(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Democrat-run state of Oregon sunk $9 billion into a salmon population recovery program that reports indicated was a giant boondoggle.
This project was one of hundreds that took place in the Columbia River Basin—all of which failed to produce significant results, according to ZeroHedge.
Bill Jaeger, professor of applied economics at Oregon State University, co-authored the study, which reviewed 50 years of salmon return data at the lowest dam on the Columbia River.
Before the dams went up, 16 million salmon would return to the basin annually; that number fell to 1.5 million by 2010.
“For a long time, there have been questions about the effectiveness of a wide range of activities taken to try to restore salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin,” Jaeger said.” We do not find evidence of an increase in wild fish.”
Several species faced steep declines in population, as the dams prevented fish from swimming upriver.
“Many of those species listed since the 1990s under the Endangered Species Act are ones for which the numbers have declined and continue to be of great concern,” Jaeger added.
Jaeger claimed that the research into the salmon population was more or less ineffectual due to the lack of a rigorous methodology and unwise spending.
“The operations and the administration of these projects could have done a lot more to do serious cost-effective analysis to determine which of these activities seems to be generating more bang for the buck,” he said.
He did conclude that it was not “useful” to discuss the wasted money, and insisted on a positive outlook for future government funded projects.
“I’m not sure how useful it is to talk about whether the money was wasted or not. That’s behind us,” he said. “I think what one can do, and what one should do, is look at this evidence and ask ‘what should we be doing differently going forward?”
The likely answer, ZeroHedge cracked, “Cue up another $9 billion, we guess…”
Taxpayers foot the bill for corporate subsidies for electric vehicles as well, despite the significant damage wrought on the environment via mining, increased CO2 emissions and running on electricity generated from fossil fuels.
