Commentary and Opinion by Samuel Strait – April 12, 2023 After being laid up for the past eight days, as promised, a look into the remote possibility that the drinking water of both Smith River and Crescent City is unfit to drink. So says Mr. Grant Werschkull, acting on behalf of the Smith River Collaborative, an activist group formed recently in Del Norte County. The question immediately becomes, "Can this possibly be true?" Seems that Mr. Werschkull, after being anointed as some kind of "expert" on all things Smith River by our fumbling Chair of the Board of Supervisors, Darren Short, was then "left footed" by Mr. Werschkull's inability to live up to Chair Short's expectations. The "short" answer is "NO". The water for both districts is completely safe to drink as certified by the fact that both community's water is tested quarterly for the past ten years and found absent any evidence that the water contains sufficient contaminants to be a danger to public health. So what is all the fuss about? Seems the local Forest Service has rather than satisfactorily maintaining its forest responsibilities for fire danger, directed its attention to a much more suitable and environmentally acceptable target, "Legacy Mines". Clearly something that will not fight back and groups like Friends of Del Norte, The Smith River Alliance, and now the Smith River Collaborative can get behind with regard to the exploitation of the Smith River by evil humans. Of course the target has long been dead and buried by a century or more, but it in the minds of people like Grant Werschkull and his friends at the local forest service headquarters, the dangers continue waiting patiently for abatement. While Mr. Werschkull totally abused the public comment period limit of three minutes with his long rambling prattle lacking any notion of being an expert for twenty minutes, Chair Short, mouth agape, seemed unable to raise his gavel of authority, to cut off Mr. Werschkull's vain attempt to appear relevant, and the public was suitably warned about the impending crisis the "Legacy Mines" posed to our water supply. Seems this particular folly was preceded by a similar plea to the City's Council who folded like a cheap suit in the face of some one getting some grant money, worthy or not. We now know that Mr. Werschkull was using his well tested method of "protecting" the Smith River from any and all human activity in the vicinity of the Smith River, valid or not. What we did not find out until recently, is that minute traces of metals, which include copper and chromium, as well as arsenic, are the result of surface runoff during our normal wet weather months that pose no issues for drinking water. Unless the forest service is planing to abate the entire County for the contamination rather than a few hundred cubic yards of old mine tailings, the forest service's request for the County's letter of support is an expensive to the taxpayer fantasy of further mismanagement by the forest service. Questions posed by several Supervisors, "Does the forest service abatement program pose any future contamination issues for drinking water once the mine material is disturbed?" With no answer forth coming, perhaps a little digging into the less than stellar performance of other federal government abatement projects around legacy mines is in order. Prior to 2008 issues with Department of Interior scientists were exposed first in several "mine abatement " projects that did not turn out as expected, then dam removals, the Klamath River dams among the exposures, with highly questionable data driven conclusions. This forced the Department to re-examine several projects with expertise from outside the department where they learned that the information from most of these projects were tainted by inaccurate findings. One of the projects consisted of a mine abatement where the project located in Colorado contaminated the water supply of several towns along the river in question. So, "Yes" there is the concern that the forest service project could cause future contamination of the water supply. And, secondly there is no reasonable conclusion that leads one to believe that the legacy mines pose any sort of contamination risk to the public currently if ever. The Board of Supervisors should refrain from offering support to the forest service and be more concerned with the County's "real" issues, something Grant Werschkull clearly has opposed, like fostering a viable economy, say what?