I stand by the story I wrote (HCN, 5/11/09). I don’t believe the facts support BPA’s arguments. Take publicly subsided hydropower: My story says that the region enjoys publicly subsidized hydropower at national taxpayer expense and that is accurate. Here’s why: The hydropower dams were built at national taxpayer expense and for about the first […]
Ken Olsen
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
Salmon Salvation
Will a new political order be enough to finally bring the dams down?
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Nevada stakes its salmon claim
Snake River dams run up against a powerful alliance in an unlikely place
Posted inArticles
Relicensing dams hangs on warm water, endangered fish
Cooler water. And endangered fish. These are two of the hurdles that stand between Idaho Power Co. and new federal licenses to operate the three dams on the Snake River known as the Hells Canyon complex. For more than four years, Idaho Power has been trying to obtain the water-pollution permits it needs for relicensing. […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Salmon Justice
An interview with U.S. District Judge Jim Redden, who’s given uncooperative federal agencies clear warning: Submit a viable salmon restoration plan for the Snake/Columbia River Basin, or face the possible breaching of four major dams.
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
History of a decline
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Salmon Justice.” Pre-European settlement: The Columbia/Snake River Basin produces between 10 million and 16 million salmon, making it the most bountiful salmon spawning ground in the world. 1933: President Franklin Roosevelt authorizes Bonneville Dam about 40 miles east of Portland, Ore., the first major […]
Posted inJuly 31, 2000: Out of the darkness
Up in smoke: Hanford fire releases plutonium
Activists worried about airborne ash
Posted inJune 5, 2000: Change on the Plains
Hanford executive quits in protest
Cleanup mounts to more than $15 billion
Posted inDecember 20, 1999: Unleashing the Snake
Hanford leaves a surprising Cold War legacy
Wahluke means “walking uphill a long way” in the Wanapum Indian language. That’s an apt metaphor for the more than three-decade battle for the Wahluke Slope – a significant part of the last untouched sagebrush desert in the Columbia Basin. For 30 years, farmers and conservationists have fought over what would happen to this land […]
Posted inMarch 1, 1999: Working the land back to health
Beetle wars
The Idaho Panhandle national forests want to log 153 million board-feet of timber this summer – doubling the cut of the past two years – to stop a bark beetle explosion in north Idaho and eastern Washington. Chainsaws are set to roar by July, and plans call for 5,000 acres of clear-cuts and 35 miles […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Amid the lovely the lethal remains
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, At Hanford, the real estate is hot. During the four decades the Hanford Nuclear Reservation produced weapons-grade plutonium, it laced eastern Washington’s soil, water and air with radioactive sludge that may never disappear. Recently, Hanford also became synonymous with human radiation experiments that make […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Hanford’s prime cuts
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, At Hanford, the real estate is hot. Four pieces of Hanford will likely spur the most contention as prospective landlords jocky for control. The Hanford Reach encompasses the last 51 undammed miles of the Columbia River and is a significant spawning area for endangered […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
For further reading
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, At Hanford, the real estate is hot. Nuclear Culture: Living and Working in the World’s Largest Atomic Complex, by Paul Loeb, 1986, New Society Publishers. Loeb looks at the nation’s largest nuclear weapons complex through the eyes of the people working there and details […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
Logged hillsides collapse into Idaho’s creeks
CLEARWATER NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho – Forest Service ranger Art Bourassa pulls off to the side of the road and looks up at a raw and broken hillside. Some might assume it’s the freshly scalped victim of a strip-mining operation. Not this time. Torrential November rains washed out this section of forest in northern Idaho. At […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 1996: At Hanford, the real estate is hot
At Hanford, the real estate is hot
To become a Yakima Nation warrior, a young man had to run from the top of Rattlesnake Mountain to the Columbia River and back to the mountain top. That meant dropping 2,400 feet to the valley floor, sprinting 10 miles to the water, and then returning to climb this rise, which looks like a crumpled […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
The public was railroaded
THE PUBLIC WAS RAILROADED Railroads and Clearcuts: Legacy of Congress’s 1864 Northern Pacific Land Grant Derrick Johnson and George Draffan with John Osborn. Inland Empire Public Lands Council, Box 2147, Spokane, WA 99210, 1995, $15. 198 pages, paper. Review by Ken Olsen The Northern Pacific Railroad snookered us out of ground it wasn’t entitled to, […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Legislature votes to hamstring Washington state
By late July, Washington state could have the most far-reaching “takings” law in the nation – one so dramatic that even zoning might require landowner compensation. The Washington Legislature’s recent approval of Initiative 164 has elated its backers. “It is a crushing blow for big-government advocates, over-zealous state and federal bureaucrats, and cash-laden, well-heeled environmental […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Conspiracy of optimism
Conspiracy of Optimism Until World War II, private forests provided 95 percent of the nation’s wood products; from 1945 to 1960, the timber industry turned away from its overcut land to publicly owned trees on the national forests. Confident in their talents and technology, Forest Service managers embraced clearcutting over selective harvesting and built 65,000 […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
How Methow Valley grew an economy
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, Beauty eludes the beast. METHOW VALLEY, Wash. – While developers and government officials spent two decades and millions of dollars trying to turn this valley into a destination downhill ski resort, residents quietly built and maintained a world-class cross-country skiing area. Now the proposals for […]
Posted inNovember 28, 1994: Beauty eludes the beast
Beauty eludes the beast
Washington’s Methow Valley may avoid industrial tourism