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Columbia Basin Project Updates!

2011

Bipartisan Congressional Green Team

Quit killing Fish and send the water

to the Project! We can have a Water

Rentention Reservoir within 2 years

after President Obama signs an

Executive Order!

Leadership for the Unemployed

President Obama, now with Your Leadership we can get the water to the new Reservoir sites for "Fast Track Completion"!

hastings.house.gov

Doc Hastings

Contact: Erin Daly 202-225-5816

 

Opening Gateways to American Jobs

Washington, Oct 7 - 2011

In Washington state we understand how critical international trade is to our economy. One in three jobs relies on trade—which makes Washington the most trade-dependent in the country. With 95 percent of the world’s population living outside of our borders, the United States must break down unfair trade barriers into foreign markets and level the playing field for our farmers and manufacturers.

 

Fortunately, after years of inaction and months of promises, President Obama has finally submitted the Colombia, Panama and South Korea trade agreements to Congress.

Although long overdue, I am pleased that Congress will finally have the opportunity to vote on these agreements that will create thousands of new jobs and spur economic growth in Central Washington.

Unfortunately this does not make up for years of delays in passing these agreements, which have already cost our farmers and manufacturers dearly. South Korea, which is our country’s seventh largest export market, implemented a trade agreement with the European Union this summer – allowing products from Europe to enter South Korea duty-free. U.S. products continued to face high tariffs.

A similar situation happened with Colombia, which implemented a trade agreement earlier this year with Canada. Colombia is an especially important market for Central Washington agriculture products, including apples, pears, cherries and wheat. In both cases, US growers and manufacturers lost important business they had in these countries to our competitors, which will be tough to gain back.

We need common-sense solutions to revive our economy including eliminating government red-tape and burdensome and unnecessary regulations, adopting an all-of-the-above energy policy to expand domestic energy, reforming the tax code and increasing domestic export opportunities. With zero jobs created last month and the unemployment rate hovering above nine percent nationally, passage of these three trade agreements is more critical than ever to our economy.

Already, we pay $8 million in lost wages and benefits every day that these trade agreements languish—and could lose an additional 380,000 jobs if they are not enacted into law soon. The simple fact is that these agreements will create thousands of U.S. jobs without driving up the deficit. However, once law the South Korea, Panama and Colombia trade agreements will result in $13 billion more in exports and 100,000 new jobs that our economy desperately needs.

 

President Obama and Washington, D.C. Democrats have been talking about creating jobs for months, but have little to show for it. These agreements will go further than the Democrats failed stimulus, bailouts and expansion of government which have only lead to larger debts and deficits. I am pleased that President Obama has finally taken an important step forward in moving these trade agreements which will create private sector jobs. As your representative in Washington, D.C., I have long fought for these job-creating agreements, and will work to see them enacted into law as soon as possible.

Actual Speech Given to Congress by "Doc" Hastings  

Future Republican Team Leader of Washington State's

Bipartisan Green Team??

Great Job Doc!

Congressman Doc Hastings

Fair Trade Agreements

October 12, 2011

I rise today in strong support of the pending trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. In my home state of Washington where one in three jobs is dependent on international trade, we understand the importance of expanding foreign markets to economic success.

And there is no question that these agreements will create jobs!

Let me give you an example, Mr. Speaker. Today, potato growers and processors in my district face an 18 percent tariff when sending their product to South Korea.

This agreement will end the tariff immediately, allowing our growers to compete fairly for this important market.

Mr. Speaker, it is critical to my constituents that we act now on these important agreements. Apple sales in Colombia dropped 48 percent last year because Chile had duty-free access to the Colombian market while growers in my state faced a 15 percent tariff.

 

Passage of this agreement is expected to increase apple sales by 250,000 boxes a year, allowing U.S. growers to regain this market share.

 

As our economy is struggling to recover, I encourage my colleagues to act now to support these important agreements, and I yield back the balance of my time.

August 3, 2011

Update to the Weber Coulee Siphon

Please Click on reporter Anusha Roy's KXLY NEWS Report

August 2011

May 2011

These high water flows should be going to the 2nd Half of the Columbia Basin Project!

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the dam, has been forced to increase the flow rate after a large winter snow melt swelled water levels.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391662/Grand-Coulee-Dam-flood-waters-killing-hundreds-thousands-fish-day.html#ixzz1NjwqoF2c

Killing: Grand Coulee Dam officials have said they have no choice but to allow more water to flow due to greater than normal winter snow melting

Boise Weekly

Sun, May 29, 2011 at 11:06 AM

Massive Fish Kill Blamed on Columbia Dam Releases

Posted by George Prentice

Cooler temperatures and wetter-than-normal conditions in the Pacific Northwestmean the biggest portion of the expected runoff volume is yet to come, with sub-basin snowpacks running 120 percent to 200 percent of normal in many places.

Meanwhile, weekend rainfall continues to keep the Boise River above 9.8 feet at the Glenwood Bridge, running more than 6,700 cubic feet per second.

http://www.boiseweekly.com/CityDesk/archives/2011/05/29/massive-fish-kill-blamed-on-columbia-dam-releases

May 27, 2011

U.S. District Judge James Redden denied a request to order federal dam managers to scale back water spills from Grand Coulee Dam.

August 2010

Anti-tax sentiment may have taken hold in much of the country, including east of the Cascades. But a stimulus-package irrigation project is reopening discussion of much-larger work.

Dave Walsh/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation The Weber Siphon helps provide new areas with irrigation water. This August 2010 view, looking south, shows the project crossing I-90 about 10 miles east of Moses Lake

 

Dave Walsh/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Workers install part of the Weber Siphon project in August 2010.

The Columbia Basin Project area in central Washington. The Odessa subarea is to the east of Moses Lake.

Related Stories:Dreams of more irrigation meet the environmental questionsPosted Thu, Mar 24, 2011

In Eastern Washington, decades of irrigation are depleting the Odessa Aquifer. Should the state and federal government lead a rescue built around what has been called "the big fix" of diverting even more river water for farming?

Topics: Eastern WashingtonEnvironmentFederalTri-CitiesU.S. CongressWashington AgenciesWashington GovernorWashington LegislatureWashington State UniversityWhite House 

Image1199.jpg

By Daniel Jack Chasan (Single page view)In Eastern Washington, the state and federal governments have launched an expansion new effort to expand Columbia Basin irrigation with more river water. It's a contentious project with a deep history. In the first of two articles, Crosscut's Daniel Jack Chasan looks at how the current project came about, despite environmental and economic questions.

Dave Walsh/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

The Weber Siphon helps provide new areas with irrigation water. This August 2010 view, looking south, shows the project crossing I-90 about 10 miles east of Moses Lake

Image1208.jpg

Dave Walsh/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Workers install part of the Weber Siphon project in August 2010.

The Republicans have taken controlof the U.S. House, anti-tax sentiment has swept the state and nation, but out in arid central Washington, the New Deal lives — kind of. The latest evidence is a steel-reinforced concrete pipe nearly 15 feet in internal diameter buried in the dry ground east of Moses Lake.

Begun last year with federal stimulus money, the second barrel of the Weber Siphon is scheduled for completion in 2012. The huge pipe, and the rest of the expanded Weber Siphon Complex, can take water from the East Low Canal in the already-irrigated part of the federal Columbia Basin Project and move it under I-90 (about 10 miles east of Moses Lake) to land that hasn't yet received federal water. The new water may help the state rescue farmers who have been mining the Odessa aquifer at least since the years of Kennedy's New Frontier, and possibly help the federal government complete the Columbia Basin Project — which was authorized during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Whether, at this stage of history, building a new siphon was a good idea or a bad one seemed moot two years ago, when Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that $50 million in stimulus money would be authorized for the project. Spending stimulus dollars on the Weber Siphon would violate federal law, three environmental leaders wrote Salazar three weeks later.

Rachael Paschal Osborn, executive director of the Center for Environmental Law & Policy, Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper, and Tristin Brown, conservation chair of the, Sierra Club's Cascade Chapter pointed out that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimullus act) required NEPA review, and that it prohibited spending timulus money on water projects that couldn't be completed without other funds. The new Weber Siphon failed on both counts.

Undeterred, the federal government let the contract, setting the stage for battles that continue.

Other than providing the obvious benefits of short-term construction jobs and local pork, why do it? What was going on?

Big picture: People have tried for decades to complete Phase 2 of the Columbia Basin Project, one of the New Deal's grandest schemes, which has given us Grand Coulee Dam, a half-century of irrigated agriculture in central Washington — and a touching reliance on federal largesse among people who claim they just want big government to get out of their way. (See, e.g., Clint Didier, the ex-pro football player who operates a farm in central Washington and ran last year for the Republican senatorial nomination. Didier opposed subsidies but had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars worth himself, and conceded in a Seattle Times interview that his family farm would never have existed without Grand Coulee Dam.)

The New Deal concept — and the abiding goal of central Washington economic boosters — has been to use power generated by Grand Coulee to pump water uphill from the reservoir created by the dam and irrigate more than a million acres of arid land. The federal government started work on Grand Coulee in 1933. Congress actually authorized the project in 1935, and re-authorized it in 1943. Workers completed Grand Coulee in 1941. The water started flowing in 1952. The first half-million-acre phase of the project was finished in the late 1960s. The late Sen. Warren Magnuson promptly started getting money appropriated to start Phase 2. But it was tough going. Magnuson got $100,000 set aside eight times, but the Nixon and Ford administrations refused to spend it.

Tri-City Regional Chamber NETWORK LUNCHEON Speaker Alex McGregor

Alex McGregor of the McGregor Company was the featured speaker at the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon June 22, 2011.The topic was the state of Washington agriculture and world trade w...

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