Sounds like Ibsen’s – “An Enemy of the People.”
Yes, An Enemy of the People. The guy finds the contaminated well water or something in the town and it threatens the town’s economic well-being. OK. Back to your questions here, Steve. “Did you initiate contact with Denny Smith’s office?” No, I never initiated any contact.
That’s an important point.
Yes. I was mum about this for four years. I never said a word to anyone. I could have gone to the Oregonian and they would have said hey, we’ll write a story. I could have blown the whistle on this a lot sooner, but I was cautious because I wasn’t sure my data was any good. I needed to verify it and wanted to collect more data. After four years, my information got leaked to Denny Smith. It was leaked to Denny Smith by someone in the Park Service but who, I don’t know.
“Were OSU researchers involved with studies on the lake between ’78 and ’82 [prior to the mandated 10 year study]?” Yes, I mentioned Cliff Dahm in particular. Cliff at that time was a research professor at OSU. He didn’t have tenure, he didn’t have a [tenure track] appointment (34). He was sort of between his doctoral work and finding a permanent job as a college professor. He finally went to the University of New Mexico around ’83 or ’84. He helped me a lot down there, but was the only person in that period from OSU. Cliff and I were at Spirit Lake, too (35).
So it was a pretty small time effort in those first couple of years of the 10-year report.
Yes.
“Why was the length of time 10 years chosen?” I don’t know.
There were a lot of government studies that tended to be 10 years in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
All I remember was that his legislation just said 10 years.
