This sucks - central planning at it's most egregious - from Capital Press:
Congress mulls project to flood Washington farmland
Federal lawmakers may authorize the Army Corps of Engineers to pursue a $451.6 million project to convert hundreds of acres of privately owned farmland into Puget Sound fish habitat, unsettling to a farmer who owns property vital to the government’s designs.
“It’s definitely, definitely in the back of my mind, all the time,” said Scott Bedlington, third-generation Whatcom County farmer. “I have to farm. That’s what we live off.”
The corps and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife propose to inundate 2,100 acres in Whatcom, Skagit and Jefferson counties, including by removing dikes protecting farms.
Restoring habitat is a nice idea and it plays well with the disconnected-from-reality urban voters but the habitat was disturbed and nothing we do can bring it back to what it once was. Some of the dam removal is good for restoring salmon runs but stuff like this is expensive and will do nothing major. It will remove the layer of flood protection that the levees give which caused them to be built in the first place.
Follow the money:
The corps and WDFW spent 15 years and $22 million developing the Puget Sound Nearshore Restoration Project.
The corps forwarded the plan to Congress last month. The plan calls for $293.6 million in federal funding and $158 million in state funding over about 10 years.
How about we put this towards reforming our education system. The Federal funding is just our tax dollars being misspent and the state funding is money that would be better served fixing infrastructure. Fish do not say thank you.
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