The Obama administration says it will be more aggressive in protecting declining Pacific Northwest salmon runs and will study breaching some dams as a last resort in a long-awaited management plan.
The administration submitted the plan to a federal judge today in Portland. Called a “biological opinion,” it will guide hydroelectric dam operations and fish conservation programs in the Columbia Basin for the next decade.
U.S. District Judge James Redden rejected two earlier plans in 2000 and 2004, threatening at one point to take control of dam management.
The new plan would immediately increase mitigation programs to boost salmon survival, expand research and monitoring, and set specific biological “triggers” for even stronger measures.
But the Obama administration plan supported an earlier version offered by the Bush administration, even though Redden found portions of that plan inadequate.
The Obama administration said it will speed up things like habitat improvement projects because of concerns about uncertainties such as the effect of climate change.
The revised plan also directs the Army Corps of Engineers to begin studying removal of the Snake River dams but warned it was “viewed as an action of last resort.”
The biological opinion is required by the federal Endangered Species Act to protect salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin.
It was prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the three federal agencies involved in operating dams, the Army Corps, the Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. (AP)
