The feds’ good news: ‘Peace in our time’
By Peter Jamison
For California’s commercial salmon fishery, which repeatedly finds itself pummeled by bad breaks, the past week has brought an unusual flurry of decent news. Last Friday, federal and state officials announced an “agreement in principle” with the utility PacificCorp to remove four hydropower dams from the Klamath River, which snakes across the Oregon-California border. On Tuesday, officials from NOAA Fisheries Service issued a finding that farmers must curtail the use of three common pesticides that endanger salmon.
Not bad for an industry that in recent years has faced, in quick succession, the largest fish-kill in West Coast history, the most severe failure of the commercial salmon fishery in history, and the collapse of previously booming salmon populations in the Sacramento and Klamath Rivers. But despite the promising headlines, salmon fishermen on San Francisco Bay aren’t smiling.
That’s because the new developments in federal fish policy — particularly the Klamath River deal — come across as incrementalist approaches to a crisis that may well be past the point of turning around, according to Zeke Grader, the San Francisco-based executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the West Coast’s largest trade association of commercial fishermen. Grader says that the list of dangerous pesticides is too small, and that the dam agreement allows PacifiCorp too much leeway to wriggle out of the deal. “It’s a little bit like Chamberlain waving the papers, saying, ‘Peace in our time,’” Grader told SF Weekly, referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous 1938 declaration that he had negotiated a truce with Adolf Hitler. “It’s a way to go before we have a deal.”
San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles counties filed a public sector litigation on Nov. 5 challenging the ban, which voters approved by a narrow margin on Nov. 4.
-- John Geluardi
We're a bit late to the party on this one, but it's too good not to post. Bill O'Reilly sent one of his ace reporters to explore the "dark underbelly" of San Francisco that, according to him, will only get worse now that Obama is in office and the radical left has been "emboldened."
Keeping it classy, O'Reilly uses man-on-the-street interviews with the homeless and sex workers for humorous effect. O'Reilly, of course, is well known for his tireless advocacy for transitional housing and rehabilitation programs. I'm not sure what the best part of this segment is, but it might be when the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" transitions into techno "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)." That's when you know shit is about to go down. --Andy Wright
