Salmon Recovery
The Bush Administration's salmon 'recovery' plan has gotten the smackdown in a federal court.
A federal judge on Thursday rejected as inadequate the Bush administration's $600 million-a-year effort to prevent the extinction of salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers.The decision marks the third time in 12 years that courts have rejected federal efforts to allow large hydropower dams to operate while killing and injuring fish protected under the Endangered Species Act. ...
Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who joined conservationists in challenging the federal plan, called the ruling "a great catalyst" for bringing Northwest states and federal agencies together to develop salmon recovery measures that avoid the need to breach dams or severely curtail power generation and other economic benefits.
Is there a way to balance salmon conservation and energy production? Or, thinking larger, balancing our regional economics with our regional environment? Discuss.
|
May 27, 2005
Posted in in the news 2005. |
More Recent Posts | |
Albert Kaufman |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
Kari Chisholm |
Final pre-census estimate: Oregon's getting a sixth congressional seat |
Albert Kaufman |
Polluted by Money - How corporate cash corrupted one of the greenest states in America |
Guest Column |
|
Albert Kaufman |
Our Democrat Representatives in Action - What's on your wish list? |
Kari Chisholm |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
connect with blueoregon
11:15 a.m.
May 27, '05
Bush was arguing that the "dams were an immutable part of the landscape and that the agency's obligations to the fish under the Endangered Species Act extended only to accounting for and ameliorating those actions that it could control." (NY Times, today)
While we have to regard this as a victory for salmon, it's well to recognize just how far afield the administration's position was.
May 27, '05
If we would honestly explore alternative fuel sources, we might have a chance. But anything that would cut out the large corporations will be spurned by this Administration.
Dams - we put them there, we can take them out.
May 27, '05
Gregor: Dams - we put them there...
Absolutely right! Leviathan-lovers with their lust for soviet-style make-work projects (sing it, Woody!) were the ones who put the dams there in the first place. It's nice to hear somebody finally acknowledge the Left's responsibility for one of the greatest ecological fuck-ups in American history.
May 27, '05
I don't recal cries of outrage from consevatives based on an ecological argument when the dams were put in. It's more than a little disingenuous to blame dams being built on a loosely tied ideological group such as "the Left" (wahtever that truly means anyway).
It's easy to sit back +70 years later and say "that was stupid," however doing so is .... pretty stupid.
May 28, '05
The dams were bad for fish and damaging to the Native way of live. On the other hand, without their power generation, most of us would likely not live in the Northwest now. Cheap electricity has been the driving force of economic development around here since the thirties.
May 31, '05
So, I canvassed door-to-door last summer on this issue, and here's what I recall about this situation:
1) Hundreds of scientists have signed a statement saying that the removal of the four lowermost Snake River dams is foundational to any effective salmon recovery plan.
2) These dams have severely cut back on the salmon runs... by over 95%. This has devastated many fishing towns along the Snake. Hundreds if not thousands of jobs lost. There is a clear correlation between depression rates, suicide rates, employment rates, and salmon runs in these areas. As salmon runs decline, all the others increase.
3) Dismantling the dams would create over 10,000 short-term jobs, and create many thousands across the region in the long run (so to speak) for fishing.
4) These dams account for less that 5% of the region's power. We could MORE THAN replace that energy by replacing the power lines that go to California. Current lines have a lot of "line loss," in which energy is lost the futher it has to go along a power line. Newer lines could cut down on this substantially.
5) The only people lobbying against dam removal is actually the barging industry. They make loads of money shipping grain downriver. Now think about this: presently at every one of these dams, we scoop up the salmon, put them into trucks, drive them upstream of the dam, and put them back in. We have fish in trucks and grain in the river! Absurd. Dam removal will keep salmon in the river and grain in the trucks.
6) Snake river salmon are expected to be extinct by 2012.
Hopefully this can better inform everyone on the issue. :) Peace.