Ag and Rural Caucus for March Policy Briefing
| March Schedule Better Practices 7:00 pm Thursday 7 March Engaging Youth Misty Muchlinski, chair, Benton County Democrats https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88689149657?pwd=R3dXbFRpYVUyeGVhb3ErTFI0QXlpZz09 Policy Briefing 6:30 pm Thursday 21 March Vermitreatment of Waste Water Russ Davis, Pres/CEO, Perca George Damov Sierra Smith https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85907982157?pwd=MU4vV3E3VGZ5VU02dnhvZjg2b3hKZz09 Paste link into browser to go to meeting. |
| Follow up note: Suicide in Rural Washington Link to recording: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/8T38Gn04nahqb8zluhYz7Ouh3XdU37hwlj_zJ66tsl8gBQ5A-EElcWt8ecbS0FfI.dcsBTWdXGwO7Dw-V Copies of meeting announcements are at arcwashdems.wordpress.com. |
| · List of Generations: The Silent Generation – born 1928-1945. · The Baby Boomer Generation – born 1946-1964. · Generation X – born 1965-1980. · Millennials – born 1981-1996. · Generation Z – born 1996-2012. · Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025 |
| A Feel-Good Session. Yes, but… You are probably expecting a feel-good session Thursday, and you would not be wrong. That is what our Better Practices series is all about. It is just that the stakes of engaging youth are high. Democrats need to get this right. Youth are impatient; they are untethered from the complications that have schooled us older folks to patience and half loaves. And just what are these “complications”? We need to talk about these. I think that process is a big one…how you go about governing is important. In a democracy this means that you talk to people, you make your case, and you build a winning coalition out of passionate factions, with everyone giving at least a little. You have to be peculiar to get satisfaction out of a win born of compromise. But there it is. How do we reach out to young people with the promise not of quick policy victories but with the prospect of being satisfied with process and compromise? By taking them seriously. By making our persuasive pitch to a passionate faction. By compromise. Come Thursday, at 7:00 pm. Join Misty. Share your thoughts. Don 5 March 2024 |
| State of the Union Address > Delay “Better Practices” President Biden delivers the State of the Union address Thursday at 6:00 pm PST. This is important and I will be listening. Misty has agreed to push our start time to 07:00 pm. Please watch the President frame his policy at 6:00 pm and then join Misty at 7:00 pm.. Don 3 March 2.024 |
| Youth are the Future – Are we Ready? When I am asked what gives me hope about the future, I invariably respond that it is the youth of this country that gives me confidence. The younger generations are much more comfortable about diversity…sexual and gender diversity, racial complexities. Of course, being young, they are less tied to conventional wisdoms and are open to questioning what we take for granted. The certainties about how society works that we grew up with are open to re-evaluation. All this is good. Just because we are counting on the youth does not mean that they are counting on us. Misty Muchlinski knows this. That is why is she is leading the Benton County Democrats in figuring out how to reach young voters and actually doing it. Let’s learn from her and share our hopes – and fears – about where our young people are leading us. Don 2 March 2024 |
| Misty Muchlinski will introduce our Better Practices session on engaging youth in Democratic politics. Misty, chair of the Benton County Democrats, talked persuasively for just a moment on CD4’s Deep Dive last month about Benton County’s commitment to reaching out to younger generations and its program to make good on our usual pretty words. Join Misty on 7 March and let’s talk about how to rejuvenate our party and maybe win a few votes along the way. “Wow!” best describes our Policy Briefing for March. Russ Davis and his team will talk about using worms to treat contaminated waste streams. This is not just promise or hype. Russ has produced eye-popping results for the City of Walla Walla faced with a troublesome waste stream from Refresco Beverages. Explore with Russ on 21 March the Refresco proof of concept and other applications where Perca is working. |
| Capital Press Op-Ed I wrote an op-ed for the Capital Press website – it was too long for the printed edition – about planning for a transition from the current operation of the Lower Snake River dams. With my language and tone, I tried to connect with the uncommitted reader. I will leave it to your judgement if I succeeded. The piece is part of a larger campaign that Ormand Hilderbrand, Bill Moyer of Solutionary Rail and I are initiating to open discussion in eastern Washington about the dams in general and, more specifically, using short-line rail to replace barges for getting Palouse grain to market. I do not want to overstate our campaign. It is more wishful thinking at this point but this is at least a start. Actually, maybe the second or third start. I thank Bill Moyer and Tom White for their foundational work on developing the short-line rail plan. They deserve credit for the concept, evaluation, and engineering of a feasible transportation alternative to the barges. This is the link to the Capital Press website. The content is below. Don 25 February 2024 |
| Let’s Plan for a Transition I grew up with the dams. I was graduating from Walla Walla High School when the dams on the Snake were being built. My dad, a farmer, was trained in engineering. He left me with an appreciation of the dams as engineering successes. I am still awed by the massive structures. Another thing my father left me was the importance of commitment. My father has passed now but he would be distressed by my generation’s shortfall in meeting our commitments to ensure the salmon runs on the Snake. These commitments go back to the 1855 treaties and to the more recent Endangered Species Act in 1973. No one in particular is to blame for the failure of the salmon to thrive. The Corps of Engineers has tinkered with the operation of the dams to make them more friendly to the salmon. We have come a long way from the idea that the turbines were chewing up baby salmon. The Corps has met every metric for smolt survival, but still… We now speculate that the pools themselves are responsible for the poor survival rate. And we now concede that deteriorating ocean conditions are probably the most important determinant of salmon survival. Dealing with the dams, though, seems easier than moving the temperature dial for the Northern Pacific Ocean. Courts, not politics, are going to decide whether we have met our commitments to treaty and law. Even the recent settlement between the Federal government and the tribes was to settle a legal dispute, not a political decision. No amount of pounding our chests and proclaiming our commitment to keeping the dams intact or, for that matter, breaching them is going to make much difference in the long run. My guess, and it is a guess, is that we have maybe ten years before the courts command the breaching of the Lower Snake River dams. We have the choice of continuing to make indignant protestations, or set about making plans for a smooth transition, so smooth that if and when the breaching is to happen, we are indifferent – if we can look past our sense of loss. This transition needs to solve at least three different problems. These are called “services” the dams provide. Power – electricity – is an obvious “service” that needs to be met. Irrigators in Franklin County and Walla Walla County rely on the pool behind Ice Harbor. This is a “service”. We need to keep them growing crops. The third “service” is moving grain grown in the Palouse to the export terminals in Portland and Kalama. We need to figure out how to replace the barges without wildly increasing the cost to wheat growers. We can turn to a couple of different ways to meet these “services”. We need to assure that we have wind, solar, storage and maybe nuclear, sufficient to replace the hydropower. Our test is simple. No blackouts. Private money is the answer here. There is money in electricity. There is enough profit in electricity to attract the necessary investment to make us whole. We need to guide solar and wind development and make sure that we have the necessary grid capacity but otherwise the power problem will take care of itself. Private dollars will drive the solutions. For irrigators the answer is Federal compensation…you take it, you pay for it. If Ice Harbor no longer holds the river back irrigators will be left high and dry. Water will still flow in the Snake. It will just be further out. The irrigation intakes from behind Ice Harbor Dam need to be extended further into the river and the pumps beefed up to handle the longer draw. The Federal Government pays this bill. Replacing the barges means investment in rail, a pretty easy choice if burning diesel and rebuilding highways is the alternative. State government is the player here, but with help from Federal investment. Rail investment takes a little more description, and the description comes in two packages. The first package is to retro-fit the ports along the Snake. These ports have a rail line that runs through their parking lots. They don’t use it. Ports of Lewiston, Almota, Central Ferry, and Lyons Ferry need to turn around and fill rail cars instead of barges and provide rail-siding space in their back lots. The Great Northwest Railroad runs along the north shore of the Snake from Lewiston to Pasco. This existing rail has the capacity to replace the grain shipped via barge to Pasco. The rail is there and the train runs. It is ready to go. This first step is quick and easy. It does not change how grain reaches the river. Once at the river, it just moves by rail instead of barge in case Tidewater is no longer on the river. Growers can see this solution every time they drive across rail tracks on their way to the river. They are right to complain, though, that every time they have had to rely on Burlington Northern/Santa Fee (BNSF) or Union Pacific (UP) to haul their grain that they forfeit their profit margin to these monopolies. Growers rely on barges not only to move their but to keep BNSF and UP honest. A second package would help keep competition alive. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) owns short line rail in the Palouse but has neglected it. By rebuilding a couple of short sections of track and reclaiming a longer stretch of unused line, WSDOT can create an alternate route for independent rail operators to move grain all the way through the Palouse without relying on BNSF or UP. There are two major grain shuttles in the Palouse that accumulate grain from smaller elevators to load onto rail. These are at McCoy near Rosalie and at Endicott. They are currently locked to either BNSF or UP. With a little effort, WSDOT could make way for eager independent operators to move grain from Rosalie to Pasco without using either BNSF or UP. McCoy and Endicott could choose BNSF, UP, or an independent, depending on price and service. This WSDOT corridor would replace the competition between the barges and the mainline railroads (BNSF and UP). Growers for the first time would have a real choice of how to move their grain. We can leave it to the market to figure out what works best and cheapest. If it turns out that the WSDOT corridor wins, it can steal business from that rail line that runs through the Snake River canyon. That would move trucks off public highways including State Highway 127, the twisty road from Dusty to Lyons Ferry, not a bad idea. I have sketched out a couple of thoughts about how to replace the “services” the dams provide. A transition from the Lower Snake River dams – if that is what the courts determine – can come with dollars, some private, some public. Solutions take dollars and these dollars flow into our communities. This means jobs and customers. If we go about this willy-nilly then we will leave dollars on the table. We will survive, at least most of us. Most everyone will be angry. If we are smart, we begin now. Just in case. Let’s make the best deal we can. We can be both happier and better off. |
Our Better Practices roundtable is on the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm.. Use the link above for 2024.
Our Policy Series is on the third Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm. Use the link above for 2024.
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Our mailing address is: Ag and Rural Caucus 2921 Mud Creek Rd Waitsburg, WA 99361