White House ignores fishing industry's SOS

The West Coast salmon fishing industry is nearly dead in the water, and everybody can see it's going to hit the rocks. But so far, the Bush administration is unwilling to lift a finger to help.

The states are trying to come to the rescue where they can. Oregon's Legislative Emergency Board on Friday approved more than $3 million in state aid. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have called on the federal government to help. Congress, pressured by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Gordon Smith, R-Ore.; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; and other West Coast lawmakers, has at least formally declared in legislation that the West Coast fishing industry is facing an economic disaster.

The three West Coast senators and two governors now must work together to try to persuade Congress to appropriate money for disaster relief. It is hard to imagine that Congress would concede that there is a disaster in the West Coast fishing industry but then refuse to provide any financial help.

Yet for now there is no commitment from the federal government for disaster aid, even though it is clear that West Coast fishermen, seafood processors and associated businesses are suffering tens of millions of dollars in losses this fishing season.

It's been two months since the California regional office of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which oversees offshore fishing, asked for a disaster declaration for a West Coast salmon fishing industry facing a sharply curtailed season this spring and summer. That recommendation was overruled by NOAA's Washington, D.C., headquarters. Nobody has publicly explained why; a NOAA spokesman simply said that any disaster declaration must come from Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, not from the agency's regional office.

Meanwhile, West Coast lawmakers were told the agency would not issue a final decision on disaster relief until February 2007, well past the end of the fishing season, and well after many in the industry had lost their boats and their livelihoods. That has infuriated lawmakers such as Rep. Mike Thompson, a Democrat who represents California's north coast. "I've got fishermen who are going to lose their boats, and bureaucrats who have never missed a paycheck are completely ignoring a real-life disaster," Thompson said.

On Friday, an NOAA spokesman denied that any decision on a disaster declaration will be put off until February. But there was no word about when, or even whether, the agency would come to the aid of the fishing industry and communities along a 700-mile stretch of ocean all but closed to fishing to protect struggling returns of chinook salmon in the Klamath River.

We know there's a war on, and the federal budget is already badly in the red. But this is a Congress and a White House still averting their eyes to literally thousands of budget earmarks that add up to billions of dollars. This is not a $200-million-plus bridge to nowhere; it is targeted aid to keep afloat a fishing industry crucial to the economic future of communities up and down the West Coast.

The states have heard the shouts for help from coastal communities and are now sending aid. Congress is trying to help. Yet the White House, so eager to rush to the aid of Klamath farmers five years ago, is in no hurry to consider the question of a West Coast fishing industry disaster.

So far, it's thanks for nothing.