Sunday, March 22, 2009

Fishy Stimulus.....

Quickly....because we have somehow done 20 parties in 8 days....and have two more to go, all without Brendan.

The Carmel Steelhead people have put together a "shovel-ready" grant application to hire locals to repair the creekbed of Cachagua Creek, and the riverbed of the Carmel River.

These guys pull 3,000 baby steelhead from our creek every year.....and have single-handedly saved the species....and much of the huge economic benefit of the California salmon run from utter devastation. Now it is only devastated....not utterly devastated.

The destruction of the West Coast salmon fishery.....I must remind you....was principally engineered in a casual thoughtless moment by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to reward some low-level Republican oat growers from southern Oregon.

Anyway.....while contemplating the Stimulus Bill, I thought that the odds of any dough penetrating Cachagua were like the Chance Brothers: Slim and None.

We have Union execs running scab labor, after all.....If the County unemployment rate is 16%....ours is more like 50%. Trust me....I wouldn't hire half these douche bags, either....but there is a highly skilled, highly motivated, highly frustrated 25% ready and willing to rock and roll.

Our guys know heavy machinery, materials, electricity, carpentry, plumbing....and they all hunt and fish and are ready to rock and roll.

The Steelhead guys want to replace all the cement "causeways" that all the various idiots, pioneers and numbnuts have built across the Cachagua Creek, Finch Creek, James Creek and the Carmel River....in the last 150 years.

Salmon and steelhead love gravel.....and in low-flow years the concrete roadways across the waterways can completely stop migration of our favorite fish. Not to mention the inconvenience to the locals when....as two weeks ago when it finally started raining....and no one in Jensen Camp could drive across the Creek over the causeway.

So....If you know someone with Creek or River issues.....concrete, old wrecks, oil drums, whatever......contact me or the Steelhead folk.

The Steelhead Stimulus Grant will allow local working people to break up and remove artificial and poorly thought out river obstacles and replace them with rail bridges.

Fish win, workers win......we all win.

Time is short. This has to get done this week.

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