Oregon, conservationists ask court to order dams to spill water for salmon
Indian Country Today, Oneida, N.Y. --Aug. 4--PORTLAND, Ore. –
Bonneville Power Administration started spilling water over its Columbia River dams in the early 1990s after tribes advocated for the program that helps young fish run the gauntlet of dams between spawning tributaries and the Pacific Ocean.
Along with the Army Corps of Engineers that operates the dams, BPA issued an
early July statement proposing to cut off the 2004 spill during August at the
Columbia River's two lowest dams, Bonneville and The Dalles. The proposal also
plans to eliminate sending water over the spillways at two upstream dams, John
Day and Ice Harbor, in late August.
Spill. It's an odd word. Parents of toddlers think of spill as something to
wipe up.
But to fish, spill means having a home. Spill means bypassing the
hydro-electric turbines. Spill means not being forced through the turbines and
getting spit out below the dam so stunned by the sheer forces of water power
that the chances for survival are nil.
The tribes labored to get the summer spill program in place, and now just as
the runs are coming back, they don't want to lose what they see as the linchpin
to fish recovery.
Why does BPA label the program spill? What does the federal power marketing
agency consider what fish biologists and independent scientists agree is the
most effective means of keeping the Columbia River salmon runs alive, the
equivalent of wasting water? It is because the folks at BPA are the power guys.
Any water that doesn't go through the turbines is wasted in terms of dollars.
Northwest ratepayers will save between $18 – $28 million dollars in 2004, said
BPA's public relations contact, Mike Hansen.
Framing the situation in a simple profit-loss equation is missing the point,
said Northwest Energy Coalition energy director, Sara Patton. Why not look at
conserving energy instead of milking the Columbia system for every last drop of
water?
NWEC suggested that BPA invest in energy efficiency programs that would
permanently decrease the amount of power consumers need to draw from the system.
"We made a proposal that was good for salmon and good for electricity
ratepayers," said Patton, "but the federal government [BPA] rejected
it."
BPA might be a federal agency, but it is also a for-profit corporation.
"That's why in the early 1980s when the Northwest Power Planning Council
developed its fish and wildlife program, Congress was explicit," said
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission's Special Assistant to the Executive
Director, John Platt. "The council's job was to develop and fund a fish and
wildlife program which was based on recommendations for projects and measures
from fisheries agencies and the tribes. BPA's job was to fund the program in
order to mitigate for the effects its dams were having on the fish and
wildlife."
The power of the purse, however, has a way of throwing its weight around.
"Instead, BPA has misused its discretion," said Platt who has been
with CRITFC for years. "What BPA did, with the acquiescence of the council,
was to use its check-writing capability to influence the fish and wildlife
program. It's federal chicanery at its worst. My comment is 'Come on guys.
What's going on here? What's wrong with this picture?'"
Platt isn't the only one telling BPA that enough is enough. In an unusual
move, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski joined the tribes, conservation groups and
fishing community in the suit against BPA. Spurred by the sport fishing
community that spent more than $700 million last year in Oregon, Kulongoski
rejected the idea that losses to the fishery from summer spill could be
compensated for by funding habitat, hatchery and predator control programs.
Programs that NOAA Fisheries – the federal agency that is supposed to protect
fish listed under the Endangered Species Act but which also serves the
commercial fishing industry – concluded would be adequate.
"The problem is that BPA isn't making the connection," said long
time commissioner at CRITFC and member of the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Reservation, Kat Brigham. "The agency wants habitat, hatcheries
and harvest management to make up for the impacts of hydropower. They aren't
accepting responsibility for their impacts on the salmon."
Brigham pointed out that "the tribes want a gravel-to-gravel management
approach," one that protects the fish from birth in their tributary
spawning beds, oversees juveniles as they grow, migrate to the ocean, mature,
and then, finally, return to the river and tributaries at the end of their lives
to spawn the next generation. As BPA's current spill curtailment proposal so
blatantly demonstrates, as long as the agency tries to broker fish policy, as
long as BPA swings its power of its purse around the fish and wildlife
management tables, genuine progress toward a gravel-to-gravel approach will be
as futile as a salmon trying to leap one of the agency's massive concrete dams.
"Three recent reports out of Washington, D.C. – one from the House
Natural Resources Committee and two from the General Accounting Office – have
pointed to BPA's conflict of interests," Platt said. "While both
entities stopped short of saying the contracting function should be removed from
BPA, they implied it -- and BPA is not above some serious arm-twisting, either.
Over the past several months during the spill discussions, BPA has even let
certain people involved with the Umatilla tribe know that if the tribe supported
spill reductions, that funds for one of their already-approved programs might
arrive in a more timely fashion. BPA also tried to get the gillnetters on the
lower river to come on board for curtailing spill by telling them the tribes
were supporting the plan. What the agency didn't know was that the gillnetters
and the tribes were communicating and thus saw through the scam."
"My question is," Platt concluded, "Isn't this abuse of power?
Isn't this activity that borders on extortion? Is having BPA trying to dictate
policies that are egregious to fish the intent of the act that Congress passed
in the 1980s, an act aimed at figuring out how to produce power without killing
off the Pacific Northwest's fish and wildlife?"
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