02/14/05 Water outlook; AgJobs back

The water outlook for this year is getting drier for the Pacific Northwest. The National Resources Conservation Service reports snow pack in the Inland parts of the region are dismal, with little hope of improvement in the upcoming weeks. Explaining what is happening is U.S.D.A. Meteorologist Brad Rippey. RIPPEY: Because the multi-year drought reservoirs across the Interior Northwest are low, and snow packs are extremely low because of sub-normal precipitation combined with recent record warmth that's melted off a lot of the lower and mid-elevation snow pack. So what we're facing here is with low reservoir levels and expected small stream flows this spring and summer, another year of irrigation water shortages. The AgJobs bill is back in play in the U.S. Senate. Larry Craig of Idaho, the author of last year's measure, reintroduced the bill last week. The AgJobs bill would create a guest-worker program aimed at identifying and legitimizing the millions of illegal laborers working in the U.S. The goals according to Craig is create and keep the current migrant labor force while creating tighter control of our nation's borders. Craig's measure passed the Senate last year but failed to reach the President's desk for his signature into law. This year, there is a companion bill in the House, with hopes by Craig that President Bush will receive the AgJobs bill by this spring. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. ALLEN: From an environmental perspective the demise of DDT has been heralded as quite an achievement. With the American Eagle as it's poster child, activist forever changed the consciousness of a nation in regard to pesticide use and in doing so erased the benefits of DDT from history. Today's youth are not taught that DDT was responsible for saving the lives of million of allied troops in world war II, nor were they ever given the facts that after the war the US spearheaded a global malaria eradiation campaign so successful that the National Academy of Sciences reported that in a little more than two decades DDT had prevented 500 million deaths. There are many in the medical communities today that feel the time is ripe to revisit using DDT to fight Malaria in Africa. Mere minuscule amounts of the pesticide sprayed inside homes could save the lives of millions yet sadly the global health institutes will not finance it use. Is it any wonder why? I'm Susan Allen and this is Food Forethought.