From the June 1999 Idaho Observer:

NWPPC is ICEBEMP actualized

$50 million EIS was inventory of northwest U.S.; foundation for land, water grabs

COLVILLE, Wash. -- In May, 1998, Panhandle Forests Director Dave Wright commented, “I don't think it's going to fly,” in response to questions as to whether or not the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) plans to enforce the findings of “preferred alternative #4 of the Interior Columbia River Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICEBEMP).

It appears that there was never any serious interest in using the combined resources of 23 state and federal agencies from the northwest U.S. states to manage the 144,000,000 public and private acres which encompassed the study. The apparent purpose of the five-year, $50,000,000 environmental impact statement (EIS) study was to use federal money to inventory every rock and shrub and bug and worm in the Northwest, then use that information to implement comprehensive, federally-directed land use planning through more publicly acceptable tactics.

Two such tactics are saving the salmon by breaching dams and denying motorized (and unmotorized) public access to public lands for endangered species and wildlife habitat preservation.

One of ICEBEMP's more subtle transmutations seems to be its manifestations the Northwest Power Planning Council (NWPPC). The council, which depends upon state, federal and private funds to meet its goals, has an annual budget of $127,000,000 that was set by a 1996 memorandum of understanding that was signed by the Clinton administration, affected Indian tribes and appropriate state and federal government agencies.

NWPPC is counting fish and exploring the possibility of breaching several Northwest dams in an attempt to save the salmon it has determined are endangered.

Last February, the USFS slaughtered an estimated 7,000 spawning salmon at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. They caught the protected fish, slit their bellies, removed the unfertilized eggs to sell them by the pound, then threw their dead and endangered carcasses back into the river to be eaten by seagulls.

Up near the Canadian border in Boundary County, in territory that has effectively been closed to public access, the USFS has hunting camps where only USFS employees and their guests are allowed to camp and hunt.

The integrity of NWPPC is questionable as its vice chairman is ex-Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Commissioner (WDFW) Larry Cassidy. Cassidy is one of the commissioners who voted in favor of the declared state of emergency with regard to certain wildlife populations on the Colville Indian Reservation in 1982 (see story pages 12-13).

According to Inchelium resident Ervin Palmer who has been fighting the declaration since its implementation because nobody can prove that any wildlife populations on the reservation constitute an emergency, Cassidy, who was then known as Frank L. Cassidy, is in the minority of former game commissioners who would still vote in favor of declaring an emergency on the reservation even if there is no evidence to suggest that an emergency exists.

The activities of the NWPPC, like all entities which use federal monies, will reflect the federal land use agenda. The Clinton administration is still pushing to strengthen the illegal and unconstitutional American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

The unconstitutional executive mandate intends to nationalize 14 major American waterways each year and appoint a federal employee who will be called a “navigator” to coordinate state and local resources as they attempt to cope with severe federally-dictated restrictions on public and private waterway usage.

The governors of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana each appointed two members to the NWPPC. Governor Gary Locke (D-WA) appointed Cassidy to the council.

Game Commission members are also appointed by the governor of a state. Governor Spellman appointed Cassidy to the game commission which allowed the WDFW to fraudulently enforce the declared state of emergency on the Colville Indian Reservation in 1982. Locke is allowing the fraudulent emergency to continue.