Judge James Redden made it clear Wednesday he believes federal dam managers have to do more if they want to avoid the regional train wreck environmental groups, sportsmen and others represented by environmental lawyers Earthjustice advocate.
He warned of “very harsh” consequences he had previously identified, including ordering more water from Idaho reservoirs, less water for hydroelectric generation and even drawing down reservoirs behind dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
He specifically pointed to Oregon’s suggestion of the drawing down of the John Day Dam on the Columbia, which kills more fish than any of the other eight dams between the Pacific and Idaho. But he acknowledged he didn’t expect the Bush administration to include breaching the four dams in its final biological opinion, according to the Oregonian.
Still Redden held out hope that a collaborative effort between federal agencies, the states and Indian tribes might yield a legally and biological defensible biological opinion. Some tribes appear to back the federal and state coalition. Others clearly aren’t there, at least not yet.
Part of the reason may be because of the issue of harvest. A separate biological opinion is in the works that would analyze whether fishing jeopardizes the 13 stocks of threatened and endangered salmon.
The tribes view their rights to fish as high a legal priority as the Endangered Species Act. They would not like to see it analyzed as a part of the analysis of these two biological opinions.
Salmon advocates had argued, and Redden accepted, the idea that the biological opinion for the Upper Snake, which is based on the Nez Perce water rights agreement, must be analyzed with the Columbia and lower Snake dam biological opinion.
They suffer a logical disconnect by not including fishing in the analysis since it is the sacred cow of their coalition. For an overall recovery plan for salmon to be able to scientifically predict recovery without breaching the four Snake dams, or perhaps John Day, it might be necessary to restrict fishing far more than already done.
If Redden were to strike down these two dam biological opinions in 2008 would the “very harsh” measures inherently have to include restrictions on fishing? I don’t think the tribes or other fishermen or fishing-related businesses want to go there.
Oregon remained firmly on the side of the salmon advocates Wednesday. They have long advocated a truly aggressive non-breach plan recognizing that such a plan may cost the region more than breaching the four dams, which does not have the necessary political support.
Redden appears ready to listen if Oregon can convince the other states, the tribes and the federal government to take the harsh medicine such a plan might need to pass scientific muster. I think the judge would rather be the engineer of a road map to recovery than the one who runs the train into the river.
Delicious
Digg
Yahoo
Yippee!
No Christmas presents for the judge...lumps of coal are enviromentally hazardous if the Post Office truck catches fire.
Forgot...
The State Of California has determined water is hazardous to the health of humans as it contains fish, a known toxic subject to agriculture. Humans are advised not to drink or use it.
;-pppppppp
We don't even get that paper here!
Haven't in maybe ten years.
Time to look at the facts about salmon.
Lest we forget that the majority of the power generated by the dams is for the benefit of aluminum manufacture (Kaiser et al in Washington State), or so it was when I argued and submitted comment in 1995 or so.
On top of that, in the Jan. 2000 issue of the peer reviewed journal “Fisheries” there was a tale-tale article on the importance of salmon in the upland streams. They were identified as a keystone specie since the majority of phosphates and nitrates needed by the upland ecosystems is ocean derived and transported to these places, like central Idaho, by spawning salmon and by no other means. There are no other means by which large quantities of these nutrients can be transported and distributed widely than the natural systems can provide.
In that study, it was indicated that the majority of the flora, fauna, and microbial species that sustain nutrient base levels for everything from algae and trees to grizzly bears, rely on the nutrients transported to the region by salmon.
It is probably, in my opinion, the reason the forests cannot ward off biological attack by bark beetles and rust etc., due to the fact that the forests, in general, have been starved of the nutrients they require to repel such invasions…
We have caused the forests to have deficiencies equivalent to HIV/AIDS by eliminating the salmon numbers that historically fed them.
We humans should learn to control ourselves before we expect nature to accommodate our desires.
How negative.
Just eat it if you need it and stop waitng to find Nirvana.