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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
Court rejects Bush plan for
salmon, dams
Ruling could lead to judge ordering four
The
Associated Press
Don
Ryan / AP file Salmon pass through the Bonneville Dam fish ladder
on the
The
ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
in
It
also keeps open the possibility that Redden could order four dams on the
lower
"Under
this approach, a listed species could be gradually destroyed, so long as
each step on the path to destruction is sufficiently modest," Judge
Sydney R. Thomas wrote of the Bush administration's approach to
balancing dams against salmon. "This type of slow slide into
oblivion is one of the very ills the ESA seeks to prevent."
The
ruling was the latest of a series in recent weeks going against the Bush
administration's environmental policies, including global warming,
forest management, and protecting endangered species.
Michael
Garrity of American Rivers, one of the salmon conservation groups that
filed the original lawsuit, said the ruling made it clear that
"small tweaks to the system" are not going to save salmon,
from a legal or scientific standpoint.
Larger
steps, such as breaching the four lower
Long
process
NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency in charge of restoring salmon
populations that have fallen to a fraction of historical levels, and the
Bonneville Power Administration, which sells the power generated by the
dams, did not immediately comment on the ruling.
NOAA
Fisheries has been trying to come up with a valid plan for operating
federal hydroelectric dams on the
A
total of 13 species of salmon and steelhead that pass over the dams are
listed or threatened or endangered. Juveniles swimming downstream to the
ocean are hit the hardest. Each dam kills a few percent of each overall
run when tiny fish are ground up in turbines, disoriented by plunging
over spillways, and eaten by predators in slow water, adding up to a
major impact.
Redden
has ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to spill more water over
the dams, leaving less to go through turbines, as a way to help more
fish survive.
NOAA
Fisheries concluded in 2000 that it might be necessary to breach the
four dams on the lower
In
2004, NOAA Fisheries came up with a new approach that argued because the
dams were built before the Endangered Species Act became law, their
existence was part of the environmental baseline, and not subject to
removal to help salmon. The same went for basic operations, such as
irrigation, flood control and power generation.
NOAA
agency criticized
The appeals court completely rejected that approach, calling it,
"little more than an analytical sleight of hand, manipulating the
variables to achieve a 'no jeopardy' finding," Thomas wrote.
"Statistically speaking, using the 2004 BiOp's analytical
framework, the dead fish were really alive. The ESA requires a more
realistic, common sense examination."
The
appeals court found that no other federal agency had ever taken such a
"cramped view" of its authority, adding that federal agencies
have a duty to satisfy the requirements of the Endangered Species Act as
a "first priority" over other laws.
The
appeals court also found that NOAA Fisheries had been unreasonable to
leave out any discussion of how the dams would affect the recovery of
protected salmon, not just their survival.
The
ruling added that improvements to the dams, such as devises to help
salmon safely swim over dams, known as removable spillway weirs, are not
enough to make up for lost habitat.
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