Bush asks court to block dam ruling

Bush asks court to block dam ruling

Jun. 17--By MICHAEL MILSTEIN, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

The Bush administration has pushed back -- and hard -- against the Portland judge who dumped its strategy for Columbia River salmon and ordered the costly spilling of water over dams to aid fish this summer.

The administration on Wednesday asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for an emergency order blocking the order of U.S. District Judge James Redden of Portland. The request was released Thursday.

The federal filing accused Redden of abusing his discretion, ignoring the law and facts, and doing salmon more harm than good.

"The court has for the first time injected itself into the day-to-day management of an extremely complicated system of dams," the government contended. "Courts lack the expertise to undertake this task and should not be in the business of running dams."

Federal officials hope for an appeals court ruling early next week.

The argument was the administration's latest testy reaction to Redden's sweeping rejection last month of its plan to protect imperiled salmon while federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers churn out low-cost electricity.

Redden had called the federal plan an exercise "more in cynicism than in sincerity." He said it illegally ignored the government's obligation to restore healthy salmon populations, and disregarded the impact of dams on salmon by deeming the dams a fundamental part of their environment.

His ruling could reshape the federal approach to hydropower as dramatically as rulings protecting the northern spotted owl remade federal forest policy by limiting old-growth logging more than a decade ago.

Redden followed his ruling by directing the government last week to spill water over dams starting June 20 to carry migrating salmon downstream this summer. Spilled water escapes electric turbines, and authorities say the move will cost some $67 million in lost power revenues.

The government contended in its argument to the appeals court that the young fish will be better off shipped downriver on barges. Spilling water makes it more difficult to collect the fish to load onto the barges.

It also exposes fish to underwater gases that could harm them the way the bends harms human divers, the Bush administration argued.

Redden disregarded advice from federal agencies and "instead premised (his) spill relief on (his) conjecture," federal lawyers said.

The power industry joined the government with an almost simultaneous filing to the appeals court this week.

"We think there's a real possibility more fish will be harmed ," said Scott Corwin, vice president of a Portland-based group of rural electric cooperatives. "You're paying more money for worse fish survival, and that just doesn't compute."

But salmon defenders said the government is using the same arguments that have already failed in court. Without spilled water to carry salmon over dams, fish mass behind the concrete before they finally dive downward in an attempt to go underneath them, they argued.

That slows their migration and exposes them to predators.

"It's entirely unnatural," said Jim Martin, retired chief of fisheries for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and now conservation director for the Berkley Fishing Tackle Co. "I cannot believe the federal government says with a straight face this strategy will recover these fish, when the plain evidence shows that's not the case."

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