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Posted on 05/28/2005 10:06:43 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
GRANTS PASS, Ore. - A federal court ruling that rejects the Bush administration's latest effort to balance Columbia Basin salmon recovery against hydroelectric dams has fish conservationists pressing anew for breaching four dams on the lower Snake River.
"What the law requires is an honest analysis of how we configure the hydro system so we can get salmon back in our rivers," said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the National Wildlife Federation. "What all the scientists tell us is such an honest analysis would call for breaching the lower four Snake River dams."
But with President Bush and the Republican-led Congress dead set against the breaching the dams, the idea remains a long way from going anywhere.
"Breaching or removing our dams is not an option," U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris, R-Wash., said in a statement. "The river systems throughout the Northwest are a critical part of our region's economy and should be used for transportation, irrigation and recreation."
Opinion rejected|
NOAA Fisheries, the agency responsible for restoring threatened and endangered salmon, is not ready to give up on its present course of aggressively working toward salmon recovery short of removing dams, said Bob Lohn, northwest administrator for NOAA Fisheries.
"It does not lead us to the conclusion that it is necessary to remove dams," Lohn said.
The judge has yet to offer orders on what NOAA Fisheries needs to do to fix the problems with the biological opinion, leaving the ruling incomplete, he said. As a result, NOAA Fisheries cannot decide yet whether to appeal the ruling.
U.S. District Judge James Redden in Portland on Thursday roundly rejected NOAA Fisheries' latest biological opinion on the Columbia Basin federal hydroelectric system. The opinion is required under the Endangered Species to make sure that federal dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers do not drive threatened and endangered salmon closer toward extinction.
Redden rejected NOAA Fisheries' approach that the dams were part of the landscape, and removing them was not an option. That was a big change from the 2000 biological opinion, which said that if all else failed, NOAA Fisheries would ask Congress for permission and funding to start breaching dams on the lower Snake.
The latest biological opinion was the fourth from NOAA Fisheries since 1994, and all four have been found wanting by federal courts.
"It's our impression and our desire that dam breeching be put immediately back into consideration as a possible action for a broader recovery program," said Charles Hudson, spokesman for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which represents tribes with treaty rights to salmon and was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "It appears to me that the judge has put the administration in a corner where he found inadequacies to their abilities and commitment to implement the aggressive non-breach plan."
Dams are toughest on millions of juvenile salmon swimming downstream to the ocean. They are chewed up by turbines, dashed on rocks going over the dams, and eaten by birds and fish in slow-moving reservoirs. The more dams they pass, the more fish die.
Political rancor|
According to NOAA Fisheries, an estimated 49.8 percent of juvenile spring and summer chinook swimming past eight dams on the Snake and Columbia do not survive.
The four dams on the lower Snake were the last of the major dams built, primarily to allow barge traffic to reach Lewiston, Idaho. They produce electricity, a fraction of the overall system, but enough to power the city of Seattle. Their completion has been seen by fish conservationists as the straw that broke the camel's back.
The idea of removing them has become the source of intense political rancor, with conservative residents of Eastern Washington viewing them as essential to their economy because they provide cheap barge transportation for grain, raise reservoir levels for agricultural irrigation, and offer lake recreation.
The Seattle City Council angered Eastern Washington when it endorsed dam breaching in 2000. Some Seattle politicians traveled to Eastern Washington the next year to apologize, but the rancor remained.
U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., has regularly tried to push legislation to consider breaching, assembling as many as 100 allies in Congress, but the bill has gone nowhere in the face of Republican opposition.
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski holds out hope that discussions to forge an agreement between Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana and the federal government over dam operations will soon bear fruit, offering a break from a decade of lawsuits.
Mike Carrier, natural resources adviser to Kulongoski, said the discussions are within days of reaching an agreement after holding weekly talks since January.
Kulongoski does not support dam breaching, and his decision to intervene in the lawsuit on the side of environmentalists, Indian tribes and fishermen was to give Oregon a role in crafting a solution outside the courtroom, Carrier said.
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Pssst! The fishies go upriver and DIE, you freaking IDIOTS!!!
Behind all this talk...there is a growing resentment between eastern Washington natives, and western Washington natives. And this split grows bigger and bolder each year. The eastern folks have hinted of splitting off into a separate state. If you took a vote of eastern Washington adults...you'd probably find fifteen percent who are totally in favor of that, which isn't alot. Yet it was half that five years ago. By 2015, you might have a majority of the voters in the region ready to split. And this lays out all kinds of potential episodes with other states thinking of a possible split. If you think the Senate is all screwed up now...add two more senators.
they spawn the next generation, who will come up the same river.
I am not against the dam's because either the fish can handle the down river flow, or they construct a run for the fish.
"Pssst! The fishies go upriver and DIE, you freaking IDIOTS!!!
Yes they do; and, I believe when they get up river, before they die they spawn, which creates little fishies, which then go downstream to the ocean. I think these idiots are talking about the little fishies. They pulled similar cr*pola on the farmers in OR a couple of years ago. There weren't dams involved, but they wouldn't let them use the water from the river for irrigation (as they had done for many years) because of the salmon. Many farmers lost or had to sell their farms.
...and a lot more juveniles who do make it past the dams would actually make it into the ocean, instead of being eaten at the locks, in the harbor, and points in between.
Eastern Oregon would love to go with you.
That is the big hiccup it this whole mess that none of the Eco-nuts want to talk about.
since the native indian and the commerical people are all unhappy with the price of salmon now that salmon farms have been the major source of product on the table, why do they need the dams breached? From Alaska to the NW Salmon population is running at an all time high. What do they want to have happen?
Nam Vet
That is not always true. We see runs shift from river to river occasionally. Fisheries biologists have as many answers why as there are biologists
One of the rivers they want to remove the dam from has had record fish returns after the dam was built in the '30's thru the '70's then there was a precipitous drop-off for a decade only to return in the early '90's.
The removal of the dams is a straw-man argument for fervent anti-capitalist or communists like Representative Baghdad Jim MacDermott. Remember these dam removal advocates are the folks who plant Lynx hair in the National forests and baseball bat salmon to death in runs that defy their socialist agenda.
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