Smalma,

I known that you like to "see the facts" before you take anyone's word for it. So I have been doing my "homework" for you. Your position is a good position to take, so I dug out my old retired computer, and pulled up my old "Settlement" emails from June 14, 2000 (just shortly before the Settlement was accepted) that our attorney had sent to the AG's office. I do believe that this will satisfy your needs. These are our comments that were made by our attorney to the AG's office, which was representing the WDFW, and the AG's reply back to our attorney.

This board should find them to be extremely interesting!

It's all public record now, so read them and tell me again about how you see me viewing this issue. Do you remember saying this to me? ; "Is there anything where you don't find conspiracies?" The answer is; yes, but not totally on this issue! If I don't tell the real story . . . who will. . . .WDFW?

I think that these guys still want to keep their jobs until they retire!

You stated this to me:

"Also ladderng the lower dam and giving the fish access to and from Tilton would seem to be a huge "win" to me. Of course it remains to be seen whether it can be successfully done. That doesn't mean that they should not try."

And my reply to you was this:

"To bad that the great Director of WDFW (Jeff Koenings) doesn't feel the same way as you do! He went out of his way to assure in the Settlement Agreement that fish ladders would not be readily available for Mayfield Dam. There were no engineering problems with making a workable ladder over Mayfield because it falls within the 140' levels that are very workable for fish. The BIG POROBLEM was that Jeff wanted 15 million dollars of insurance for his hatcheries if within 15 years the bench marks (Which he had personally set) were not met! The ladder issue was a cake walk at Mayfield, but that 15 million dollars that WDFW wants to have will never allow that to happen!"


So look at what the WDFW "rats" have done; "e) within five years of license issuance, the Licensee shall establish an interest-bearing escrow account in the amount of $15 million to contribute to the total cost of constructing volitional upstream fish passage facilities. To minimize administrative cost and allow conservative growth, said escrow account may be held by the Licensee as a separate account (with Licensee being obligated to treat said account substantially similar to an escrow account), and said account may be invested, consistent with investment limitations on public agencies within the State of Washington?. "


So this is how it all went down!!!!

"Neil," (Attorney General Rep.)

"Regarding your report that Director Koeings "felt there was not sufficient biological justification for lowering the fish passage standard," my clients have some questions: Would you please identify what the WDFW considers its "biological justification" for the higher passage standard? In what way was this brought out at the Fish Technical Committee meetings? My clients do not believe that it ever was. How does a higher passage standard promote the Department's statutory mandate to "preserve, protect, perpetuate and manage" the state's fisheries resources? What would the Director deem to constitute biological justification for lowering the fish passage standard as advocated by the Conservation Caucus?

Thank you in advance for your reply.

Regards...."

The AG's answer (This should make a blind man see the light) was:

We had a two hour meeting with Jeff Koenings last night regarding aproposed change in the upstream fish passage triggers (changing fromself-sustaining levels of coho and either spring chinook or late winter steelhead to at least one indigenous anadromous fish stock). I explained the settlement framework and the posture and interests of the various
parties, then the technical staff discussed the biological issues with the Director. After long discussions and Q&A, the Director decided he could not accept the proposed change, primarily because he felt there was not sufficient biological justification for lowering the fish passage standard.

We did discuss some possible alternative language, such as focusing on the upper basin steelhead and chinook instead of the Tilton coho, or some combination with a higher productivity level. Hal Beecher and I will work on the alternatives, and try to have some language out for review by the end of today.

If anyone has specific questions, I will try to answer them, to the extent I understand the technical details. I will be in meetings most of the day, but hopefully we can connect."

The "Settlement Agreement" was accepted by WDFW within hours of this email!


Now Smalma, do you still think that WDFW is so pure? There are good people in WDFW (like you) and there are some really big FAT RATS!!!!

Sorry to put you back onto the hot spot, because you had nothing to do with this issue! But you need to know what really goes on behind closed doors, before you make "statements" about me thinking everything is a "conspiracy"! Maybe Aunty was right. . . it's not "conspiracy" it's "stupidly".

Show me the "science" that the Director of WDFW used, and I will be the first one to say that I was wrong!

Cowlitzfisherman