and now, a word from Bob and Thea Pyle...

Robert and Thea Pyle, who know lots more than a thing or two about the local ecosystem, share a letter they wrote to the Wahkiakum Eagle:

Gray's River, WA 98621
December 3, 2006

Wahkiakum County Eagle
To the Editor:

In recent days,  we have all been barraged with a load of pretty propaganda from Northern Star company--kindly letters and bright brochures in our mailboxes, full-page ads in the papers, promo pieces that those same papers published as "news."  Originating from "Bradwood Landing," which sounds more like a park or an upscale community than a heavy industrial site, these slick puff-pieces promise varying amounts of blood-money for salmon enhancement ($40 million in the brochure, $59 million in the press release), spread over many years.  They paint Northern Star as God's Gift to Fish.

We have some questions for "Si" Garrett and his hench-people:  Just how stupid do you think we are?  Do you take us for hicks from the sticks who have never seen the seductive products of public relations mercenaries?  Do you suppose we've never been fooled before by commercial flak that represents a sow's ear as a silk purse?  (But that old saying is unfortunate in this case, unfairly associating an honest animal, the pig, with these slinky moneybags.)  Did you think we wouldn't notice that these mendacious documents never even mention  "liquefied natural gas?"   And do you think we haven't heard the one  about the high-class woman who accepts a million-dollar proposition, and then takes offense at a second offer of ten bucks?  "What do you think I am?" she asks, indignantly.  "We've already established that, Madame," goes the punch line.  "Now we're just haggling over the price."

We hope everyone who read "Bradwood Landing and the Legacy of Salmon"  feels as patronized, offended, and disgusted as we do.   We hope when  everyone looks at the pretty pictures (including the comically out-of-proportion Puget Island, making it look far away from harm's way), they will see the destruction of the night sky, hear the end of the river's silence, and sense the jeopardy in which these "neighbors"  will place us if they get their way.  "Our Commitment is Total,""  reads the oily text.  That much is true: total ruination of the Lower Columbia.  If we really believed that their "guiding principal" is to "nurture and safeguard the surrounding environment" and that they will "deliver a net improvement in the Lower Columbia ecosystem," we would fully justify their faith in our stupidity.  Don't be sucked in, folks: a deal with these people is a deal with the devil.

Robert and Thea Pyle
Gray's River