The US Department of Energy recently approved a proposal to build a natural gas terminal in Coos Bay, OR, a plan that fish advocates argue will do far more environmental harm than economic good.  The plan calls for dredging the Coos River so that tankers can reach the natural gas terminal.  The Coos is a productive salmon watershed, where anglers regularly find big fall chinook.  And Coos Bay is only twenty-five miles from where the Umpqua, famed steelhead river, reaches the ocean.  Any environmental disaster here could further damage that fishery.  

The state of Oregon has asked federal regulators to revoke its approval of the terminal, on the grounds that any public good from the terminal would be nil, given the recent terminal begun on the OR/CAL border.

We all await the Fed’s decision.  But it might be time to sharpen our swords.