Removing Dams (From Consideration)

Seated with Kitzhaber was American Rivers' northwest regional director, Rob Masonis. "We would not spend $6 billion dollars to send someone halfway to the moon, or to build half an airport," he declared. "And we should not spend $6 billion dollars to merely slow the rate of extinction of wild salmon and steelhead. Instead, we should invest the money in actions that will lead to recovery, such as breaching the four lower Snake River dams. We had 22 Snake River sockeye return in 2004; and there's a no-jeopardy determination in the Bush biological opinion. That doesn't pass the straight-face test. How could someone possibly conclude that Snake River sockeye aren't in jeopardy? It's legal artifice."

The only good thing about the opinion, according to Masonis, is its back-door admission that tweaking the system won't work. In fact, the document states that you can tweak to the tune of $6 billion and still not make progress. He also worries about costs of maintaining the status quo beyond the $6 billion-such as reluctance on the part of taxpayers and ratepayers to fund initiatives that really work. For example, after spending $160 million on useless fish weirs at the lower Snake River dams, they'd be less enthusiastic about ripping them out along with the dams themselves, even though independent biologists agree that dam breaching is the only solution that can work.

If the Clinton administration had showed some courage and resolve in writing the first biological opinion, that document would have passed court muster and the Bush administration would not have been able to perpetrate all this mischief. In November 1999, as NOAA Fisheries was preparing the biological opinion of 2000, I reported the following in Fly Rod & Reel: "Now President Clinton has an opportunity to set a national precedent for admitting and correcting environmental blunders by dismissing the quack cures of the engineers and disabusing America of the dangerous superstition that we can redesign nature." But because Clinton failed to take that opportunity, because he rejected dam breaching in favor of barging and trucking and other bogus elixirs, Bush's people have been given an opportunity to redesign federal law.

Both administrations had all manner of warning. In March 1999, 206 of the nation's most respected fisheries scientists briefed President Clinton about the realities of salmonid recovery: "The weight of scientific evidence clearly shows that wild Snake River salmon and steelhead runs cannot be recovered under existing river conditions. Enough time remains to restore them, but only if the failed practices of the past are abandoned and we move quickly to restore the normative river conditions under which these fish evolved." Among the signers were Dr. Robert Behnke of Colorado State University, arguably the world's leading authority on salmonids, and the University of Idaho's Dr. Richard Williams, chair of the independent scientific study group that had been hired by Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and NOAA Fisheries and which had dismissed trucking and barging as a farce.

Concurring with Williams' group was a team of tribal and state fisheries biologists assembled by NOAA Fisheries to recommend recovery strategies. Their report also trashed trucking and barging, concluding that dam breaching on the lower Snake was the only way to get salmon back in the river and that this option would result in an 80 percent probability of recovering spring/summer chinooks and a 99 percent probability of recovering fall chinooks.

Confronting the White House in the salmon wars are advocates not just of fish but of fiscal responsibility. "Salmon recovery will only come when the fish have a healthier river system," says Autumn Hanna, Senior Policy Analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Twenty-three years of silly schemes like this have cost Americans more than $3 billion, while making things worse for salmon and destroying salmon-based economies. We are deeply disappointed that the Bush Administration, which has pledged its concern for taxpayers, has nevertheless decided to continue this boondoggle."

Congress is outraged as well. On October 12, 2004 more than 100 US representatives wrote President Bush, complaining that, after the enormous investment of time and money, the draft biological opinion "redefines the problem instead of fixes it," "could place an even greater liability on thousands of West Coast fishermen, and millions of federal taxpayers" and "would cost $600 million a year just to keep salmon on the brink of extinction instead of headed for improved survival rates."

Even the four Northwest states, which support restoration but haven't made a lot of noise since Kitzhaber left office, are expressing bitter disappointment. Jim Myron, natural resource policy advisor for Oregon's new governor, Ted Kulongoski, told me his boss is unhappy about "the approach the federal government has taken with regard to changing the environmental baseline to include the dams as part of the landscape." And he sent me 40 pages of written comments which, for example, call the plan "so vague and undefined regarding what actions are proposed that it creates a situation where it is impossible even for those familiar with the FCRPS [Federal Columbia River Power System] to understand what the agencies are proposing to do, let alone the public" and which accuse "the action agencies"-Bonneville Power Administration, Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation-of "trying to avoid stating to their partners and to the public what they can and can't do to conserve salmon in their operation of the FCRPS."

Ron Boyce of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said this: "We're concerned about them changing the requirements under ESA for improving survival and recovering listed salmon. Now it's just to do no additional harm. That's a major shift in focus. If this goes on, it will further jeopardize these fish. The levels of allowable take [by the dams] are just astronomical-84 percent for Snake River fall chinook, for instance."

On September 28, 2004, 412 businesses sent Congress a letter that called the Bush administration's draft biological opinion "a substantial step in the wrong direction" and pled for relief in the form of the recently introduced bi-partisan Salmon Planning Act-HR 1097 to "initiate a series of studies that explore the economic costs and benefits associated with effective salmon and steelhead recovery." Signers included fly-fishing companies Sage, Winston, Redington, Bauer, Cortland, Scott, Simms, Berkley, Dr. Slick, Patagonia, Helly Hansen, Pure Fishing, and conservationist Bob Triggs of the Little Stone Flyfisher Guide service.