[Vision2020] Veracity of the Moscow Civic Association

[Phil Nisbet]

I started this as a behind the scenes letter to Saundra, but the 
Livingstone's comments tell me that I need to post it to the complete board.


Saundra

Then let me back up and make some very basic statements to you.

In a democracy, the people debate the issues and then make an informed 
choice as to the course they wish their community to follow.  The Moscow 
Civic Association, in that perfect world, has as its stated goal the 
fostering of that debate.

The trouble is that that is not what is happening.

What we are faced with is the MCA getting together and figuring out what 
they want to happen in the community and then fostering that as the goal.  
With goal in hand, MCA puts out its agenda and tells any who might disagree 
to come and debate the 'community', or in some cases does not even ask for 
the other side to come to debate.

That is not democracy, its oligarchy.

When the Naylor's first sought a water right and that became an issue, did 
MCA ever contact them and ask them to come to any MCA meeting and present 
their idea of what they wanted to do with what has been their family's 
property for the last 140 years?  The answer is that MCA never asked them.  
MCA met in secret and then started to host anti-Naylor Farms mass meetings.

Is that fostering community debate or simply spreading political propaganda 
for one side of a debate?

Following these mass meetings to which Naylor was never invited, many things 
which were indeed not fact were presented to the community as FACTS.  Then 
political pressure was placed on State and local agencies and leaders to toe 
a 'community' line and accept those 'facts' as reality.

I tried to correct MCA on numerous occasions, as a private citizen and was 
simply blown off as though I existed not as a human being, but a stooge for 
some supposed giant conspiracy.  (You complain about being lumped and that I 
do not know you, yet have you ever had a complete organization characterize 
you, publish it here and there, not have one fact correct and yet have it 
blared from the front page of Newspapers?)

First, the Naylor Family is indeed the Naylor family and not some strange 
evile group of rich folks.  They each held small percentages of ground held 
by their Great Grandfather, who was one of the founders of the City of 
Moscow.  The individual bits of land were not large enough to be farmed, but 
the family wanted it to stay farm land.  To consolidate the land, they 
formed a family farming company and duly incorporated it as a Limited 
Liability Company under the state's laws.  That’s pretty common in the state 
and if anybody had even looked, every single shareholder in that corporation 
is a direct descendent of Ralph Naylor.  There are no Non-family members 
involved.

But at MCA's meeting, Ralph Naylor Farms was characterized as a 'front' 
organization for a Canadian mining company.  As a matter of fact, the 
statement was made that there were interlocking boards of directors between 
i minerals inc and Naylor Farms.

A simple examination of the corporate record would have established that the 
MCA statement was false.  No person who has shares in Naylor Farms has a 
seat on i mineral incs board or works for i minerals inc.  There is no 
agreement (And since i minerals inc is a public company, any agreement would 
have to be published or a criminal act would have taken place) between 
Naylor Farms and i minerals inc.  The Naylors were just community members 
trying to figure out what to do with their Land, property of their family.

The Naylors are friends of mine, which is the only connection, and I work 
for i minerals inc.  I do not own any shares in Naylor Farms.

Because they are friends of mine and as friends follow what I have been 
doing out in Helmer and Bovill, some of the Naylor Family purchased shares 
of i minerals inc on the open market.  It’s a public company and has 
hundreds of shareholders and the Naylors are just one group of those many.  
The big dogs, the people who control the company, are from Coeur d'Alene and 
Idaho Falls and not one of them has a share in Naylor Farms.  That also is a 
matter of public record.

The Naylors started with the idea that if they changed crops from the 
current drylands wheat and lentils, they could make the farm a paying 
proposition.  The Farm is a free and clear million bucks worth of real 
estate and the income from the property is $18,000 a year, which is a 1.8% 
return.  That is if the crop price and if the harvest is normal, which in 
many years it simply is not.  They would make more money simply selling out 
to the developers and putting the money in the Bank.

Latah County approached the Naylors and suggested that they look at a series 
of alternative crops.  Latah County Rural Development and the BOCC 
encouraged Naylors to change out from wheat.  At the same time, they were 
approached by developers who offered to buy the farm for 1.5 million bucks 
so that the 1.5 miles of highway frontage and the 638 acres behind that 
could be turned into housing and shopping north of town.  Those meetings 
between the county and Naylor Farms are also part of the public record.

So the Naylors pledged their wheat receipts, the money they make every year, 
for as long as it took to find an alternative crop.  They decided as a 
family that they did not want their family farm to become Moscow North 
Developments.

Chris Storhok, as the Latah County Rural Development Coordinator, did a 
large amount of research and presented it to the Naylors.  His suggestion 
was that drip irrigated crops would bring in a reasonable return.  His focus 
was herbals and he was hoping that those could then be used to foster an 
herbal business here in the county that would give value added jobs beyond 
just the farm.

As a friend to all concerned, I suggested that they look at grapes.  I have 
a cousin in California who was quite successful with a vineyard and artist 
colony combo.  A grape crop would also require irrigation, but they were 
looking at that anyway.

So the Naylor's paid for studies for grape crop growing.  The resulting 
report suggested that the degree temperature days in Moscow and at Naylor 
Farm on south facing slopes were excellent for making high value wine 
grapes.  North facing slopes would not be useful.  There are 199 acres of 
south facing slopes on their farm.

Further, the grape study suggested that in order to prevent lose of grape 
vines during the winter months, lakes can provide micro-climates that keep 
the root stock from freezing and dying.  In order to get the amount of land 
next to the 199 acres turned into lakes that would provide micro climate, 
the ground would have to be changed and that would take moving 2 million 
tons of earth.

But that same work showed that if the Naylors carried out these plans, they 
had every chance of producing about three tons of grapes per acre, about 600 
tons of grapes in total and that the change would bring in $300,000 a year 
in net farm income after the vineyard was established.  It takes 5 years to 
establish a vineyard from scratch, but the potential returns looked to make 
it worth doing.

They had the land.  The mortgage value of the land was sufficient to build 
the vineyard.  They lacked two things, water and a way to move 2 million 
tons of dirt to build lakes.

The MCA's meetings and reports suggest that at this point the Naylors 
applied for more water than the cities of Moscow and Pullman combined.  That 
is not the case.  They went to Idaho Department of Water Resource and asked 
them what amount of water they had to apply for.  IDWR assigned them an 
amount that IDWR insisted was the amount of water they were required to ask 
for.  It was an extremely large amount of water, but it was not the 2.4 
billion gallons that MCA suggested.

The Naylors realized that they did not need that amount of water and 
withdrew their initial request, going back in to IDWR and asking 
specifically for enough water to irrigate 199 acres of ground by drip 
irrigation with peak summer misting with water.  They also applied for a 
small amount of industrial water, which I will get into in a minute.

MCA has stated that IDWR refused the first request, but that is not true.  
The Naylors and not IDWR asked for the very first reduction in amount of 
water.

Drip irrigating those 199 acres of ground simply puts an average rainfall 
amount on the land at what is the hot dry period of time for the Moscow 
area.  During the peak heat, when temperatures can soar to the hundred 
degree mark, requires some additional water to throw a mist of water vapor 
in the air and keep the plants cool.  6 inches of water over a four month 
period was all that looked required for the irrigation side of the equation.

There are 325,851 gallons of water in an acre foot, which is the amount of 
water that putting a foot of water over an acre of land is.  The irrigation 
of Naylor Farms 199 acres of grape crop area drip irrigated for the 4 months 
of season that they had applied for would take 6 inches or half a foot of 
water spread over that total amount of land or a total of just less than 100 
acre feet of water.  It’s not hard to do the math, it’s just over 30 million 
gallons of water.

But IDWR told Naylors that they could not apply for only the amount they 
wanted to get and use.  They were required to request three acre feet of 
water for every acre of irrigated land.  IDWR told them that this was not a 
problem, since once they were using water, their allotment would be reduced 
to actual use rather than the higher figure.  Still, that is just under 600 
acre feet of water, about 190,000,000 gallons of water, not 2,400,000,000 
gallons which is the amount that Moscow and Pullman use, the figure that MCA 
has bruited about.

That brings us to the other concern they had.  They needed to pay for moving 
one heck of a lot of dirt to build lakes.  Moving that 2 million tons of 
dirt would require them to spend about 6 million dollars.  How to pay for 
that and build 150 acres of lakes?

I had already told the Naylors that the clay on their property was not of a 
sufficient quality to justify commercial mining.  It has some value as 
possible pottery clay, but it is not of a value that could be used in the 
large industrial applications that consume lots of clay.  The pottery clay 
market is small, but it was possible, since larger minerals operations are 
not interested in tiny markets, that they could sell some clay every year to 
local potters in the Pacific Northwest.  The total market for that 
application is only about 5,000 tons a year, but it was possible that they 
could make about a quarter million a year in profits to offset building 
their lakes.

5,000 tons of clay is not a big volume of clay.  The clay beds on the 
Naylors place are about 20 foot thick, which gives about 55,000 tons of clay 
under every acre of their ground.  But it takes a lot of money to mine and 
process clay, so only the clay that has less than one foot of overburden for 
every foot of clay would be minable on their property.  Only about ten acres 
of land on the farm have overburden thin enough for practical mining of 
clay, but that is 110 years worth of market supply for the pottery industry.

Processing 5,000 tons of clay with water requires 2000 gallons of water for 
each ton of clay processed.  Though the Naylor's were not sure that the clay 
in the one suitable area would be good enough for local potters, since they 
would need to do test work to establish that, they went ahead and applied 
for enough industrial water to process that amount of clay.  Once again, 
IDWR informed them that they would have to apply for more water than they 
actually wanted, indeed they were told to apply for ten times the industrial 
water that they wanted or needed.  Again, they were assured that once they 
had a use, the water right would be adjusted to actual use of the water and 
that they were somehow required to ask for the higher amount of water.

So, once they had finished with IDWR, the real request, the one that was 
actually protested, was about 10% of the use that the Cities of Moscow and 
Pullman currently use.  It was more than the Naylors needed, but they had 
been assured that once they actually started to operate, it would be reduced 
to slightly more than 40,000,000 million gallons they had calculated were 
required for their project.

Of course, the Cities of Moscow and Pullman protested their getting any 
water, but assurances were negotiated and a Protocol was devised to see that 
if their actual water use harmed the cities or other water users, they would 
not continue pumping.

It was at that point that the MCA intervened and that the MCA convinced the 
county to try to block Naylor Farms from any water.  A letter was drafted 
and a petition circulated that claimed that Naylor Farms was requesting 2.4 
Billion gallons of water, more water than the Cities of Moscow and Pullman 
combined.

Larry Kirkland from the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee flat told the MCA 
that the number they were using was false.  Idaho Department of Water 
Resources flat told the MCA that the number was false.  The experts along 
the way also informed the MCA that the figure that they were using was 
false.  It did not matter, even after the denial of the water right to 
Naylor, the same false number was used to crow triumph.

Is it fostering debate for an organization to put out a completely false 
figure and claim that it represents the truth?

Once the protestors, the Cities of Moscow and Pullman, had withdrawn their 
protest in favor of the protocol, the interveners under Idaho Law are 
supposed to also be dismissed.  IDWR asked the Naylors to try to come to a 
deal with the interveners and include them in the protocol.  Meetings were 
held, but the interveners were not interested in simply being included in 
the agreement, they wanted to completely rewrite it.  No deal was reached, 
but because the Naylor’s had agreed to discuss that issue with them, IDWR 
called for hearings.

While all that was going on, the Naylors decided to start to work on 
gathering the geological data that they would need to establish where a well 
could best be placed and what the actual geology under the complete farm 
was.  They needed a geologist and a hydrologist to get that work done, but 
the cost of drilling and trenching required would eat up all of their funds. 
  I recommended several area consultants and went to meetings with the 
Naylors to discuss contracts with some of them, but the consultants figured 
that their costs would be equal to the cost of drilling and trenching.  The 
Naylors simply did not have that sort of money.

So after a few beers one night, I agreed to help them out, to do the work 
they needed done as a freebie.  I told them at the time that they would 
still need to eventually hire a licensed hydrologist, since hydrology is not 
something I do, but at least they would have the geology of the farm to hand 
off to the guy.

Three core holes and 27 trenches were dug, all the drill logs of existing 
water wells for the farm were collected.  Every paper ever written on the 
hydrology and geology of the area to the north of Moscow was gathered.  I 
spent weekends and time after work on the project, took sick days off to 
help out, but in the final analysis, I did not have the time it took to 
complete all the work and still do my regular job.

Still, the data was new and showed that previous mapping to the north of 
Moscow had been in error.  It had been suggested that the ground below 
Naylor Farms was composed exclusively of a thin veneer of soil over the top 
of Granite.  The drilling showed that there were 470 feet of sediment and 
basalt prior to hitting any granite.  It was more information than had ever 
been available to any geologist who had worked trying to figure out what was 
happening north of Moscow.

And the Naylors opened up that data to anybody who wanted to come and look 
at it.  Nobody did.  The political controversy swirling around the claim of 
billions of gallons of water requested scared off any geologists and 
hydrologists who might have benefited from having additional data.  To this 
date, no professional other than myself and Mr. Squires, has even looked at 
Naylor Farms core or trench work.

I verbally presented the information that had been gathered at a hearing 
before IDWR and the interveners in the fall of 2004.  Not one of the 
interveners had bothered to seek any geological input and the IDWR granted 
the Naylors their rights to test under the protocol to see if there were 
sufficient gallons of water and sufficient lack of connectivity to allow the 
Naylors to get the water that they required.

The false number that MCA had put forward, and continued to use, sparked 
major controversy over the grant by IDWR.  It was blared on the Radio and 
shouted from headlines in the paper.  It was not true, but as with any big 
lie, it became a "fact".

So the interveners needed a reason to overturn the ruling.  They picked the 
fact that I do not possess a geologist's license as the means of overturning 
the ruling.

First, understand, that company staff geologists are not required to be 
licensed under the state's law.  I have never required a license or ever had 
need for one in the 25 years that I have worked in this business.  I have my 
degrees and work experience and have published 34 peer reviewed works over 
the years.  I have mapped the specific rocks which are present at Naylor 
Farms for over 8 years and have more experience with logging core related to 
those rocks than any other geologist currently living.

But MCA 'hired' several geologists to show that I was not correct in what I 
had mapped and trenched and drilled.  Not one of the geologists that MCA 
hired initially were licensed either, but that was never mentioned to the 
public.  Not one of the geologists who MCA hired ever looked at the rocks, 
the core or the maps generated on the work at Naylor, but they were willing 
to state that it just could not be true what those samples actually said.

I learned that I was targeted from the front page of the newspaper.  No 
person who chose to attack me had the courtesy to actually call me.  I was 
never invited to present either my side of the story or the data that was 
supposed to be generating the controversy.  But members of MCA and of 
Protect Our Water felt perfectly free to send letters by the bushel to the 
county prosecutor, to state officials and to the county attempting to make 
me out as a criminal.

I would ask, is it fostering debate to attempt to criminalize your 
opposition without ever hearing what he might have to say?

First I was cleared of all the attempts to have me charged by the State 
Board in charge of licensing.  The Idaho Board for Professional Geologists 
is the agency which is supposed to prefer charges if there are to be any, so 
being cleared by them should have been enough to show that I had done 
nothing wrong.  But it did not end there.

Even though I had been cleared, political pressure was continued and the 
County Prosecutor attempted to forward complaints to the Nez Perce County 
Prosecutors office to have me charged.  The Prosecutor never called me or 
attempted to ask me any questions and neither did the Nez Perce County 
Prosecutors office.  I learned about these attempts to criminalize me from 
the paper once again, blaring that I had done something wrong.  There was 
never a front page article out when I was cleared of all charges in even 
that attempt to silence me.

But I find it interesting, if the MCA was seeking justice uniformly, why 
they did not turn in Dr. John Bush, Professor of Geology, who also lacks a 
license.  Why did the MCA not turn in and insist on an investigation on Reed 
Lewis and on John Kauffman of the Idaho Geological Survey, who are also 
un-licensed geologists?  Why did the MCA not turn in and have CE Brockway, 
the consultant for Latah County, turned in for his lack of a license?

Unlike myself, each of these individuals actually does require a license 
under Idaho law, but they were testifying on the behalf of the MCA, so of 
course only I was targeted.  Its great to debate when only one side gets to 
use who they want as an expert, now isn't it?

By the time of the second hearing, the Naylors could afford just one expert. 
  He was stacked against five people who the establishment could afford to 
hire.  The Naylor's could only afford to pay this guy for a few days, so he 
never had the chance to do a full review of the data or to even go out on 
the property.  He showed up, hit the hearing and headed home.

On the other hand, the experts for the interveners, including MCA, had not 
looked at the data, the ground or the core.  They gave their opinions about 
the geology of the area without critical information, the best information 
available.  MCA's side did no trenching, no drilling, took no samples and 
did not even go on the property involved.  They had no hard data, just their 
personal suppositions as to what the geology of that property was.  The 
Naylors offered right up to the time of the hearing to allow them to come 
and look at the core and the trench samples and the maps and the rest, but 
the advice of the intervener’s attorneys was to stick to avoiding the data.

Its pretty amazing when to help foster debate, you close even your experts 
off from looking at data which might favor the other side.

So IDWR made a ruling.  It amazes me that you at MCA or those with POW would 
be cheering.

In its ruling IDWR decided that all water north of Moscow belongs to the 
City of Moscow as the senior water rights holder.  Further, they ruled that 
even though Naylor's would not get their water right or the right to even 
test for water, the City of Moscow had plenty of room to apply for and get 
all the water there and they specifically did not restrict the City of 
Moscow from doing so.

And a news flash for those of you who MCA supposedly represented north of 
town.  Moscow has the senior water right, where Naylor Farms never would 
have.  You could have used the Protocol or used the courts to halt Naylor 
Farms from over pumping the aquifer and drying your wells up.  What IDWR 
ruled means that the city can simply suck all the water below your land dry, 
since they have the senior water right and get their appropriation first.  
If it means your well goes dry, tough luck, live with it.

And now you are not even protected by the fact that the aquifer in the 
Sediment of Bovill is separate from the Wannapum and the Grande Ronde, 
because the ruling of IDWR says there is no Aquifer in the Sediment of 
Bovill, only Wannapum and Grande Ronde.

So the City of Moscow will build new play fields and WSU will build a new 
golf course and between them, they will use as much water as Naylor Farms 
would have.  Naylor Farms will probably end up being turned into a housing 
project and strip malls, which will end up using as much water as Naylors 
proposal.  There will never be a discussion or a debate about whether it 
makes more sense to grow grapes or add 18 holes, if we want Moscow to remain 
an agricultural town with green space or just another suburban sprawl zone.

So when I see Bruce writes;

"But we're glad to know that some politicians are listening to us.  Perhaps 
that's because we try not to make grand overstatements, and instead try to 
base our arguments and requests on facts."

Bruce Livingston, Moscow Civic Association

You are going to have to excuse me for laughing.  You will also have to 
excuse me for not readily believing anything that MCA has to say after my 
experience with that organization.

Phil Nisbet

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