Restore Celilo Falls

Google stares a green opportunity in the face

RE < C.

This equation, which comes to us courtesy of Time Magazine’s issue of October 5 , translates as “renewable energy costs less than coal.” It appears in an article about Bill Weihl, “Google’s new green-energy czar,” who is shown wrapped in a sheet of Mylar.

Weihl, one of three featured “Heroes of the Environment,” is the former MIT professor leading Google’s current campaign “to help make the world better.”

Already, Weihl has cut energy consumption in half at a Google data center, and installed an enormous solar installation at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The company is giving millions to clean-energy start-ups and funding in-house research.

All well and good, but still “one small step for a man.” I have a green-energy proposal for the Google data center in The Dalles that packs the potential of “a giant leap for mankind.”

Phase in an orderly switch from hydroelectric to wind-generated energy. Then lead the charge to decommission The Dalles Dam, create a free-flowing Columbia River between Bonneville and John Day dams, and restore the ancient Native American fishery at Celilo Falls.

Windmills are sprouting on the bluffs and slopes along the Columbia at a fantastic rate, doubling in number over the past summer — a personal observation, not a hard fact, though my estimate was confirmed by a worker who helped construct this forest of green-energy giants.

We met by chance at the Stonehenge War Memorial, just east of Maryhill. In the course of our conversation, I asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if all these windmills one day replaced The Dalles Dam?” He said the powers-that-be would never let it happen. No matter how much energy they generated, windmills would forever play second fiddle to dams.

Another of the three “Heroes” is China’s Sherri Liao. “Chairman Mao preached that humanity must conquer nature,” we read before learning how Ms. Liao, a philosophy teacher who founded Global Village of Beijing, a thriving green-advocacy group, is quietly but effectively upsetting Mao’s applecart.

Hydroelectric dams are throwbacks to Chairman Mao’s credo. The green-energy movement is beyond the control of those in government and industry who cling to the notion that Earth exists for man to exploit. The movement is growing from the ground up, and gaining momentum daily.

Certainly our collective intelligence will find ways to irrigate fields and move crops to market if The Dalles Dam disappears. And with a free-flowing Columbia, Celilo Falls again will serve as the river’s pump, heat regulator and oxygen source, giving new hope to the dream of restoring native salmon runs.

What will it be, Google? Small step or giant leap?

Do you recall the popcorn wagon at Celilo Falls in the 1950s?

My grandfather and I used to sell popcorn, hot dogs and pop at Celilo Falls in the fiftys before the Falls were flooded. We sold these item out of a Dodge van that he made a popcorn wagon out of. We would drive from Portland on Friday and stay until Sunday. We slept in the popcorn wagon and I can remember the roar of the river and the drum from the bone game that was held near by. I have been looking for a picture of the area with the popcorn wagon in it. The color of the wagon was white. If you know of such a picture please contact me.

Thanks,

Bill Blake

Olympia, Washington

b-blake@comcast.net

Questions & Answers

Q: How will we replace the lost electricity?

A: Put progressives in charge of developing alternative sources — something that should have started with a fury in the 1970s when we had our first wake-up call. Innovators are lurking in the shadows, like mammals waiting for the dinosaurs to drop. Give them free rein. Provide incentives. Get the American people behind it. With President Barack Obama leading the charge, we can do it. In 10 years.

Q: How do we pay for it?

A: President John F. Kennedy’s dream of putting a man on the moon in 10 years was realized. People hundreds of years from now will still marvel at that achievement. The same will be true of breakthroughs in energy production and delivery that will make current modes obsolete, and fuel the economic engine of the 21st century. In the end, the development of new energy systems will pay for itself many times over.

Q: How do we flush the 50-year accumulation of metallic and radioactive poisons built up behind the dam?

A: Put bright minds to the task. Make the process competitive. Keep the bureaucracy to a minimum. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

Q: Won’t native salmon go extinct as a result?

A: They’re close to extinction now. Once the river is clean and free-flowing, salmon runs should increase. History and oral tradition tell of the salmon’s return after major volcanic eruptions, river-blocking landslides, and monumental floods.

Q: Won’t Celilo Falls be covered with silt after being submerged since 1957?

A: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released sonar maps in November, 2008 showing that no sediment had accumulated at Celilo Falls, as had been expected. Also, the maps disproved rumors that the Corps had dynamited the Falls to accommodate barge traffic.

Q: How will decommissioning The Dalles Dam affect irrigation and navigation?

A: Changes will be necessary. Perhaps water could be pumped to the high plateau during winter and spring months, when water volume is great,and stored for later use. A similar plan was announced for the Umatilla Basin in late December, 2008, by a coalition of farmers and engineers. Perhaps the canal and locks at Celilo, currently underwater, could be upgraded to accommodate modern tugs and barges. Possibilities are limited only by the reach of imagination.

Countless other questions arise. Answers can and will be found.

“Voyage of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia River” by Robin Cody

“On the morning of June 18, 1990, high up in the Canadian Rockies, Robin Cody pushed his sixteen-foot, forty-seven-pound Kevlar canoe through tall grass and mud to launch it on peaceful Columbia Lake, the nominal source of the river that heaves more water into the Pacific Ocean than any other in North or South America: the Columbia. For the next eighty-two days, Cody would steer his canoe around massive dams, through killer rapids, and across reservoirs the size of small states, plunging 2,750 feet in 1,200 miles….”

—From the book jacket of Robin Cody’s Voyage of a Summer Sun (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), recipient of the Oregon Book Award and the PNWB (Pacific Northwest Booksellers) Book Award.

Excerpt from “Voyage of a Summer Sun”

I was twelve, maybe thirteen, when my mother packed the family in the green Chevy and Dad drove us to Celilo Falls. We took the cliff-snaking old gorge highway out of the Willamette Valley, past The Dalles, to this hard-baked treeless land where the Columbia thundered into rocky chutes and broken islands, cascading over crooked flat steps in the riverbed. The river frothed and boiled at the foot of each step, throwing spray to the sky.

The air was thick with smoke, too, and we walked down from the road into a knock-you-back smell of pink salmon on drying racks, salmon smoking, and piles of rotting fish heads, tails, and guts. Gulls screamed. It was chaotic. Dogs and brown kids had the run of the place, and the dwellings — made of scrap lumber, tar paper, plywood, corrugated tin — might have been thrown together only to last until spring flood. Truck and car parts littered the village, but the village was not poor. Many of the shacks had TV antennas, a new thing, and of the cars that were complete there were Cadillacs and Chryslers, caked with dust.

Rickety wood platforms reached over steps of the falls. Indian men, roped at the waist, stood on these platforms and dipped hoop nets on long wood poles. The best of the salmon leapers moved quickly and got through, taking ten-foot vertical jumps to the next-highest ledge of river. Catches were in the pools and on the rebound. A salmon jumped into the falls and then slipped backward, the force of falling water canceling his leap. The fish ended up tail first, thrashing, in the waiting net. The man swung the pole and its net to shore, where a woman, waiting, thunked the fish on the skull with a club. She dumped the salmon from the net and passed it to a row of other women, who sliced and gutted it on the rocks. The women had round brown faces and flat noses and muddy eyes. If one looked up, you took a step back.

On the bank below a platform, Indian boys my age threw harpoon-tipped spears, tethered with chord. I thought they were goofing around, but one speared a salmon square behind the gills. Two boys, struggling, bent to the tether and dragged a fall Chinook onto the rocks.

We stayed and watched until the sun dropped and the Indians quit the river. Mom knew Celilo was soon to be inundated, gone forever. That’s why we were there. But I don’t remember any discomfort in our family about the idea that Celilo Falls was soon to go, or any great sadness about it. Progress was the way of the world. We watched this famous fishing grounds the way you might feel privileged to see the last performance of a very good play. I knew I’d seen something huge, but I couldn’t have said what it was.

Reprinted with permission of author Robin Cody.

“Celilo Stories: New Conversations About an Ancient Place”

Notes from the conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the drowning of Celilo Falls, Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, The Dalles, March 17-18, 2007.

Keynote Speaker Charles Wilkinson, Moses Lasky Professor of Law, University of Colorado at Boulder:

Listening to stories of Indian life before Lewis and Clark has provided “the purest joy of my professional life.” … “We are commemorating the loss of Celilo Falls. We are celebrating the 10,000 years of culture.” … Celilo Falls is “forever at the center.” … “No one in charge seemed to hear or care …. Only Indian people asked questions that needed to be asked.” … “America was in a hurry and wanted results now.” … Dam supporters claimed “The Dalles Dam would improve fish runs by destroying the fishery at Celilo Falls.” … A passive society “left it up to the experts.” … The Dalles Dam is the “biggest fish killer on the Columbia River.” … “A wrong against nature and people was committed.” … Support “the movement to decommission The Dalles Dam.” … We are “in an era of dam removal” — the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, Snake River of Oregon and Idaho, Klamath River of Oregon and California. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ohq/108.4/wilkinson.html

Elizabeth Woody, poet, artist, director of the Indigenous Leadership Program at Ecotrust:

“Plants and animals live by natural laws. Only man breaks them.”

Chief Wilbur Slockish, Jr. of the Klickitat Band of the Yakama Indian Nation:

“When we ran this country, there was an abundance of everything.” … “You drink water, you breathe air, you eat from the land. We’re all in this together.”

Chief Johnny Jackson of the Cascade Band of the Yakama Indian Nation:

“River People didn’t have (tribal) names. They were all one people.” … “You treat the old man (the river) right, and he’ll feed you and take care of you.”

William Robbins, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History, Oregon State University:

“The river wants to run free again.”

1948 Celilo Falls photographs by Cal Crook at Brick Wall Gallery in Spokane starting April 3

The Brick Wall Gallery will feature photos of Celilo Falls taken by Cal Crook in 1948. The exhibition opens Friday, April 3rd with the First Friday Artwalk (until 8:30 p.m.) and the photos will be on display for the rest of the month. The gallery is at 530 W. Main on the skywalk just east of Macy’s in downtown Spokane.