.)

You said it. Not me.

Hilarious!

Also, I would guess that most of the water would be collected toward the mouth of the river, rather than further upstream. This would make sense since a) it would be easier to collect it without having to navigate the rivers b) it wouldn’t really have any effect on stream flow (the big concern with salmon) because the mouth is, obviously, at the terminus of the river. Taking water near the mouth won’t have the same effects on spawning grounds as, say, dams do (since dams impede both fish movement and water flow).

In any case, there are good arguments both for and against the whole idea, but Kari Chisholm seems either ignorant or uninterested in any of them. As far as I can tell, his opposition has more to do with the fact that the plan originated from Republicans than anything else.

It’s also true that places like Phoenix and Los Angeles use up way more water than they should — the whole idea of planting subdivisions in the middle of the Arizona desert, complete with a nice, green lawn and everything is patently absurd. On the other hand, it’s not as if, say, Los Angeles is a net drain on the country, at least economically speaking. The real challenge is to start to change expectations about what living there entails.

If Inuits have to get used to not having nice, warm, sandy beaches and Mississippians have to get used to stifling humidity, then at some point, Californians are going to have to get more used to the actual climatic conditions in the places that they live.

You can bet your boots that if they start buying water from the Columbia and it has to be shipped or piped to California, it’s not going to be cheap. As population continues to increase and as subdivision sizes continue to increase, demand will also increase, and there’s a practical limit as to how much water can feasibly be sold to desert states. Eventually, utility prices will rise to the point that keeping a golf course-grade lawn out in front of the house takes too much out of the pocketbook. Witness the steady drop in gasoline consumption and SUV sales as gas prices have gone up.

Personally, I think these water-deprived areas need to just slowly go away.

Even IF they got some water, it’s only a band-aid on the larger issue: they live in a desert.

But yeah, I could see the protests as Klamath Salmon die off and water is shipped off to Tonepah, NV for profit.

It would also depend on how much water they were looking at selling.

Does the man not own a mirror?