Posted on 08/03/2006 10:14:43 AM PDT by calcowgirl
The new president of PacifiCorp's power generating division says the utility could agree to remove five dams from the Klamath River to help restore salmon if customers don't have to pay more for electricity.
"We have heard the tribes' concerns," PacifiCorp Energy President Bill Fehrman said in a statement posted Wednesday on the utility's Web site. "We are not opposed to dam removal or other settlement opportunities as long as our customers are not harmed and our property rights are respected."
The company said the statement reflected its position all along in talks concerning a new 50-year license to operate the dams. But Native American tribes characterized it as an encouraging move toward restoring salmon to 350 miles of river blocked by the dams for nearly 100 years.
In Portland, about 200 people, mostly members of tribes along the Klamath River, rallied at the Oregon Convention Center where 2,000 hydroelectric experts from around the world met for a conference.
Demonstrators chanted "Undam the Klamath, bring the salmon home" as tribal representatives voiced cautious optimism that the new PacifiCorp management would hear their words.
"The company is behaving differently under the new management," said Craig Tucker, coordinator of the dam removal campaign for the Karuk Tribe. "Certainly when we first started, they said there was no way they were going to consider dam removal. This is the first time they've released a media statement with us saying, 'Dam removal is OK by us.' They just don't want to stick it to (their) ratepayers."
PacifiCorp posted the statement at the request of the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath and other tribes, in conjunction with the rally.
"By working with us on this visionary restoration effort, PacifiCorp could become a model for corporate responsibility," Allen Foreman, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, said in a statement.
The tribes will be looking to Oregon and California governments to develop a package of grants and tax incentives to help PacifiCorp remove the dams, Tucker said.
The cost of that package will become more clear as the relicensing process continues, and PacifiCorp sees what it will have to spend to continue operating the dams, he added.
PacifiCorp created PacifiCorp Energy and hired Fehrman from a Nebraska power cooperative as part of a reorganization after being taken over this year by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., based in Des Moines, Iowa, and controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett.
Fehrman has been active in settlement talks and has spoken with tribal leaders since becoming president, said Dave Kvamme, a company spokesman.
"We would far prefer reaching a settlement agreeable to all parties than to work through the standard licensing process to its conclusion," Kvamme said, "because we think there's more room for a creative outcome through settlement than there is through standard licensing process."
Once the third-largest producer of salmon on the West Coast, the Klamath River has produced only a fraction of its historic runs since five dams were built between 1917 and 1962. Spring chinook are a remnant of former runs. Fall chinook are struggling. And coho salmon are listed as a threatened species.
To protect the Klamath's struggling fall runs of wild chinook, federal fisheries managers this year cut off most of the commercial salmon fishing along 700 miles of the California and Oregon coastline. The Bush administration is considering an economic disaster declaration to make possible millions of dollars in aid for salmon fishermen.
The dams produce about 150 megawatts, enough to power about 75,000 homes in California. The power represents 1.7 percent of PacifiCorp's total output for 1.6 million customers in six Western states.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is expected to issue an environmental impact statement later this year on PacifiCorp's application for a new license to operate the dams.
As part of the licensing process, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said it wants to see fish ladders built over all the dams and fish screens installed on the turbines so salmon can return to the upper Klamath Basin. In the past that would have been mandatory, but changes this year to federal energy law give PacifiCorp a chance to challenge it. An administrative law judge will hear the case starting Aug. 21.
Please refer to my Reply #20, above. Thanks.
And I think you are absolutely correct in that assumption!!! I just know you are!!! I just can't prove it...
Surely, the taxpayers wouldn't object to paying for a massive dredging project, coincident with the dams being taken down.
Or pitchforks. ;-)
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