Klamath Dam Removal Sheer Madness
From Klamath Basin Crisis [here] — [Yesterday] around 100 people drove to Salem to testify at a hearing on Senate Bill 76, Klamath dam removal financing.. Up to $4.5 billion, according to FERC report, is the pricetag. 1800 petitions from Karuk tribal members, Siskiyou County residents, on and off Project irrigators and community members signed petitions opposing SB76, and these were submitted to the senators. Signers oppose the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement. Advocates of SB76 tried to convince the senators and media that there is no opposition.
The following is the Testimony of Katherine Lehman before the Oregon Senate Environmental and Natural Resources Committee, Hearing on SB 76, Tuesday, February 3, 2009 [here]:
My name is Katherine Lehman. I live in Ashland, in Jackson County. I am the President of People for the USA! Grange, with members in both Oregon and California. PFUSA Grangers are “People united in applying Constitutional, free market principles in support of strong communities, vigorous economies, and a healthy environment.” I appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me to comment on SB 76; I hope you consider my comments as earnestly as they are submitted.
I hope each committee member has personally read the draft Klamath River Basin Restoration Agreement released in January 2008, and the Agreement in Principle released late last year, as SB 76 proposes Oregonians fund the proposed removal of 4 Klamath River hydroelectric dams; said dam removal is inextricably linked to both documents. The hydroelectric project owner is PacifiCorp. PacifiCorp has been attempting relicensing since 2006. If pursued, this will be the largest dam removal project in the world, necessitating generation of replacement of the project’s 169 megawatts (mw) of abundant, clean (that is, greenhouse gas free, and carbon free), renewable, and sustainable electricity, serving about 70,000 customers. That is enough clean, GREEN POWER to serve the combined populations of Eugene and Springfield - GONE!
These agreements, while not yet binding, represent many serious infirmities, such as violations of existing Oregon and California state statutes, existing federal statutes, and even the U.S. Constitution. But too few care about violating the law anymore, so I am here today to speak for PacifiCorp’s ratepayers, and as a taxpayer, for it is we who will pay the astronomical cost of this dam removal boondoggle - costs not just for the replacement energy required, but mitigation for the expected environmental and property damage, loss of jobs, tax revenues, and other significant impacts I don’t have time here to fully address.
Part of this proposed dam removal would entail the complete destruction of the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery. The hatchery was established in 1963 at river mile 190 to mitigate the effects of the dams on anadramous species. Production goals for the hatchery include 4,920,000 Chinook salmon smolts, 1,080,000 Chinook salmon yearlings, 75,000 coho salmon yearlings, and 200,000 steelhead yearlings (Richey 2006). If we Oregonians really mean to increase populations in these species, killing off such great production is worse than moronic.
Ratepayers Forced To Pay For Removal of Klamath Dams
Oregon Senate Bill 76 will be the subject of a Hearing next Tuesday, February 3rd. SB 76 requires that electricity ratepayers in the Klamath Basin bear the costs of dismantling four dams on the Klamath River.
The ratepayers oppose the destruction of the dams, which will cause electricity rates to skyrocket as well as cause massive brownouts in the region due to lack of substitute power. Despite that, ratepayers are being forced to buy the bullets for the firing squad that will shoot them.
Removal of the dams, and the plan to force costs on the ratepayers, are the brainchild of braindead Governor Teddy “The Torch” Taxandgougeme, the worst governor in history [here, here, here, here].
The removal of the dams is ostensibly to improve salmon survival, but instead will have the opposite effect [here]. In any case, those who have promoted the dam removal will NOT be paying for it, nor will they be paying for the exorbitant Enron-style electricity rates that result.
Furthermore, the Enron-style screwing of the residents of the Klamath Basin starts now, if Ted the Goober gets his sick way.
Egregious Misuse of the ESA
The Endangered Species Act was enacted in 1973 with the idea of preventing species from going extinct. From the Endangered Species Act of 1973 as amended through the 108th Congress. ESA § 3(6):
(4) the United States has pledged itself as a sovereign state in the international community to conserve to the extent practicable the various species of fish or wildlife and plants facing extinction.
However, in the ensuing years, the ESA has been used to “protect” a wide number of species that are in no way in danger of becoming extinct.
There are numerous cases in point. Polar bears were listed under the ESA as threatened last May [here], despite the fact that the polar bear population is growing and may be at an historic high [here]. Canadian grey wolves were planted (by the US Fish and Wildlife Service) in Rocky Mountain states and then declared endangered despite the fact that the exact same wolves teem in Canada.
One of the slick tricks the USFWS pulls is to declare some geographic sub-set of a species to be a Distinct Population Segment (DPS) or Evolutionarily Significant Unit (ESU), which are supposed to be genetically unique and separate sub-populations [here]. Examples abound, such as the western snowy plover and marbled murrelet, both of which are common and not threatened with extinction, but are listed as DPS’s at the extreme termini of their ranges.
The same is true of Canadian wolves in the U.S. which are split into at least three DPS’s, or were until recent judicial decision found that ESA lacks any definition of a Distinct Population Segment [here].
Perhaps the most egregious misuse of the ESU designation is in Pacific salmon, with 52 (count ‘em, 52) so-called Evolutionarily Significant Units [here]. That doc was written in 2005. As of 2008 16 salmon and steelhead ESU’s are listed as threatened, and 6 bull trout ESU’s, as well [here].
Endangered Specious Homo sapiens Salmon and other fish Wolves
by admin
leave a comment
USFWS Reinstates Protection For Wolves In Compliance With Court Orders
Tom Remington of Black Bear Blog has written an excellent review [here] of the court cases that led up to the recent re-listing of Rocky Mountain wolves as endangered species [here]. We excerpt some of Tom’s essay below. Please see Black Bear Blog for the entire article.
By Tom Remington
On December 11, 2008, recorded in the Federal Register, the Department of Interior, more specifically the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, published the final rule that places the gray wolf in nearly all of the lower 48 states, under federal protection of the Endangered Species Act. What this final rule does, I doubt 99.999999% of Americans understand.
How I understand this is that the Department of Interior (DOI) has cranked the clock back in time to 1978. My question now becomes, why stop there? …
What is becoming distinctly clear in all of these cases combined is that the DOI and USFWS have no legal authority to create a Distinct Population Segment for any species.
In the Vermont court case, part of the two lawsuits that essentially rendered the three DPS of wolves in the lower 48 states illegal and a violation of the Act, Judge J. Garvan Murtha’s ruling stated the following:
The definition of “species” includes “any distinct population segment of any species.” 16 U.S.C. § 1532(16). The ESA does not define “distinct population segment” (“DPS”), nor is it a term used in scientific literature.
Judge Murtha recognizes that the “DPS Policy” “allows” for the USFWS to protect species based on the Policy Regarding the Recognition of Distinct Vertebrate Population. This policy takes into consideration the “discreetness”, “significance” and “conservation status” of species. But Murtha obviously doesn’t think creating a DPS for management purposes and in this case, delisting purposes, is legal.
Judge Paul Friedman, who ruled that the WGL DPS was illegal, also stated that there is no definition of a Distinct Population Segment. …
As a result of the three court cases discussed above, I have to ask why the Department of Interior stopped their clock rewinding at 1978? Why not go back to pre-ESA. As we have seen by court rulings of Defenders of Wildlife v. Norton, National Wildlife Federation v. Norton, Humane Society of the United States v. Kempthorne and the twelve parties that sued Kempthorne to put the wolf back under federal protection in the NRM DPS, tells us that creating DPSs is an illegal act. Any reasonable person would now question whether the federal government had the authority to create the first Distinct Population Segment of gray wolves in 1978 when it classified wolves in all the lower 48 states.
The confusing mess this has created now extends beyond just the gray wolf. It involves every species in existence in the United States. This is a clear example of the courts having inadequate knowledge of the issues making rulings that have now put the very species we may be wanting to protect in danger as well as stripping management powers from the USFWS.
I wrote recently of the efforts taking place as we speak to list the Atlantic salmon in Maine as endangered or threatened under the ESA. From this information we now ask, can the USFWS and NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service/NOAA) create a Distinct Population Segment of Atlantic salmon? The feds are attempting to expand the listing and define critical habitat. This, according to the court’s interpretation, is creating a new DPS within a DPS.
Surely the Department of the Interior, in issuing this final ruling to return the gray wolf protection to 1978 levels, is telling us their hands are tied. They should have taken it one step further and rescinded the original declaration of a wolf DPS within the U.S. from the beginning. (Perhaps they knew that would actually get someone’s attention.)
This also raises some very serious issues with regard to the “Nonessential Experimental Population” of gray wolves in the Yellowstone National Park area and Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Was it a legal act to create these NEPs? The broader question becomes whether the federal government had legal authority to reintroduce wolves into these regions? Surely if they can’t create segmented DPS of a species for management purposes, they have no legal right to dump species into these illegally crafted NEPs. … [more]
Sophie’s Choice on the Klamath
The following letter is from Ric Costales. Ric has lived and worked on the land and in the woods in the Klamath Basin for 35 years. He is currently the Natural Resource Policy Specialist for Siskiyou County. This letter represents his personal opinions and is not an expression on behalf of the County of Siskiyou.
Dear Green River friends:
I understand from a friend of mine in Rock Springs that there was a recent forum having to do with water issues and the matter of the Klamath Basin was brought up as a solution in progress. Apparently an image was conveyed of happy stakeholders awaiting a New Day. Well, yeah, the Tribes are probably happy for numerous reasons. And, yeah, the big irrigators are probably content thinking they have secured the amount of water that is positively the absolute minimum they can economically live with. And, yeah, environmentalists are thinking they have taken a small step, but a first great step for mankind in “freeing” all the rivers. But that is it. It is not any sort of a rosy picture for the majority of people in the Klamath Basin, especially the small irrigators who are so far left out in the cold. Nor does it come without impact on the future of renewable hydropower and irrigated agriculture in America.
The position of Siskiyou County has been and still is that a decision to take the dams out is premature. Given the magnitude of the irrevocable step being proposed, no compelling argument based on fish or water quality science or economic feasibility has been presented. Neither has sufficient effort been made to investigate the mitigation for negative impacts. This is a shameful rush to judgment for political reasons, plain and simple. Any other analysis of the situation is self-serving, ignorant or both.
We in Siskiyou County are well aware of the flow characteristics of the Klamath River. People are going to be shocked when they see how little water comes down the river in dry years. The dams are the only thing mitigating the flow in those years. They are the last thing between the irrigated agriculture in the Upper Basin and losing the water completely. When (not if!) the salmon fail to rebound if the dams are decommissioned, there will be immense pressure to end irrigated agriculture in the entire Klamath Basin. The farmers who have sold out thinking that supporting decommissioning will somehow guarantee their way of life will have only bought themselves time to live out their lives on their farms. It will be the next generation who will have to live with the final round of “takings.”
To be fair, the big irrigators were faced with “Sophie’s Choice,” having to choose which “child” was “killed.” The dams weren’t in their backyard, so it was easiest to cut them loose. I think they know what they did, and the futility of the bargain they made. Honestly, I don’t know that I would have done differently had I been in their shoes. But the point is, this is not a rosy scenario by any stretch.
Klamath Dams Slated For Removal
After years of acrimony and political struggle, it appears that four power dams on the Klamath River will be torn down, allegedly to benefit salmon. From the Siskiyou Daily News [here]:
Power company, states, feds reach tentative deal to breach dams
By Heather Dodds, Siskiyou Daily News, November 14, 2008
Siskiyou County, Calif. - Four dams on the Klamath River, including three in Siskiyou County, are now on track to be torn down, as the power company that owns them has signed a deal that begins the process of removing them.
A nonbinding agreement to remove the four Klamath River dams has been reached between the Bush administration and the states of California and Oregon in what Gov. Schwarzenegger on Thursday called “the largest dam removal project ever in history.”
The Agreement in Principle (AIP) released yesterday marks the first step toward removal of the dams by setting the framework for the transfer of the dams from PacifiCorp to a government-designed dam removal entity (DRE) that would undertake the removal process.
The dam removal will not aid salmon, however. It will flush sediment into the Klamath River — burying spawning gravels — and will not provide the “cool” water that “fish advocates” desire. Dam removal will decrease irrigation flows, increase flood hazards, and remove the cleanest form of energy available, renewable hydro-power. Farm land will be devalued, and the regional economy will take another kick in the teeth.
For a selection of articles, the Klamath Bucket Brigade website [here] is very good. A selected excerpt, excerpted from a posted news article:
The planned removal of four hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River is a bitter pill to swallow for the basin’s agricultural industry. Some farmers regard the plan as an unpleasant but ultimately necessary remedy that will help heal divisions over the competing water needs of farmers and fish. Other growers say dam removal will only inflame the Klamath Basin’s ills over the long term. “Common sense says, what are they thinking?” said Tom Mallams, a hay farmer and president of the Klamath Off-Project Water Users, who opposes dam removal. “It’s an absolute disaster, the way they’re trying to do this.” …
Oregon Sen. Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls said he had severe reservations about the dam removal agreement in principle signed by state, federal and PacifiCorp officials Thursday. “I think that we really have no empirical science that removal is going to improve anything,” Whitsett said.
The Klamath Basin Crisis website [here] provides excellent commentary and analysis. A perceptive and expert letter on the KBC site written by Dr. Kenneth A Rykbost, former Superintendent of the Oregon State University Klamath Experiment Station, [here] is very much worth reading.
Many local farmers feel they have been pushed up against a wall and that dam removal will come with much-need guarantees of existing water rights. Whether that (essentially extortion-driven) outcome really happens remains to be seen.
What is clear is that the fisheries “science” has been politically biased for years. Some of the worst excuses for science have emanated from federal and state agencies allegedly researching Klamath River biology and hydrology.
Warm ocean conditions (called El Nino) have dominated the eastern Pacific (our coast) for 25 to 30 years or more. In the last year or so a major shift has occurred (called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) that has brought cool water (La Nina conditions) to the eastern Pacific [see here]. The warm water of the previous 3 decades has been bad for salmon because the upwelling of nutrient-rich cool water has been minimal. Now that the PDO has shifted, more cool water will provide more nutrients for the ocean food chain off our coast.
Improving ocean conditions will aid salmon. Tearing down the dams will not. Furthermore, half the water in the Klamath River system comes from the Trinity River, but that tributary has been diverted (65%) to irrigate agriculture in California’s central valleys. Tearing down the dams will not add one drop of water to the Klamath River.
Our erstwhile contributor bear bait had some thoughts regarding this history-making blunder. We post them for your edification:
Klamath Suckers
by bear bait
Klamath River, hmmmm… So extraordinarily good ocean conditions produced a huge survival of Klamath stock fall Chinook salmon, mostly from hatchery origin. Hatcheries, years ago, would take the first returning fish back to the hatchery for spawning, as they have goals to meet and commissions to answer to. The eventual result of the Iron Gate Hatchery program on the Klamath River is that the salmon return about 3 weeks too early and in a concentrated group because releases are not staged for different times.
Now we have a huge Pacific Coast run of salmon, the ocean trollers have done well, the fall gillnet season is open on the Columbia River, and the offered prices are under $0.25 per pound in the round. Hardly worth the fishing effort. The market is sated.
Dam the Torpedoes? Torpedoing the Dams … and much more
by Julie Kay Smithson, property rights researcher
So, the hammer finally, officially fell on the Klamath Basin. Oh, the year 2020 makes it sound somehow less final to most, but the end result is the desired result: The people of the Klamath Basin and their honest, proud way of life are soon to be gone, swept away on the utterly false premise-current that fish cannot live and thrive with dams.
In the timeframe of eternity, the Klamath Project and its young, idealistic, war veterans-turned-farmers are slated to be but an eyeblink. The lotteries that awarded winners the right to fight and scratch and bleed their way to having their own farms, with water guaranteed ‘forever,’ must have been little more than a cruel hoax.
What could the faraway benevolent government possibly have had in mind but the prosperity of its working class people? Didn’t ‘forever’ mean ‘forever?’ If ever there was a binding agreement, the youthful lottery winners thought they had it: The right to water forever, the use of which would coax from the land a plethora of crops that still boggle the mind and delight the palate. Yet today, new crops and varieties of others are developed and tested in the Klamath Basin, not the least of which is the Klamath Pearl, a beautiful little spud with a magnificent texture and even better taste: A gourmet’s dream come true.
What, indeed. Looking from afar at the Klamath Project, the farmers and irrigators and the private property that was theirs through the blood, sweat and tears equity of five generations, was a small group of obscenely powerful bankers with names European. They wanted the land, all right, but they had no intention of actually earning it. No. They’d “award” it by lottery to returning American soldiers and their new brides — youth with the bloom still on and the energy and dreams to invest willingly … yea, eagerly … in the high mountain valley of the Klamath.
From Midland, Dairy, and Lorella in Oregon to Newell in California, people live and die here. They are born and bred here. They grow strong and honest and they love here.
They, unlike the politicos in the distant not-even-a-state “District of Columbia,” are part and parcel of this great Klamath Basin… but they are what make it great.
Without its people, the Klamath Basin is but another empty land. The vast, sky-darkening migrating flocks need not stop here if the crops are no more. Look closely and you will see … the sandhill cranes weep, and the fish are crying.
Federal Courts Ensure Junk Science Governs Salmon Harvest Decisions
News from the Front #94, by James Buchal [here]
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved. John 3:20.
Sportfishing interests, more precisely the Salmon Spawning & Recovery Alliance, Wild Fish Conservancy, the Native Fish Society, and Clark-Skamania Flyfishers, recently lost a big one when Judge Lasnik in Seattle rejected their challenge to National Marine Fisheries Service decisions sanctioning continuing overfishing on threatened Puget Sound chinook salmon. The Alliance sued under two federal statutes that require NMFS to use the best available science in decision making. It has been years since the Service did that, and it is increasingly clear that the Federal courts are the most powerful force making sure that NMFS can deem any particular science it wants as the best science—at least when it comes to harvest science.
Back in 2001, NMFS invited a blue-ribbon panel of outside academics to review its harvest policies. Called the Recovery Science Review Panel, they issued a blistering report [here](.pdf, 2.3 Mb) concluding that “NMFS should develop a rational [harvest] policy that does not demean scientific common sense” (p. 13). Commercial harvest interests (more precisely, their state and tribal mouthpieces), demanded that NMFS repudiate the Panel report. NMFS bureaucrats scurried about like bugs after their rock was overturned, ultimately commissioning a thirty-eight page review of the Panel’s wide-ranging critiques from the elite science wing of NMFS at its Northwest Fishery Science Center facility [here](.pdf, 1.5 Mb (redacted version)).
NMFS bureaucrat Frank Lockhart testified that the Science Center’s review “affected NMFS’ adoption of recovery plans and biological opinions pertaining to the listed salmonids” throughout the Northwest. Presumably these included the very decisions Judge Lasnik approved. But NMFS made sure Judge Lasnik never saw the thirty-eight page Science Center report, or the Panel’s “common sense” report that triggered Science Center’s involvement.
Federal judges taught NMFS long ago that it need fear no discovery in litigation with mere citizens. When citizens complain about government decisions, federal judges declare that citizens don’t get to put on evidence. Only the federal agencies do. They go into their files, and bring out a set of documents and present them to the Court as the “administrative record” against which the decisions must be judged. Congress required the Courts to consider the “whole record” in the Administrative Procedure Act, including all documents considered by the agency, but most of the time, no one can ever tell if the agencies have presented the “whole record” or not.
more »
Looters Limit Out on BPA Salmon Dollars
News from the Front #93 [here]
by James Buchal, April 22, 2008
Now more than ever, as we sink in a cesspool of public and private debt brought on by a corrupted federal government, and we all tighten our belts, we can ill afford wasteful public spending. BPA’s recent announcements of “Memoranda of Agreement” (MOAs) with Pacific Northwest States and Tribes promise just that, with substantial hikes in electricity rates to fund another billion in salmon spending, and no real public benefits at all. And the MOAs only set a floor for wasteful fish and wildlife spending, not a ceiling.
The general design of the MOAs is a wholesale subversion of the decisionmaking processes crafted by elected officials in favor of agency decisionmaking by contract with special interests. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has been charged by Congress to develop the Region’s fish and wildlife plan, and BPA is by law supposed to follow that plan, funding programs the Council and its independent scientists identify as appropriate. The Tribal MOA gives lip service to the Council’s program, but warns that it contains “specific and binding funding commitments” irrespective of Council decisions. Thus big new programs will be established to promote salmon parasites (lamprey), irrespective of the lack of public or Council support for such programs.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is supposed to review actions concerning endangered and threatened fish, but through the MOAs, many of the choices NMFS would dictate are now to be specified by agreement with the special interest groups. The dam operators will now be bound by contract to take the fish out of transport barges, irrespective of scientific evidence proving higher survival. They will be bound to spill water at dams, irrespective of scientific evidence proving massive outbreaks of gas bubble disease. The Tribal MOA even attempts to bind NMFS to approve the wholesale gillnetting of endangered salmon, declaring that “tribal treaty fishing rights were present effects of past federal actions that must be included in the environmental baseline” and that the MOA is based on the “assumption that NOAA Fisheries will give ESA coverage” to future harvests. Ordinarily, scientifically-based natural resource management decisions might be expected to evolve based on better science, but the MOAs even attempt to prevent such scientific evolution.
Retardant Justice
by Dave Skinner, the Flathead Beacon, [here]
It must be spring. After all, environmentalists have “sprung” at least six or seven new lawsuits on the Northwest court system the past couple weeks – and Earthjustice is about ready to file against delisting Northern Rockies wolves.
But it’s a just-dismissed lawsuit that has my attention, especially since I just got “carded” for this year’s fire season. It was filed by the Eugene, Oregon-based, so-called Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) in District Judge Donald Molloy’s Missoula courtroom, way back in October 2003. I’ll spare you the stultifying federal acronym soup.
On the surface, FSEEE basically sued the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in order to force a full-blown paperwork shuffle on the environmental effects of air-dropped fire retardants.
Judge Molloy took two years to rule for the paperwork shuffle, in October 2005, at which point FSEEE crowed “Group Wins Lawsuit to Protect Firefighters and the Environment From Toxic Aerial Fire Retardant.”
But the use of chemical retardants hasn’t been stopped. FSEEE never asked for that to begin with. Molloy’s 35-page ruling specifically pointed out the case was not about the safety or toxicity of retardants per se, but only a procedural case affirming the need to shuffle paper if and when “substantial questions” of environmental impact “may” exist.
The already overwhelmed Forest Service dragged butt on the shuffle, goading Judge Molloy into threatening Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey with jail unless the paperwork hit Molloy’s desk – which it did in late February 2008.
The Forest Service concluded that using retardant poses no “significant environmental impact” to Judge Molloy, who dismissed the case March 12.
Now, after four-plus years, FSEEE spokesman Andy Stahl (the guy who made “spotted owl” a household word) is telling reporters his group intends to file ANOTHER lawsuit over retardant in Molloy’s court. It’s all part of what Missoulian reporter John Cramer terms “another decade-long campaign” to stop “the war on fire.”
Artificial Salmon Runs in the Willamette Basin
The Chinook salmon in the Willamette River system are considered one of the most threatened “Distinct Population Segments” in the Pacific Northwest. Yet historically, there were very few salmon in the Willamette. The reason: Willamette Falls, 26 miles upstream the confluence with the Columbia, was mostly impassable to upstream-bound fish.
Willamette Falls is 42 feet high and flows over a sheer natural rock formation. It was a natural barrier to fish passage. Only in spring flood, and not every year, could a few Chinook salmon make the leap. From PGE (who runs the power dam there today) [here]:
In 1885 the first fish ladder was excavated out of the solid rock. Though primitive, this ladder did help fish move above the falls. Technology and knowledge of fisheries advanced over time, and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife designed the current fish ladder, which was completed in 1971.
In the early 1900’s seven Willamette Basin salmon hatcheries were established: McKenzie River, Marion Forks/North Fork Santiam River, South Santiam in the South Fork Santiam River, South Santiam in the Calapooia River, South Santiam in the Mollala River, Willamette, and Clackamas hatcheries. Salmon returning to the hatcheries to breed after their oceanic sojourns swam up through the fish ladder at Willamette Falls.
In 1999 the artificial Willamette River salmon population was declared an endangered species [here].
UPPER WILLAMETTE RIVER CHINOOK ESU THREATENED
ESU STATUS AND DESCRIPTION: Listed as threatened on March 24, 1999; threatened status reaffirmed on June 28, 2005. The ESU includes all naturally spawned populations of spring-run Chinook salmon in the Clackamas River and in the Willamette River, and its tributaries, above Willamette Falls, Oregon, as well as seven artificial propagation programs…
Sportsfishing Interests Face Ten More Years in the Wilderness
News from the Front #92 [here]
by James M. Buchal
The Feds have been centralizing all natural resource decisionmaking and putting it under wraps ever since Nixon sent Judge Boldt out here. So the action in salmon decisionmaking, at least for Columbia River harvest issues, is in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. Public observers learned at a December 12, 2007 status conference before Judge Redden that the Federal government and the Northwest States and Tribes had privately advised the Court of a new ten-year secret harvest deal back in September. The deal will become final when and if NOAA Fisheries issues a biological opinion approving the deal in the next couple of months.
Judge Redden is overseeing the new biological opinion on dam operations, not harvest, but at the December 12th status conference, the attorney representing the State of Washington explained that the two opinions were “intertwined”. More specifically, he told Judge Redden: “. . . we need to get that [dam biological opinion] done in order to prop up what needs to be done in United States v. Oregon in the associated harvest [biological opinion]”.
What did he mean by “prop up”? Most people think Judge Redden’s opinions are about offsetting harm from dam operations, but when NOAA Fisheries models only the effects of dam operations on salmon populations, it can’t find that they threaten to wipe out salmon. So NOAA Fisheries is going to hide future harvest rate increases in the biological opinion on dam operations, even though it knows this is not how the Endangered Species Act is supposed to work. The Regional Administrator of NOAA Fisheries even admitted in testimony before the Northwest Power & Conservation Council in November that “if you scrupulously used the rules for writing a biological opinion [on dam operations], you wouldn’t include future biological opinions [on salmon harvest that are yet to be written]”.
more »
A New Cloud Over the Klamath Basin
News from the Front #91 [here]
by James M. Buchal
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the listing of “endangered” suckerfish, beginning the invasion of the Klamath Basin by “swarms of officers” “sent hither”, in the words of the Founders, “to harass our people and eat out their substance”. On January 15, 2008, the swarms released a draft “Klamath River Basin Restoration Agreement for the Sustainability of Public and Trust Resources and Affected Communities” [here]. The title is ironic, if not Orwellian, as the true purpose and effect of the Agreement is to destroy the sustainability of a growing agricultural economy, part and parcel of a larger hollowing-out of America that becomes more and more apparent.
Dam Removal and Other Economic Losses
One overarching purpose is the destruction of productive capital in the form of dam removal, though PacifiCorp is not yet on board. Presumably one reason the draft Agreement was released, rather than being consummated in secret like so many other vital natural resource decisions, was the need to pressure PacifiCorp. Destroying clean, renewable hydropower in favor of forcing citizens to fund their foreign enemies with energy payments will someday be regarded as a great crime. For now, the answer is always the same: Uncle Sam will print up more dollars to paper over the problem, but those days will soon come to an end.
Specifically, there is to be a $41.7 million (143) program “to provide power costs security” at a level of three cents (2007) per kilowatt-hour (141). But “actual realization of the specific power cost target depends on several factors and variables and is not guaranteed by the Agreement” (141). To get the benefits, if any, participants must “enroll to support this Agreement and the Hydropower Agreement” (142), adopting the time-honored tactic of using borrowed fiat dollars to buy off political opponents of the Agreement.
Counties losing tax revenue from dam removal or suffering other adverse impacts (147) will be bought off by the “Counties Program” for economic development, though no level of funding is specified yet (148). Local losses may be even worse as more land is converted into into Tribal trust property; a “Mazama Forest Project” (138), rumored to involve converting 80-90,000 acres, appears to show a proposed funding level of $21 million (175). A related Klamath Tribe document [here] even suggests that the Tribe expects to “[s]ecure assurances that the Tribes and Tribal members will be given preference on contracting, employment and business opportunities generated on the Tribes’ ancestral homelands by the Settlement Agreement”.
