(9 of 10)
The nuclear power issue is especially sensitive in the Northwest because it involves water—and water, once so bountiful in the region, has become a scarce resource, although heavy rains in western Washington last week forced the evacuation of thousands. Water is competed for by fishing interests, farmers and the builders of power plants. The water that cools the nuclear reactors comes from nearby rivers and is later returned to them warm. Environmentalists claim that the warm water can disrupt the ecology of a stream. They are stubbornly fighting a plan to build two large nuclear plants on the shores of the Skagit River, campaigning to have a 59-mile stretch of it protected from any kind of development under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The plants, Ray argues, are necessary and will cause no harm.
She and many other Western Governors are frustrated because so much of their territory is owned by an absentee landlord: the Federal Government. The 29% of Washington that belongs to the U.S. is comparatively small: the Government owns 47% of Wyoming, 52% of Oregon, 64% of Idaho—indeed about 57% of all the land west of the Rockies. Bureaucrats decide how minerals and coal will be mined on federal land, how timber and grazing rights will be apportioned, how electricity will be generated and sold, which areas will be set aside for public recreation. Says Ray: "I often feel that the long arm of the Federal Government reaches out this way, but the distance is too great for our voice to penetrate back there."
She complains that the U.S. is applying "salami tactics" to Washington, reclassifying, slice by slice, rivers and forests in a way she feels harms the state. A prime example: converting national forests that are now designated for multiple use, including logging, into tightly protected wilderness areas. Exercising its right of eminent domain, the Government is buying up private lands and including them in the restricted parcels. Says Ray: "I am against usurping private land. This is not federal encroachment. It's outright interference."
The fight over the shape of the future is even fiercer on the local level than in the state capitals of the Northwest. The battle flares on individual bumper stickers: SIERRA CLUB, KISS MY AXE, V. DON'T CALIFORNICATE IDAHO. On fashionable Mercer Island, just across from Seattle, residents have stalled the construction of two bridges for ten years to hold down growth, although the present spans are dangerous and jam with traffic during rush hours. In Lewiston, Idaho, the Potlatch lumber company is fighting the Sierra Club and others for permission to cut unsightly swaths through stands of white and ponderosa pine to meet the national building demands. Says Jim Hilbert, a local Teamster official: "Sure, we ought to grow. Create more jobs. City fathers run this place, and they don't want growth. But you can't stop it." William H. Cowles III, publisher of the Spokane Spokesman-Review, says hopefully: "We can learn from others, and maybe we will be wise enough to tell the difference between growth and controlled growth."