For the week of August 27 - September 2, 2003

Babbitt says
breach dams

Craig says it won’t happen

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"Those four dams are the cause (of the salmon decline), and the question we face tonight is ‘how?’ Those dams have got to come down."

— BRUCE BABBITT, Clinton-era Interior secretary

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Equating the fight for the breaching of four lower Snake River dams with American football, Bruce Babbitt, secretary of Interior during the Clinton administration, said last week the fray is like Woody Hayes gridiron tactics. "Three yards and a cloud of dust," he said.

Babbit was the featured speaker Tuesday, Aug. 19, at a Ketchum fund-raising event for Save Our Wild Salmon, a Seattle-based nonprofit group that is devoting significant time and effort into removing four lower Snake River dams to clear the path for threatened and endangered Snake River salmon and steelhead.

"This (George W. Bush) administration is not looking for resolution," Babbitt said. "They are looking to grind the opposition and wear them down.

"Those four dams are the cause (of the salmon decline), and the question we face tonight is ‘how?’ Those dams have got to come down."

As he spoke, Babbitt stood on the back porch of a north-Ketchum home overlooking the meandering Big Wood River. A fisherman worked idly down stream, rhythmically airing a fly into crystal pools behind rocks and logs. The sun was low, and the sagebrush covered Boulder Mountain foothills glowed orange in the waning light.

More than 100 people attentively listened.

Babbitt said that, in 1992 when he was new to the role of Interior secretary, he did not know much about dams and salmon. But he soon declared a goal of dismantling at least one large dam during his tenure. He eventually presided over the dismantling of several dams on waters ranging from the Kennebec River in Maine to San Geronimo Creek in Marin County, Calif.

Both of those projects cleared the way for migratory salmon.

"There are more than 75,000 dams in the nation, most built long ago, many clearly obsolete," Babbitt said in a 1998 Interior Department press release. "Roy’s Dam (on San Geronimo Creek), for example, was built in the early 1920s. The role of many of these structures needs to be reassessed, especially those that have an obvious and adverse effect on our rivers and threatened and endangered species."

However, one of Babbitt’s most vocal critics during his tenure as Interior secretary was also in town last week. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said a day after Babbitt’s visit that efforts to breach the lower Snake River dams would not succeed.

"It will take an act of Congress to remove the dams," said Craig. And, in the current political climate with concerns about the risk to U.S. energy security, he said it is highly unlikely that any dams will be dismantled.

As far as the impact on the river system’s salmon, Craig said dams were not the culprits. According to a National Marine Fisheries Service study this year fishermen were enjoying a 30-year record salmon run. He said a bigger problem for the fish than dams could be "the character and the quality" of the ocean.

But environmentalists counter that the vast majority of salmon and steelhead returning from the Pacific Ocean are hatchery fish that benefited from high water flows during spring migration three and four years ago.

Craig also said to remove dams would be costly from an energy standpoint.

For every kilowatt taken off-line, it would cost 200 to 300 percent to replace the loss of hydrological power generation with an alternative source, he said. Currently a hydroelectric kilowatt-hour costs consumers about 3.8 cents.

Craig said he didn’t think Babbitt or his supporters would be in favor of building a nuclear power plant to replace lost hydropower.

"I’m not willing to wipe out the Northwest economy for the fish," Craig said.

But last week north of Ketchum, Babbitt said progress has been made on attitudes about dams removal.

"Ten years ago, there wasn’t a lot of talk about blowing up dams," he said.

He also pointed to the 1920s destruction of Sunbeam Dam on the Salmon River near Stanley, where miners allegedly blew the dam to pieces when salmon runs dwindled, and called it "a wonderful precedent."

"These are tough times; there’s no doubt about it," he said. "They’re so tough, I actually yearn for Jim Watt, (Interior secretary in the Reagan administration)."

He said Watt, a proponent of the so-called "Sagebrush Rebellion," was full of rhetoric on environmental issues with little associated action. "Today it’s just the opposite," he said.

Nonetheless, salmon advocates have enjoyed recent wins.

Last May in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of anadromous fish advocates, a federal judge ruled that government programs designed to protect the threatened and endangered salmon runs in the entire Columbia River Basin did not meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.

The federal recovery blueprint did not include dam breaching as a near-term solution, and fish advocates believe the judge’s decision could pave the way for breaching to again be considered as a legitimate option.

Steve Mashuda, an attorney with Earthjustice who worked on the case on behalf of Save Our Wild Salmon, said at the North-Ketchum event that the ruling was significant. He also said more lawsuits that will attempt to make power and water users understand the costs associated with keeping dams will soon be filed.

"We are, of course, pushing them to listen to the science and to consider dam removal," he said.

Pat Ford, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon, said the organization’s goal is to secure dam breaching by 2006.

"We could have chosen a better administration to do it under, but that is our goal," he said. "Now is the time, now through 2004 is the time, for our litigation strategy to succeed. If we can’t show (the illegality of maintaining the dams) now, we won’t be able to show it."

 

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