by Matthew Preusch
Tuesday August 04, 2009, 8:52 PM
Three former Northwest governors are urging the Obama administration to reject a Bush-era plan designed to save the region's salmon.
The letter sent today from John Kitzhaber, Cecil Andrus and Mike Lowry is the latest high-profile plea to the president to engage on the persistent problem.
And a coming court deadline means Obama's salmon policy should be clear soon.
The administration has until Aug. 14 to decide whether to defend, amend or ditch a plan put forward last year to run federal power-producing dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers without pushing imperiled salmon closer to extinction.
U.S. District Judge James Redden has hinted that the plan, supported by most Northwest tribes and the state of Washington -- but not Oregon or a coalition of environmental and fishing groups -- may not meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.
The plan "is likely to be found illegal if you decide to support it. We urge you not to take that course," wrote Kitzhaber, Andrus and Lowry, the former governors of Oregon, Idaho and Washington, respectively.
The letter echoes recent calls from Idaho's two Republican senators and Oregon's new senator, Democrat Jeff Merkley, for the administration to lead competing regional interests toward an enduring strategy for the 259,000-square-mile Columbia Basin's salmon runs.
Federal courts rejected two earlier plans, called biological opinions, to square the operation of the Northwest's giant hydropower dams with the survival of salmon that must migrate past them. The most recent plan has broader support than past versions.
"We believe that an unprecedented regional consensus has already been reached in this biological opinion, with only a couple of outliers, and that we need to move forward," said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest River Partners, a coalition of shipping interests, power users and others who support the current plan.
But the state of Oregon and environmental groups have challenged the plan in court, and their hope is the change in administrations might mean its demise.
In May, top administration officials -- including Jane Lubchenco, the former Oregon State University scientist and current head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- visited the Northwest to meet with biologists, dam-operating agencies and politicians about salmon.
But she and others have so far kept quiet on their strategy for the fish, whose recovery costs have run into the billions of dollars.
Redden has said the biological opinion should include a contingency plan to consider breaching four dams on the lower Snake River if wild salmon edge closer to extinction.
That has reopened an old debate over whether dam removal is necessary to save salmon. In 2000, Kitzhaber made headlines by coming out in favor of dam removal as one part of a larger strategy to restore wild salmon.
But the political landscape is different now: More regional leaders say dam removal should at least be on the table. And some businesses in inland ports dependent on the dams are now open to them being removed if it includes support for improving rail and road infrastructure.
"Right now the weak link are the Washington senators, who at best have been silent on this issue," said Nicole Cordan, an attorney for Save Our Wild Salmon, which facilitated the governors' letter to Obama.
The letter doesn't mention the dams, saying only that federal leadership is the missing ingredient to finding a settlement.
"Dialogue among key parties on the salmon, energy, water and job issues at stake here has never entirely died, but it was not a priority for the last administration," the letter says.
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