"Crisis of Confidence" Hearing Highlights

Dan Keppen

Executive Director

Family Farm Alliance

August 3, 2007

With the new Congress having conducted over 600 oversight hearings so far, even dead fish are getting pulled into the political arena. On Tuesday, July 31, the House Natural Resources Committee (“Committee”) conducted an oversight hearing entitled "Crisis of Confidence:  The Political Influence of the Bush Administration on Agency Science and Decision-Making." 

The hearing was broadcast in its entirety over the Internet, but most of the urban media coverage so far appears to closely mirror the press statements issued by environmental organizations and their allies in Congress. A story which appeared in today’s edition of Indian Country Today, does the best job of reporting what actually happened at Tuesday’s hearing: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415495. The headline of that story was “Science clears Cheney in Klamath salmon die-off”.

Overview

While the focus of the hearing was originally intended to address claims made by Democrats that Vice President Dick Cheney (allegedly) over-rode scientists to give Klamath Project (CALIFORNIA-OREGON) farmers water in 2002 - thereby (allegedly) killing over 30,000 fish in the lower Klamath River that fall – other topics of interest to Western water users were also discussed. These included (allegations of) political interference on California Bay-Delta water decisions, the Preble’s Meadow Jumping Mouse, and the role of peer-reviewed science in water resources decision-making.

Quotables

Some fascinating questions and dialogue ensued over the course of the day-long hearing. Most of the press coverage contained quotes similar to this:

“Today’s hearing is clear evidence that the scientific process behind the water diversion was purposely manipulated by government officials. Sidestepping this process led to an illegal water plan that contributed to the largest adult salmon kill in the West.”

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CALIFORNIA)

Other quotes that were significant but did not garner wide-spread media coverage include these zingers:

“The formation of an NRC committee to examine the scientific and technical issues related to endangered fishes in the Klamath Basin was well justified and timely, with no detectable overtones of partisan political motivation…. Once formed through the NRC by NAS, committees are managed so that their findings cannot be manipulated politically, nor would committee members continue to serve in the face of manipulation.”

NRC Klamath Committee Chairman William Lewis

“[W]e found no evidence of political influence affecting the decisions pertaining to the water in the Klamath Project… The consistent denial of political influence by government officials was corroborated by the view of the outside scientists and one former DOI official, all of whom denied feeling any pressure – political or otherwise.”

Excerpt read by Rep. Greg Walden (R-OREGON), taken from a 2004 response letter from OIG to Senator John Kerry

"If the report says there is no evidence of political interference, doesn't that mean no evidence, whether it came from Karl Rove, the Vice President, the President, or the Pope?"

Rep. Wally Herger (R-CALIFORNIA), following up on Mr. Walden’s statement, above.

Alleged Political Interference at Interior

It appears that a recent, initial Interior Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) report supports allegations made by environmentalists regarding political interference exerted by Julie MacDonald, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks. However, as noted by Rep McMorris (R-WASHINGTON) and Rep. Cannon (R-UTAH) at the July 31 hearing, both suggested that the entire story has not yet been heard on this matter. Here’s another quote that was not widely reported on:

“(Julie MacDonald) has been unfairly called a future “convict” by a senior member of this Committee already, but there’s no basis for such irresponsible talk - especially when the Inspector General found that she did nothing illegal.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WASHINGTON), the Ranking Member of the House Water and Power Subcommittee

There are apparently unanswered questions regarding MacDonald’s ability to address the OIG charges, and how her input was factored into the OIG report.

The Vice President’s Role in Klamath Decision-Making

The hearing did nothing to strengthen the accusations and claims made by critics of the Bush Administration and its handling of Klamath matters. Those who claimed that Mr. Cheney somehow used his influence to roll the National Academy of Sciences and kill fish on the Klamath River in 2002, and the witnesses who testified towards this end, offered up no evidence linking the Vice President or any other high-level Bush Administration appointee to alleged political skullduggery on the Klamath. Consider the following:

1.         The witness who the anti-farming environmental groups have relied upon the most – “Whistleblower” Mike Kelly – admitted that he had no direct exposure to purported Vice-Presidential heavy-handed tactics in 2002;

2.         A high-ranking official in the Interior Department Inspector General’s office admitted that if Dick Cheney had used his influence to change Klamath water management, that likely would have been discovered in an earlier OIG report that found no such political influence exerted by anyone in the Bush Administration;

3.         The Chairman of the National Research Council (NRC) committee that provided recommendations on Klamath in no uncertain terms denied that his committee’s work was tampered with by politicians;

4.         This same witness re-stated the NRC committee’s finding that Klamath Project operations in 2002 had little - if any – effect on the die-off of salmon on the Klamath River .

To see for your self what Dr. William Lewis (Chairman of the NRC Committee on Endangered and Threatened Fishes in the Klamath River ), submitted to the committee, check out the attached PDF version of his testimony.

Initial Mainstream Press Coverage

Environmental activists and their allies in Congress quickly found a way to put a positive spin on the mess that came out of the committee hearing on Tuesday. A press statement released after the hearing by Chairman Rahall suggests that further investigation into Mr. Cheney’s Klamath involvement is justified because the earlier IG report only focused on Karl Rove.

The mainstream media appeared ready to accept that explanation.

“Cheney overlooked in Klamath inquiry” was the headline in the Associated Press article on the hearing, which opened its story with, “The Interior Department's inspector general did not find political interference by Vice President Dick Cheney on a key environmental policy in part because investigators were not looking for it, an Interior official said Tuesday.”

The Washington Post article on the hearing was short and buried within the inside pages.  The Post also appeared to accept Chairman Rahall’s explanation: The Interior Department Inspector General in 2004 did not find any evidence of Cheney's involvement because he was not looking for it and he was not looking for it because nobody gave him reason to believe that the Vice President was involved.   Had the IG known about or suspected Mr. Cheney’s involvement, he certainly would have looked into it.

What truly stands out and what is regrettable in the media coverage is the lack of attention paid to the very significant hearing developments noted above. This hearing was driven primarily by allegations made by the Washington Post, and the hard evidence presented on Tuesday that countered those claims was simply not reported in most media accounts.

Repercussions

Future hearings, if scheduled, could potentially invite calls for more oversight of Interior Department decision making on water issues in the Klamath Basin and elsewhere. It is unclear at this time whether further investigation of Mr. Cheney’s alleged involvement on Klamath matters will take place. However, given the nature of Chairman Rahall’s statement after the hearing, it is likely that the committee will ask the Inspector General to conduct another investigation.

Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), a senior Member of the House Natural Resources Committee, announced on Tuesday that he will introduce legislation to require increased transparency for decisions made by the Department of the Interior regarding endangered species.

Rep. Markey said, “As reports of political interference with scientific Endangered Species Act decisions within the Bush Administration continue to surface, increasing the transparency of the decision-making within the Interior Department will help ensure that politics do not trump science.”

The legislation will be formally introduced shortly.

Wrap-Up

The hearing utterly failed in fulfilling its original purported intent to provide more information on the Cheney-Klamath relationship. Virtually every argument made trying to link Bush Administration political interference to dead salmon on the Klamath River was shot out of the water. But still, critics of President Bush appear to be set on further pursuing these matters as part of a larger strategy to paint the Administration as a place where politics reign supreme, at the expense of the scientific process and the environment. Apparently, quotes in the Washington Post hold more sway with the House Natural Resources Committee leadership than unbiased investigations and National of Academy of Sciences studies that say otherwise.

And reporters with urban newspapers continue to report one side of the story – an inaccurate perspective that will, nevertheless, allow their headlines to comply with the old adage “If it bleeds, it leads”.

In many ways, the hearing turned out to be an alarming new attack on Western water users. Parts of the hearing and much of the news coverage that followed should sound alarm bells that need to be heard throughout the West. Make no mistake about it, this hearing made it clear that there are many interests in Washington and the national media that are dedicated to laying blame on Western farmers and water users, no matter what the facts say.

Meanwhile, Western farms and ranches are seeing their once secure water supplies under scrutiny from urban and environmental interests, Western forested watersheds are being “managed” into potential tinder boxes, and our country is becoming more reliant on unsafe and exposed imported food.

No worries – we’ll just wait for Congress to tackle those issues after they have conducted a few more constructive, politically-driven oversight hearings.

*******************************************************************************************************

`Testimony of William Lewis
U.S. House of Representatives
House Committee on Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Water and Power
31 July 2007 

My name is William Lewis. I am employed by the University of Colorado at Boulder , where I am Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Limnology within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. My field of specialization is inland waters, including lakes, streams, rivers, and wetlands.

The National Research Council (NRC) is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The NRC forms and manages committees under policies and guidelines set by NAS. Between the 1970s and the present, I have been a member or chair of several NRC committees. Between 2002 and 2004, I was chair of the Committee on Endangered and Threatened Fishes in the Klamath River Basin (“Klamath Committee”). The work of the committee, as defined by its statement of task, was to review documents prepared by agencies of the federal government regarding effects of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Project, which manages water for irrigation, on three fish species in the Klamath River Basin that are listed as threatened (coho salmon) or endangered (shortnose sucker, Lost River sucker) under the Endangered Species Act. The committee’s study was sharply focused on the scientific basis of agency decisions through which the Endangered Species Act was being implemented in the Klamath Basin . The work of the committee is described in its final report, which was published by NAS in 2004.

The Klamath Committee considered the possibility, as proposed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, that new restrictions on operations of the USBR’s Klamath Project could offer significant benefits both to the endangered suckers and threatened coho salmon. After studying valuable information collected by federal agencies and others, the committee concluded that stricter operating requirements for the Klamath Project, as proposed by the ESA implementation agencies (USFWS, NMFS), would be unlikely to benefit the ESA-listed species. This conclusion was reached by the committee on a scientific basis, without any consideration of economic or political factors, as directed by the committee’s scope of work. The incidental effect of the conclusion, however, was to call into question a tightening of water management for the Klamath Project that would have caused significant and frequent shortfalls of water delivery to agricultural water users.

In considering documents prepared by the federal agencies and others, the committee also concluded that a proposal prepared by the USBR, if approved, would have left operations of the Klamath Project open to a wider range of water use than had been the case in the recent historical past. The committee noted that intensifying water management in this way could not be supported scientifically because more intensive water management had not been studied environmentally. Therefore, while the committee could not find reasons for new restrictions on water management, it also could not find a scientific basis for a greater latitude of water management than had been in place for the preceding decade.

Because the biological opinions issued by the ESA implementation agencies made reference to numerous factors other than water management that might be affecting the listed species, the committee considered all other possible causes for failure of the listed species to recover. For each of the species, the committee found compelling arguments for numerous kinds of remediation that could be effective in improving the likelihood of recovery for the species. Options identified by the committee include removal of small dams, restoration of cool water to tributaries, experimental elimination of heavy stocking of non-endangered species, restoration of streamside vegetation and woody debris, and numerous others. Some of these measures have been undertaken since the committee finished its work.

Circumstances leading to the creation of the Klamath Committee followed a pattern that is typical for NRC committees formed under direction of the NAS. Within the Klamath Basin , the US Bureau of Reclamation is responsible for operating the Klamath Project for the benefit of private irrigators, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service has the responsibility of implementing the requirements of the ESA for non-migratory fish species. Both of these agencies are administered by the Department of the Interior. Over years of study and debate leading to increasing degrees of restriction on the USBR’s water management practices for the benefit of endangered suckers, the two agencies had reached a critical point at which the USBR strenuously objected on technical and scientific grounds to further restrictions on its management of the Klamath Project. Furthermore, the National Marine Fisheries Service of the Commerce Department, which administers ESA requirements for anadromous migratory fishes, including coho salmon, was also calling for increased stringency of water management based on welfare of coho, again in opposition to the USBR’s analysis of the probable benefits of increased restrictions. Thus, three agencies of the federal government were involved in a scientific and technical dispute with substantial potential consequences both for endangered species and for agricultural water use and its economic derivatives. Assistance in resolution of this problem by nonpolitical means is exactly the type of task for which the National Academy of Sciences, which is not a government agency, was created. The Academy has been a consistent source of independent analysis and review on scientific and technical matters of importance to the federal government for over a century. In other words, the formation of an NRC committee to examine the scientific and technical issues related to endangered fishes in the Klamath Basin was well justified and timely, with no detectable overtones of partisan political motivation.

Over the many decades that have elapsed since its formation by Congressional Charter in 1863, the National Academy has developed procedures insuring that the work of its committees will not be influenced politically or by any other means not related to an independent and factual examination of scientific and technical information. The safeguards are numerous and have proven highly effective. They include the following:

1) NAS does not accept a committee charge that directs the committee to reach specific conclusion or type of conclusion, 2) NAS populates its committees with individuals who come from varied backgrounds, have varied expertise relevant to the problem at hand, and have established national and international reputations as experts in their fields, 3) while the committee collects evidence and opinions in open meetings, it is insulated from external pressure during its deliberations, 4) NRC committees are directed to prepare a report containing conclusions that can be approved by all committee members, and not just a majority of members, 5) NRC committee reports are reviewed anonymously by as many as 10-15 experts who give anonymous opinions that must be considered by the committee and either rebutted effectively or reflected in revisions of the report, 6) the report and revisions to NRC reports are overseen in detail by two officials representing the interest of the NAS in the integrity of the report, 7) final reports must be approved by the chair of the NAS Report Review Committee, 8) members of NRC committees formed by the NAS are not compensated, 9) committees are dissolved when their task is completed; they do not have lasting influence except through their final report, 10) committee members are rigorously screened for conflict of interest and bias.

During 2002, while the committee was conducting its work, the Klamath Basin was experiencing a severe drought, and in early fall there was a mass mortality of adult salmon at the mouth of the Klamath River . The federal agencies sponsoring the NRC Klamath study requested specifically that this incident of mortality be addressed by the committee as an addendum to its statement of task. Mass mortality of salmon at the mouth of the Klamath attracted much attention to the work of the Klamath Committee.

The mass mortality of 2002 involved the death of a conservatively estimated 32,897 salmon. Three hundred forty-four (1%) were coho; 32,553 (99%) were fall-run Chinook salmon out of a run of approximately 170,000 fall-run Chinook. Coho salmon in the Klamath are listed under the ESA, and the NMFS is charged to protect them from any unnatural mortality.

The immediate cause of death of the salmon was massive infection by bacterial and protozoan disease agents. These disease agents are common and cause mortality of fish that are stressed or crowded.

The salmon that died in 2002 were gathered in a dense mass at the mouth of the Klamath in preparation for group migration up the main stem of the Klamath. This is an annual phenomenon and would not be considered unusual. The salmon await favorable conditions for migration. A typical trigger for upstream migration is a cool pulse in flow, the natural cause of which would be precipitation in the lower part of the basin. Because the weather was extraordinarily dry, it appears that this pulse did not come, and the prolonged crowding of the salmon led to the mass mortality.

An important question considered by the committee and many others is whether management of water by the Klamath Project was responsible for withholding the pulse of flow that would have allowed the salmon to migrate. The NRC committee concluded that this is very unlikely. The Klamath Project is located over 150 miles upstream from
the mouth, and water flowing through the Klamath Project accounts for only 10% of the total flow at the mouth; large tributaries entering the river below the Klamath Project contribute most of the flow at the mouth. Furthermore, the Klamath Project releases water that is warm because it comes from storage lakes rather than reaching the stream through groundwater or surface runoff. The committee concluded that a relatively small amount of warm water propagated over a distance of 150 miles would not have made a critical difference to the salmon that were staging for migration at the mouth of the river.

The committee also examined previous conditions and found that low flows similar to those of 2002 had occurred in several years within the period of record without any accompanying salmon mortality. The committee therefore concluded that mortality was the result of an unusual combination of conditions, probably including unusually low flow plus the absence of a cool pulse of flow that even a brief precipitation event might have provided.

In summary, formation of the Klamath Committee in 2002 followed a series of events that is typical for formation of NRC committees by the NAS: conflict over technical or scientific issues within agencies of the federal government leading to a need for opinions from an independent body, which often is the NAS. Once formed through the NRC by NAS, committees are managed so that their findings cannot be manipulated politically, nor would committee members continue to serve in the face of manipulation.