Talk about provocative titles!
Aw, just what I need right now - another post like this following on the heels of my 'Cascades Water Farm' post. This time, it's the Columbia River someone wants to sell to fund education in Oregon.
State Senator David Nelson (R-Pendleton) is proposing to do just that, and describes his scheme in the attached white paper:
Download Columbia_River_Revenue.pdf
The appendices look very intersting but unfortunately, I don't have access to them.
Also see my11 August 2008 post about Nelson's plan, described in Michael Milstein's article in The Oregonian.
When I chatted with him last spring, he spoke of diverting 1 MAF per year from the Columbia and selling it for a profit of $0.01 per gallon; that would net the State about $3.26B per year.
He will be visiting us at Oregon State on 29 October 2008 to give a seminar entitled Oregon's Oil. I won't be able to attend, as I will be en route to Norman, OK for the WaTER Center events.
In his white paper, Nelson states that diversion from the Columbia River and transfer outside the basin will likely happen some day whether Oregon wants it or not, so we need to get on the bandwagon and do it so that we can profit. As you can imagine, this proposal has raised more than a few eyebrows and hackles.
All of a sudden I'm back in my early-1970s grad school days, when my U of AZ professors spoke wistfully of piping Columbia River water to the parched Southwest, or LA engineering firms got teary-eyed at the thought of NAWAPA. If they'd only known about Cascades ground water, they would have pined for that as well!
Wonder if the Senator has Pat Mulroy on speed-dial?
"Oregon's schools need money and the current tax and fee arrangements are not paying the bill. Higher education is locked in a permanent downward spiral. If Oregon fails to act now it is destined to become the Appalachia of the West." -- Sen. David Nelson
Can anyone spell S-A-L-E-S T-A-X?
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