Public input, comments and cooperation needed
To The Eagle:
Regarding the October 28, 2008 Grays River Grange hosted Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board (LCFRB) presentation on potential projects, with a goal of improving salmon habitat in Grays River.
It was great to see so many people in attendance at a presentation that could be a turning point towards revitalizing our community and creating a partnership with a strong regional entity. However, I would like to respond to comments I heard at the meeting.
“Fish first” – The hierarchy is Life, Property, Resources. Fish are resources;
“Eminent Domain” – the LCFRB does not have eminent domain authority;
“Flood land without permission” – no projects can be started without the landowner’s and affected landowners’ permission;
“No public input” – the meetings, which started in spring 2007, have been advertised in The Wahkiakum County Eagle and in the Mark Linquist/Gorley Springs Newsletter multiple times. Grays River residents have come, spoken up, and had their comments included. Not as many as the work group would like, but some.
The goal is to improve our lives, our futures. LCFRB has stepped up, with valuable coordination skills and a deep resource base, to give our community a list of ideas. If you are interested in helping them tailor those ideas to meet our community’s needs, you can tell them by calling, (360) 455 – 1555, sending them a letter at 2127 8th Avenue, Longview, WA 98632, or emailing the Executive Director, Jeff Breckel at jbreckel@lcfrb.gen.wa.us.
If you’re curious about the project list, it can be found on-line at http://www.lcfrb.gen.wa.us/grays_river_community.htm or call them for a copy.
One last thought: the LCFRB is a state-formed entity that distributes roughly $2 million per year in salmon restoration projects from Skamania to Pacific counties. If we tell them ‘no,’ their money will go somewhere else.

Amy Ammer
Deep River

Being a part of nature is a part of country life
To The Eagle:
In response to the letter printed in The Eagle November 6 entitled "Duck hunting must stop on Puget Island":
Dear Mr. Dowers,
Your letter to the editor was very interesting and I would like to point out my concerns with it.
I grew up on Puget Island and you are correct, bird hunting is a tradition that we all accept. Back in the 1950s, as a child, I was sitting in our living room watching cartoons when a pheasant flew through our window, breaking glass all over and his neck because he was trying to escape a hunter on Welcome Slough. Unfortunately that was suicide as opposed to being killed by a hunter.
I, too, like you, am a night owl due to my chosen profession but I would no more require the secession of duck hunting because of early morning noise than I would put a ban on carpenters who start hammering at 8 a.m. or garbage trucks that do early morning pick-ups. All I can suggest is that you buy an inexpensive pair of ear plugs and choose to live in peace with those of us who have lived here for many, many years and not try to change what you, as a newcomer, decided you liked about our community as opposed to wherever you were previously living when you decided to move here.
This isn't about "just killing a few ducks" as hunting is necessary for population control or it wouldn't be allowed. I hope you wouldn't want ducks to starve to death because of overpopulation and lack of wetland habitat to support a healthy environment for them. That certainly wouldn't make me sleep any easier. Being part of nature is what this small community is all about, something that has been lost in major populated areas.
Noise is your only issue because safety is not a consideration. Birdshot cannot travel more than 400 feet before it becomes less harmful than hail. And I would hope you wouldn't complain to the powers that be to stop all hail because it might be a detriment to your safety.
I have lived in major cities and wouldn't wish that you lived in any of their ghettos. I was even the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting and nearly lost my life in Tualitan, Ore. in 1990 (someplace you'd never expect that to happen but it does.) So what I'm trying to impart to you is that you chose to move here, you choose your sleeping times and you should try to live with what the community has accepted for decades or perhaps find another place to live. I hope you don't leave because we welcome everyone here but we don't appreciate newcomers that start dictating our lifestyle just because they found a cozy little spot to settle.
If the local drugstore doesn't have the earplugs I suggested I know for a fact that WalMart in Longview does. I use them with regularity!
Welcome to our old fashioned community, I hope you can find peace here as we have for so many years.

Max Wika
Cathlamet

Misconceptions and innuendos in Grays River
To the Eagle:
We, the Grays River Habitat Enhancement District and many residents/landowners have had two public meetings with the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board. The affected landowners, many having the opportunity to view the project list and maps prior to the meetings, have said “no” to their fish habitat plan. In the opinion of most, this plan is a ruse that will increase flooding and impede development of fish habitat and fish passage. Ultimately the plan will create a swamp.
The Grays River Habitat Enhancement District and most landowners see this plan as an excuse for future land acquisition.
When we said “no” to this plan, we were perceived by the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board and by some media, as saying, we do not want fish recovery. Wrong! The GRHED and the landowners want river restoration that includes fish habitat as well as habitat for people. The mission statement of the GRHED states that as well.
The GRHED commissioners traveled to Longview twice last week to personally meet with Jeff Breckel, Executive Director of LCFRB, in an effort to find a workable plan to enhance the Grays River. Mr. Breckel was not amenable to any suggestions brought by the commissioners.
So beware, the twisted words, the half-truths and the misappropriated science that is being handed out.
We want to thank those people who signed the petitions in opposition of the “plan” and those who were able to attend the meetings on behalf of themselves and their neighbors.

Delvin L. Fredrickson, Chairman
Alton George,
Commissioner
Poul Toftemark,
Commissioner
Grays River Habitat
Enhancement District


Duck hunters need limits
To The Eagle:
I was so inspired by Mr. Michael Dowers' letter about duck hunting on Puget Island that I must express my frustrations about the situation.
We live on West Birnie Slough and are dreading the next three months of incessant gunfire. The report from several guns begins before dawn and sometimes continues all day long even through drenching rain. The shooters must be very poor shots or are exceeding their limit. Where is the game warden? My guess is he doesn't want to get wet. They have been seen using private boat docks which, I believe, is called "trespassing on private property."
I, too, visited the Sheriffs' Office and was told there was no law against duck hunting. I believe it is illegal to shoot firearms in a residential area for other sport shooting. Why is this different? What has happened to the "disturbing the peace" ordinances? The constant gunfire is very disturbing to one's peace and tranquility and also disturbs the dogs, causing them to bark which causes an irritation for some folks.
The river is full of uninhabited islands--why must they use Puget Island? It is because the ducks feed in the open fields and it is easily accessed and they have no regard for their fellow citizens.
Apparently Ducks Unlimited means they have no limits!

Janet Freed
Cathlamet

Natural resources cut off by red tape
To The Eagle:
Elections are over and nothing much has changed. Nationally, we are awash in a wealth of natural resources: carbon based fuel to last us hundreds of years, with unlimited nuclear capability to back it up, but are unable to make use of it because of a bureaucratic tangle of regulation and litigation. Regionally, we are nestled in an area rich in resources for fishing, farming, and forestry that we are prohibited from using wisely by a mu ti-layered bureaucracy concerned only with civil rights for fowl, fish, and kangaroo rats, and perpetuating their own little empires.
Locally, we are literally drowning in our natural resources. A recent small victory temporarily saved Puget Island from going the way of Atlantis, but only after a decade of paper-shuffling, political puffery and permit roulette, while at the other end of the county, the fish and fowl mavens were recently sent packing with a plea to roto-rooter the mouth of Grays River, more or less identical to our pleas for the last two decades. In the meantime, the timber we are not paid for to not harvest tumbles into our rivers damaging dikes and bridges that we must repair from the revenue we didn't get. Adding insult to these injuries, the state is busily making rules that if you want to collect rainwater in a barrel to drink or wash your drawers in, you'll have to get a permit for the barrel and put a meter on the water.
Not too many years back we rustics were not only smart enough to dam, dike, and dredge our own rivers and make our own forestry decisions, but also able to provide support for a doctor and his staff, and educate our children without jumping through hoops for educrats, medicrats and insurocrats in Olympia and Washington D.C. At the national and state levels we have now elected various politicrats dedicated to continuance of the same sorry trends. Wahkiakum voters were split roughly 50-50 on those decisions, but we may have done much better at the local level. We have assembled a group of county commissioners with an array of talent and experience that could be formidable if channeled in the right direction: taking back our county from the state and federal meddlers while trimming back taxation and services to a level we can afford.
So, welcome aboard Lisa, welcome back Dan (and Blair too). We wish you well in the coming battle with bureaucracy and promise to come visit you in jail.

Howard Brawn
Puget Island

Writers put tongues in cheeks -- quietly
To The Eagle:
We, the undersigned residents of Skamokawa, are writing about Michael Dowers in support of his campaign in last week's Eagle aimed at eliminating the noxious "sport" of duck hunting from Puget Island.
Sometimes we hear gunfire in Skamokawa. Could it be that the East Valley Liberation Army has begun the secession process to protect us from the campaign to combine Wahkiakum County with Cowlitz? At this time of year, during deer and elk seasons, there are times when we hear shots and many assume that someone is hunting. We had not considered, until Mr. Dowers' letter, that this noise could be gang-related drive-by shootings; we could be under attack by the Cathlamet Crips. As a courtesy, if all hunters could please shoot their trophies between 11 a.m. and noon, that would be appreciated. Moreover, we don't want to abolish the long-standing local tradition of hunting, but we feel hunters should use silencers on their guns like in Hollywood movies.
On the topic of noise: On mornings when it is foggy, the ships on the river sound their horns for no good reason. We know it is foggy because we can see the fog. Duh! And what with modern things like radar and cell phones, they know that there are other ships on the river. No more ship horns!
Log trucks. Chip trucks. UPS trucks. And sedan cars. They are always on the road, making tire noise, engine noise, and some have squeaky windshield wipers--not to mention fire trucks, ambulances and police cars with their annoyingly loud sirens. Many start so early that some of us are not even home from the Duck or the "O" yet. In respect for our hangovers, if drivers would observe the same operating hours as proposed above for hunters, we would appreciate that.
We also ask that spawning salmon please observe daylight hours to travel upstream in the event that the state-placed weirs haven't killed them (although admittedly silently) on their way. Those of us who work during the day prefer not hearing the sound of those fish thrashing their way to their spawning grounds; this interrupts our inalienable right to sleep whenever we darn well choose.
Then there are lawn mowers, chain saws, logging equipment of all types, and the "beep-beep" sound of heavy equipment--these are most distracting both for the transplanted urbanites working quietly in their offices, and the generations-long local residents toiling in businesses catering to the upscale tourists that they service. From now on we should all keep silently to ourselves and avoid people trying to earn an honest living, fill their freezers with meat, help their neighbors, or have fun. Wahkiakum County is successfully tipping the balance to successfully become a low-tax, low-interaction, low-economy former community. Shhh!
Once our county commissioners have corrected the county code to reflect our requests, we would then like them to generate jobs to (quietly) stimulate our local economy. Perhaps they could hire a sound abatement officer to patrol Puget Island and the Skamokawa Valleys?

Duncan Cruickshank,
Heidi Heywood
Skamokawa