Dam supporters will find out if they have proposed doing enough
Later today the Pacific Northwest will hear what the Obama administration has to say about Columbia River Salmon and dams.
Whatever they say it will mark a new chapter in a legal fight that foes back to the beginning of the 1990s. It started when the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe petitioned the federal government to protect Snake River sockeye salmon as an endangered species.
Since that time the region’s power structure has fought to keep its hydroelectric system intact, to keep water flowing to farm fields, keep barges shipping 700 miles inland to Lewiston and to allow development to continue. In that time the population has continued to grow to more than 10 million people, the aluminum industry has all but left and salmon numbers rose from the brink of extinction.
Now the battle lines have shifted. All of the region’s tribes, except the Nez Perce are supporting the current biological opinion for the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers. Even the Nez Perce aren’t challenging the Upper Snake biological opinion after an historic agreement with the state of Idaho and irrigators.
The Shoshone Bannock, who started it all also are on board.
Idaho WaterUsers Association executive director Norm Semanko, who also heads the Idaho GOP, wrote this week in southern Idaho’s Ag Weekly that the captive breeding program that has increase Redfish Lake sockeye numbers from one to more than 1,000 is proof the region’s plan is working.
And Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest River Partners a coalition of utilities, irrigation groups, barge shippers and other industries with a stake in the hydropower in the region, says even the $1 billion increased cost of the current biological opinion is worth it.
With the states of Washington, Montana and Idaho on the side of the current plan, Washington’s powerful Democratic senators and most Republicans in the region, the politics of the decision are reasonably clear. Only Oregon, environmentalists, commercial fishing interests, the sport fishing industry and salmon fishermen are standing against it.
But they have national support and the Endangered Species Act on their side. The Obama administration’s trick now is to try to bring the law over to its side.
If it doesn’t do it to the satisfaction of U.S. District Judge James Redden of Portland, then the next chapter will be filled with new drama.
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from salmon recovery.gov
September 15, 2009: The federal government today filed with the United States District Court of Oregon a plan to implement the 2008 FCRPS BiOp. Following an extensive review of the BiOp, the Administration said that the BiOp, combined with the implementation plan, is legally and biologically sound and based on the best available science. Documents and background information here.
So this says, despite what details will be spun by the environmentalists and sympathetic newspapers and reporters is that the Obama Administration says the "Bush" bi-op is legally and biologically sound!
salmon plan
Here's a good indication of the rigor of the new plan: If salmon abundance drops below certain thresholds, a "rapid response" is triggered.
Not only do the feds have up to a year to implement the "rapid" response, but the plan suggests such aggressive, population-based measures as . . . trapping more sea lions. And raising the bounty on pikeminnows.
Something like Nero fiddling while Rome burns.
None of this actually means anything.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...