Solar Salt Yakima Water Treatment Plant - City Of Yakima: Fill & Download for Free

There is a book titled Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. He is libertarian. He says that bad laws are created when they focus on short term outcomes and ignore long term outcomes. And, when a specific group is addressed without considering how the policy affects all groups.This applies to your question as well. He doesn’t say that all government is bad. He explains why the government often implements bad policy. You can see it a town hall meeting. A local hairdresser wants to open a shop where she can manicure nails as well cut hair. A town meeting is held in which the issue will be discussed in front of the city council. Who shows up? All the other hairdressers who want to kibosh a potential competitor. Do her potential customers show up? No. She doesn’t have any yet. So all of her competitors show up at the meeting, and the wishes of hundreds of potential customers are ignored. The council turns down her request, and another bad policy is put in place.The “fake libertarians” as you call them, are guilty of the same mistake that we all make. They are in denial to keep logic simple. They will say, “The government is bad. Period. So get rid of it and all will be fine.”“No nuclear plants, they are unsafe.” “Windmills and solar will solve everything.” “Blow up the dams, they are killing the salmon.” “Global warming is a hoax.” “Coal is dirty”. “Fossil fuels are bad.” “Birth control is murder”. These attitudes show prejudice — or bias. Our minds use biases to make life less complex. Without them, we would fall into an endless pool of indecision. But there are some intractable problems out there, such as protecting the environment and competition, and the answers do not fall into neat little homilies. Luckily, we don’t all have to grapple with these issues. We can leave it to economists and researchers to ponder, and read their conclusions. If we aren’t willing to wade through all the studies, we can shut up when we don’t know what we’re talking about. A third thing we can do is vote against politicians like Trump, who claim to know everything, while understanding nothing in any depth.“Good” economists tend to support cap and trade to resolve many environmental issues and they recognize that natural monopolies do occur, and often require regulation. In order for cap and trade to work and to regulate monopolies, people and politicians need to understand the underlying principles that justify the extra government involvement. Entire books have been written.I live in Richland Washington, next to the Columbia, Yakima, and Snake rivers.The Columbia River comes from Canada. If the Canadians believed in “Canada First”, they would dig a canal from the headwaters of the Columbia, which are fed by rapidly diminishing glaciers, and ship the water over to the Fraser River, which would then dump it into the ocean. Then they would say to the Americans, “If you want our water, you must pay for it.” This puts them in a monopolistic position. Eastern Washington farmers would be crushed. Eastern Washington gets most of its electricity from hydro power. Electricity rates would triple. The salmon and other fish would be wiped out, because every drop would be used by someone, before it got to the ocean. Prices would rise above the true cost of just leaving things as they are, so Canada could line its pockets. We would have a permanent scarcity of water in Eastern Washington, beyond what is efficient, because Canada would charge as much as the market could bear. We would not pay based on supply and demand, as in a free market. Canada would have no competitors, and they would squeeze the lemon to get out every last drop. This is what monopolies do. They cause a permanent scarcity, at higher prices for inferior service, and they line their pockets while under contributing to society. In this case, the monopolists are rewarded for hurting society as a whole. Do you think such a thing could never happen? Look what California has done to Mexico by hijacking the Colorado River. California is causing long term environmental problems in the process, because salt is building up in the waterways that transport their hijacked resource. So they may pay in the long run.But it just starts there. Who would pay Canada? The guy immediately downstream in the US would have to. He, in turn, would have to collect money from the next person down stream, who would collect from the next, and so on, all the way to the mouth of the Columbia, which would no longer exist. Each person who “owned” that portion of the river would charge a processing fee — a toll if you wish. This would be added on to the price of water. By the time it got down to farmers, the fees would be oppressive.It gets worse. The Central States (Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma among others) are drawing down a huge underground aquifer that will eventually run out. As global warming sets in, the land will not be farm worthy, and Eastern Washington will become a “breadbasket” of the country. But if libertarian favored river tolls ate up the Columbia river, Eastern Washington would have a permanent scarcity of water, and its farmers would be under constant pressure. This would exacerbate food scarcity and increase prices even further.Dams would stop operating, and each owner of the Columbia River would likely put barb wire fences across the river to keep trespassers out. Navigating the river would be impossible.The way around this is to say that no one “owns” the Columbia River. Sorry “fake libertarians”. There are limits to what people should be allowed to own. Plots of land? Yes. Huge waterways? No. The ocean? No.Back in the 1970s, when I was a teenager, people and pig farmers were dumping raw sewage into the Yakima River. If you swam, you risked getting a rash. The Yakima flows into the Columbia. Now, with sensible regulation, this is not allowed. The water is clean, but perhaps not potable. We have several shops that sell gear, allowing people to float and swim in the Yakima as the water slowly wends downstream. It’s nice. Any other policy seems unthinkable to me. You can’t dump barrels of poisons into a river. And unless you regulate against it, and enforce it, it will happen.The Columbia used to freeze at some sections during the winter. Ranchers could march cows across the river. In the spring it would often flood all the way up to George Washington Way — Richlands’ main street — flooding houses and everything else along the way. Now, dams prevent flooding, hopefully pooling excess water so that gravitational flow can be used to create electricity later on. Irrigation systems draw water from the Columbia (there is more than enough water for everyone, at least for now) which allows farmers to grow crops on semi-arid land.We have a very cheap cost of living in Richland. Cheap power. We have a farmers market. Columbia River water is drawn, treated, and used freely. The water tastes great except during September when the water temperature in the Columbia is warm. None of this would be possible without government interference.But now for the downside. There always is a downside. When Lewis and Clark visited the mouth of the Yakima, way back when, the water was clear, and there were “layers of salmon” that could be visibly seen on the bottom of the river. No more. The dams have slowed water flow, creating “lakes”. Visibility is about 2 feet at best. The salmon are sparse. They are endangered. They are getting killed by rising water temperatures, being flushed through turbines, unsuccessfully swimming upstream to their spawning grounds, and taking in too much nitrogen. The government did it. The same government that helped build a great infrastructure on the Columbia River is killing the salmon.So how does one make these tradeoffs? I think you do research, you quantify, and then you use the power of free markets to help make decisions. How much is one more salmon worth going up or down the river each year? Not much. How much is it worth to keep Columbia salmon from going extinct? A lot. In my opinion the salmon are almost priceless. We have a need to establish a value for trade — how much a salmon is worth on the open market, but we also need to establish a cap. In my mind, it is unacceptable to allow the salmon to go extinct. The loss is too great. There has to be a certain level set where we say, “Enough is enough, no more!” We can also increase the perceived value of salmon as we get closer to critical levels that are unacceptable to cross.How do we decide about the cost of salmon at non critical levels? We do some research, identifying the tradeoffs, and let regulated free markets sort it out. For example, Grand Coulee Dam could be charged for every salmon that dies going up or down stream. This would be traded for the right to produce electricity and help with flood control. (I’m not sure if salmon can get past Grand Coulee). There would be a required level of salmon crossings which they cannot go below. If people have to go out with nets and throw the salmon over the dam, that’s what they have to do.Another thing the government can do is research. As I speak, Pacific Northwest National Labs (where I used to work) is using robot fish to go through dam turbines to get a better feel for what happens. They are experimenting with fishnets and sound devices to lure salmon to locations where they can cross a dam safely. To a “fake libertarian” this probably sounds like government waste. But it is research. It is needed to make a better infrastructure. It is an investment. And only the government can make it. Gourmet Salmon company would not be willing to spend millions in research to help salmon cross dams. That’s because once they find a solution, that solution is available to everyone, including their competitors. We could offer Gourmet Salmon proprietary rights if they come up with a solution, but then the government would be creating a monopoly.Annually subsidizing windmills, just for existing, is not an investment. It’s a waste of money. Building a one time infrastructure so that windmills can contribute, would be an investment. And that might be reasonable. Building an infrastructure for hydrogen cars might be reasonable. But once done, that should be the end of the subsidies.There are people who want to blow up all the dams on the Snake River. They don’t care about cost analysis, alternative ways to preserve the salmon, or anything else. Just blow em up. To me, this is no different than the “fake libertarian” who wants everything unregulated, no matter what the cost. It’s extreme. It doesn’t compare the local and immediate problem against all people affected and against long term consequences.There are people who want to make it illegal to ship coal through our state on a train. They don’t care about ways of liquifying coal to make it clean. They don’t care about cow farts, which are a much worse problem. They don’t care about where electricity comes from before it charges an electric car. They just hate coal. It’s irrational.There are people who don’t want oil pipelines through their state. They’d rather have it come through on a train, which derails and craps up everything. Once again, a form of “cap and trade” is the answer. “Hey. Bring it on. But — pipeline company — if the pipeline ruptures for any reason, you are going to pay 200% of all cleanup costs.” “Hey train company. Bring it on. But if a train derails, you are going to pay 200% of all cleanup costs.” It’s all spelled out, and the business can decide, without taking advantage of the public.With all the irrigation in Eastern Washington, much of the water is returned to the Columbia. The returned water is contaminated with nitrates from fertilizer, and chemicals sprayed on crops. There was a time when people were blaming the nearby nuclear reservation for every birth defect on the planet. They were overreacting. However, nitrates from farming do pose a problem, just like too much sunshine. Don’t get me wrong, we swim in the Columbia, and water our lawns with it. We also pee in it. Without a doubt, less nitrates and insecticides in the Columbia are better than more nitrates and more insecticides. The government could come up with a formula that approximates how much each farmer is contributing to the pollution of the Columbia in terms of pesticides and nitrates. A little bit isn’t too bad. But as more and more people pollute, the problem grows. Farmers should be charged if they pollute, even though they can’t help it. It’s part of their business. Just like you pollute when you barbecue.Cows are enormous contributors to global warming. They should be taxed. I’m not saying that EPA inspectors should be counting every cow fart so they can send a bill. But we could tax approximately. If cows had to pay their fair share for global warming, this would apply slight pressure to the consumer to eat less meat. But it wouldn’t be a mandate.To show you how ridiculous things can become, and what not to do, consider the Hanford nuclear reservation.We have 100 football stadium sized rotting tanks, full of nuclear waste, about 20 miles outside our city, next to the Columbia River. Our economy depends on a nuclear vitrification plant that sucks up $1 Billion dollars a year from the Federal Government, theoretically to treat the waste. So far, they have spent $12 billion and counting, and it will never produce a thing. How did we get into this weird position?Hanford made the plutonium that went into one of the bombs dropped on Japan near the end of World War II. There are many people, mostly Swedes, who feel that any use of an atomic weapon is unforgivable. It doesn’t matter that most historians feel that two bombs, killing 100,000 people each, prevented the loss of 2,000,000 people that would have died if the war to occupy Japan continued. Some feel, “Nuclear weapons are unforgivable”. They will justify their position by saying that 2 million lives doesn’t justify the number of birth defects that followed. However, studies show that the uptick in birth rates was amazingly small. They’ve seen the same thing at Chernobyl. Swedes will say that there is nothing worse than being vaporized by an atomic bomb. Really? When I think of how my mother, father, grandmothers, and grandfathers died, I think being vaporized sounds pretty good. When I see vets from the Middle East come home, with missing limbs, broken marriages, and all messed up, I think that’s the real tragedy of war. I read somewhere that more vets are dying of suicide when they come home than have died in combat.Swedes will tell you that Japan was on the verge of surrendering. It wasn’t. According to some, when the Emperor asked the military to surrender, after the 2nd bomb was dropped, two generals unsuccessfully tried to assassinate him, so they could continue the war.Congress, in their infinite wisdom, decided that all nuclear waste must be stored deep underground, and isolated, for the next 10,000 years. That’s a long time. It’s a knee jerk reaction. It is costing the taxpayers billions a year, for broken programs that can never guarantee to meet that goal, and there is no reason they should.The government wants to turn the contents of all 100 tanks of nuclear waste, each about the size of a high school football stadium, into glass logs. That’s 56 million gallons of waste. The logs are to be buried in some place, not identified yet, where they won’t see the light of day for 10,000 years.None of the tanks have exactly the same kind of waste. 97 are already down to 30% of their original radiation levels. They will fall to less than 1% the original radioactivity in 250 more years. 3 have bad stuff. Because of politics and impossible regulations, the “Vitrification Plant” if it ever does operate, will probably treat waste from the 97 benign tanks and leave the bad stuff alone, because they don’t know what to do with plutonium and technetium. When the logs are produced, God knows where they will go, because no state wants to take them — let alone hold on to them for 10,000 years.This kind of craziness occurs because people and government think in terms of absolutes. They think at the local and immediate level with knee jerk reactions. “Radioactivity kills. Therefore we can’t see any of it for 10,000 years.” (Radiation is all around you, but at lower levels). “There is only one kind of nuclear waste tank — a bad one.” Different waste deserves different kinds of treatment. But the government is very poor at taking advantage of this and being cost effective. Unfortunately, so is most of the voting public.More craziness at the Columbia River. There are radioactive elements like tritium that have a very short half life. Tritium is hydrogen. If you dump tritium into the river, it will decay back to non-radioactive state very quickly, but never quite get to zero. Farmers can dump nitrates and insecticides into the Columbia. But not a drop of tritium, or any other chemical that increases the level of concentration beyond where it currently exists is allowed to touch the nitrate filled lips of the Columbia River. The consequence is billions spent on crazy programs to scrub tritium out of the soil to levels almost equivalent of creating distilled water.To summarize:It is a mistake to think in terms of black and white, even for libertarians.It is a mistake to not quantify options into their true cost, and deal with them that way, if you possibly can.It is a mistake to eschew free market forces, when they can help with the decision making.It is a mistake to let local interests dominate the conversation, over the interests of all.It is a mistake to make short term policy decisions without considering long term consequences.That was a list of what not to do. The hard part is doing the right thing.Unfortunately, government waste still comes from the government. You can’t march up and tell them to stop. You’re only one person. You will be ignored. Believe me. I’ve gone through this. At the local level you need about 150 or more friends to make an impact at City Hall. Even then, it’s not easy.On the other hand, for example, if you want to end the incessant nagging of robocalls, you need the government’s help. Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them.