Written by by Conor Coughlin
On March 26th, California officials in Siskiyou County declared a local State of Emergency after the ‘fish experts’ at the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC) had created one the largest man-made ecological disasters in U.S. history. Mark Bransom, the CEO of KRRC had apparently made a unilateral decision to go ‘off-plan’ on January 23rd, on an innovative project that was designed to save endangered fish populations.
Which was also supposed to create a bunch of high-paying sustainable jobs for the Klamath Justice Coalition, a group of Indigenous leaders that had produced a “Un-dam the Klamath, bring the salmon home” campaign. That catchy expression was allegedly heard all the way from their fishing boats on the river, to the Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
Berkshire Hathaway is the parent company of PacifiCorp, that owns and operates the four Klamath River dams, which apparently bought into the theories presented by government-funded “Fish Experts” seeking to restore the habitat for endangered species. Berkshire Hathaway had agreed to transfer their operating licenses for the dams over to KRRC, and the states of Oregon and California. So naturally, those state officials trusted that their own ‘clean-energy partners’ would work diligently to save the fish for their Indigenous Community associates.
The issue of “restoration” for fish habitat has been debated by Democrat-aligned green NGO’s for several decades, and at great cost to taxpayers. All of those university-connected experts agreed, they had the skill-sets to make money off the Clean Energy Economy. The ‘Great White Father’ in Washington DC, and his patsy-faced pals were reportedly really into the green. Besides, the EPA, Dept. of Energy, and NW universities had studied the issue, all with the NW tribal members best interest in mind. So what could possibly go wrong, if everyone followed the science?
Which appears to be the only real problem with this man-made catastrophe. Democrat Governors, federal officials, bureaucrats and their NGO’s were only interested in considering their own science. This was literally a case of the blind, leading the blind.
These ‘official’ wildlife experts had developed their own ‘Best Practices’, and had absolutely no interest in the opinions of others outside of their cloistered social justice clubs. These savvy entrepreneurs didn’t have to worry about the economics of their plans, because California and Oregon citizens were going to be held responsible for any cost over-runs on this ill-advised project. Or any subsequent EPA Superfund clean-up required to remediate a failed restoration project.
State officials could simply blame the contractor hired to do the work, by implying they should known that their plan could create new problems from dredging operations. Their original plan sounded highly questionable in the first place. The millions of cubic yards of silt that had been resting on the bottom of reservoirs behind those dams, was now going to be washed down down the river with the annual flooding. Any salmon that had managed to survive the initial onslaught from the removal of the dams, was going to face a real challenge returning up the river to spawn in that new environment.
On April 9, over two and half months after the man-made disaster had begun, the FERC was informing KRRC about an engineering report that had finally come to light. Which had described the dangers of decommissioning a “clay-core” dam, that apparently was ignored. Corporate media has issued a news blackout for the most part, so that the general public won’t be able to consider what damage to the region had actually occurred due to this social justice project.
The issue of clay in the sediments of the Klamath River dams was not a new topic, according to a 2006 study published by Gathard Engineering Consulting in Seattle. That report allegedly estimated that “approximately 20.4 million cubic yards of sediment is trapped in the four lower most reservoirs of the Klamath River Project. Most of the sediment, 78% of the total for all the dams, is smaller than than silt sized material.”. The California Globe had reported that Dirty Truth in March, along with the fact our US EPA had classified that excessively fine sediment in streams as a pollution.
The governors of California and Oregon that placed taxpayers on the hook for the cost-overruns from that restoration project, when they should have known there was a huge discrepancy in the total volumes of polluted material to be flushed downstream. The government’s experts that overlooked that critical fact, were aligned with the same groups that had been pushing the EPA’s draconian ecological policies for the last several decades.
Those experts had to know those levels of pollution would violate the Waters of the United States rules, regardless if it involved releasing 5 million, or 20 million cubic yards of toxic material into the habitat for endangered fish. God only knows how state officials issued an Environmental Impact Statement on such as massive undertaking, without knowing anything about the EPA’s rules that impacted everyone else in America.
The one federal agency that appeared to be almost totally missing from this government engineered fiasco, was the U.S. EPA. The same EPA, that had recently announced a unique type of Restoration Credits for their newest Superfund project in the Portland Harbor. That are said to be like ecological “shares” for members of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities that are engaged in a restoration project. Defendants in a EPA Superfund settlements, can now purchase Restoration Credits instead of paying cash to resolve the ecological injury portion of their liability.
EPA Director Gina McCarthy had introduced the Portland Harbor Superfund cleanup project back in January of 2017, two weeks before Donald Trump became the U.S. President. The pollution in the Portland Harbor had been studied since at least 1920, and after a hundred years the responsible parties were well-known to government officials. Gina McCarthy’s Superfund report from 2017 was 3,0012 pages long, and had a list of the ‘community activist’ selected for assisting the EPA, that included groups like Occupy St. John’s, Right 2 Dream Too, Oregon Tradeswomen, Coalition of Black Men, Sierra Club Portland, Oregon Environmental Justice Task Force, League of Women Voters, Latino Network and other progressive Portland neighborhood associations, and schools.
Many of the players in the EPA’s new Portland Harbor Superfund cleanup project, were involved in the originally planning process for the restoration of the Klamath River basin long ago. That was back when California Governor Gavin Newsom was hyping the Klamath River Basin project as a transformational effort for generations to come. While Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown, was suggesting the project was beyond ecological restoration, it was an act of restorative justice that would supply a boost to the economy.
Those leaders were informed the Selected Remedy for protection of human health and the environment on their project called for dredging of 3,017,000 cubic yards of contaminated materials from river banks. With principle threat waste (PTW) being treated prior to disposal.
Restoration credits may have sounded wonderful to EPA bureaucrats once upon a time, but now they resembled a corrupt Pay-To-Play scam. It wasn’t just the radical nature of community activist groups demanding that the federal government take action, that presented an issue. The Portland crew of community activist appeared to resemble the ‘peaceful protesters’ that had assaulted the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Portland in July of 2020, which should have raised some very serious concerns.
It was a question of scientific credibility, that indicated a far larger, and more important set of issues.
The Chevron Corp. had warned the EPA about using the services of Stratus Consulting on their Portland Harbor project. The Colorado-based Stratus Consulting had allegedly participated in a massive, shake-down scheme in Ecuador against the oil giant that resulted in a RICO case that should have should have been disclosed to the general public. The sheer levels of deception and fraud in that decades-long case, should have caused the EPA to avoid this group of environmental experts at all cost going forward. That corruption case has been suppressed, twisted, and distorted by corporate media for decades.
Stratus Consulting had already produced several major technical reports for the Dept of Energy, which could reflect poorly on the credibility of many other DOE or EPA policy initiatives. Including the 2009, EPA: Lead By Example guidelines released by Energy Secretary William Chu. Which had directed state and federal bureaucrats to claim that the DOE’s ENERGY STAR® brand of “certified” energy-efficiency products, were now producing 25% to 50% more electrical energy-savings than identical products lacking a logo sticker. Essentially creating a multi-billion dollar electrical commodity, owned by the US, but marketed in global markets as a cure for what the UN calls Global Boiling.
Which is an easily provable lie. Attributed to a respected Noble Prize recipient, that any twelve year-old kid with a basic understanding of electricity could undermine in minutes if honest debate was ever allowed on energy issues.