The City Light license to operate the dams expires April 30, 2025. Meanwhile, the clock is relentlessly eating up time, with much yet to resolve about fisheries issues.
The leak of more than a quarter million gallons of gasoline and resulting explosion and fire shook Bellingham and its environment. The disaster was compounded by the deaths of two boys and a young man who had been at Whatcom Creek that day.
Seattle City Light has long claimed that its Skagit River hydroelectric dams had little effect on salmon spawning grounds that the tribes say were blocked by Gorge Dam. But now the dams need federal approval for relicensing.
The original sin, according to some Hawaiian activists, was committed by the “colonialists,” including the sanctimonious New England missionaries whose descendants prospered mightily from sugarcane.
A hellacious, killer wildfire was not high on Hawaii’s list of expected alarms. But, as in many other emergency situations over time, the islands residents would realize, too late, what had led to the terrible events of August 8.
Fisken was a unique combination of banker, reformer, fiscal conservative, author, and humanitarian. He was a most useful citizen who tried, in his lifetime, to make things better for people.