By Bill Arthur, Snake/Columbia River Salmon Campaign Chair
The long-awaited Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on recovering Snake and Columbia River salmon was released on February 28th. Sadly, the DEIS merely perpetuates the status quo and fails to take the bold steps needed to recover our endangered salmon, steelhead, and orca.
The federal agencies are giving us until April 13th to submit feedback on this woefully inadequate DEIS.
Please use this Comment Form to submit your feedback!
Due to the current national health emergency, the hearings that were scheduled for public comment have been appropriately canceled. The Sierra Club and other groups have made three requests for the agencies to extend the public comment period to 120 days or more and reschedule the hearings, but thus far the agencies have not been willing to do so. Instead, the agencies used teleconference hearings.
The DEIS includes information that can be useful in developing a comprehensive recovery that works for the Pacific Northwest’s salmon, orca, communities and clean energy future. But they fail to propose the bold changes that are necessary.
Although their analysis demonstrates that removing the four lower Snake River dams would be the most beneficial action for salmon and steelhead recovery, they dismiss the option as too expensive. Instead, they opt for the status quo option: spilling water over the dams to assist with downstream migration. We support spill as a helpful, intermediate action but it won’t save our fish from extinction or restore abundant salmon runs. This short-sighted decision hurts both our orca and our sport, commercial, and tribal fishing economies and communities. We need a comprehensive solution that works for everyone. It must restore the Snake River and its abundant salmon runs, invest in clean affordable/reliable energy, aid farms with transporting their commodities and keep communities strong and robust.
In order to do this, we need to invest in bold, comprehensive solutions.
Key points about the DEIS:
- The DEIS’s recommendation fails to take the bold steps needed to recover our endangered salmon, steelhead, and orca. Instead, they opt for the status quo option: spilling water over the dams to assist with downstream migration. We support spill as a helpful, intermediate action but it won’t keep our fish from extinction or restore abundant salmon runs. This short-sighted decision hurts both our orca and sport, commercial, and tribal fishing economies and communities.
- The DEIS acknowledges that removing the four lower Snake River dams would provide the most benefit for salmon and steelhead recovery. Yet the federal agencies have failed to select this alternative.
- The DEIS also alleges that none of the actions they studied would benefit Southern Resident Killer Whales (orca). This is not accurate. The science shows that Snake River Chinook are historically important to the orca; a restored Snake River and restored salmon abundance could play an important role in restoring critical nutrition to our starving orca. The orca feed off the mouth of the Columbia River in late winter and spring to get the large, fat, nutritious Chinook salmon that are returning to the Columbia Basin and Snake River.
2. Removing the four lower Snake River dams is essential to any effective plan to restore Snake River salmon. The warm water reservoirs behind the dams create lethal conditions for salmon and steelhead by slowing travel, increasing exposure to diseases that flourish in warmer waters, and increases predation from other fish. The dams also impede the downstream passage of young salmon and the upstream migration of adults.
- There are over 5500 miles of excellent habit in the rivers and streams of Central Idaho, SE Washington, and NE Oregon. These are high elevation, cold water areas that can provide a critical salmon sanctuary.
- In a world on the verge of a climate crisis, a restored and free-flowing Snake River is vital. The River's high elevation, cold water habitat is imperative to the health of our Northwest iconic species and will ensure their presence for generations to come.
3) We need a comprehensive plan that works for salmon, orca, communities and Tribal Nations
- We can replace the lost power with affordable/reliable clean energy (wind, solar, conservation, and demand response)
- We must invest in rail to assure we can get agricultural crops to market and maintain irrigation to the limited number of users who get water from above the Ice Harbor dam.
- Restoring the Snake River and its abundant salmon will benefit sport, commercial and tribal fishing economies and communities.
We need agency and political leadership to advance a dialogue that will develop these kinds of comprehensive and durable solutions.