WP: Senator Aims to Kill Agency That Tracks Salmon (What a headline...)

[DeepModem Mom]

What a headline, but how typical. Big Bird yesterday, salmon today -- what's next?


Senator Aims to Kill Agency That Tracks Salmon
Craig Angry About Court Order to Allow Water to Spill Over Dams to Save Endangered Fish

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 24, 2005; Page A11


SEATTLE, June 23 -- Angered by a federal court order that spills water over federal dams to save endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest, Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) has inserted language into a Senate energy bill that would kill an agency that keeps score on the survival of fish as they swim through the heavily dammed Columbia and Snake rivers.

The federal government has spent far more money trying to prevent the extinction of Northwest salmon than it has on any other endangered species. Craig's move would eliminate the Fish Passage Center, which for more than two decades has been collecting and analyzing data that document how effective that multibillion-dollar federal effort has been....

***

At the heart of the dispute over salmon is a disagreement about how to increase their survival as they negotiate federal dams that have transformed the Snake and Columbia from the world's premier salmon highway to a series of slow-moving lakes separated by huge slabs of concrete.

Indian tribes, many state fish biologists, fishing organizations and environmental groups say the best way to increase survival is to keep the fish in the rivers while increasing their flow during migration months and spilling water over dams. These groups have long supported the Fish Passage Center, which has published many reports calling for more spill and increased flow -- programs that can cost millions of dollars by reducing electricity generation and disrupting irrigation and river transport....

***

On the other side, are federal agencies that built the dams and sell the power, along with irrigation, barging and utility interests that depend on the dammed-up Columbia and Snake for their livelihood. Their side has received considerable support from the Bush administration, which concluded last year that federal dams should be viewed as part of an "environmental baseline" when it comes to saving salmon. U.S. District Judge James Redden rejected that analysis this month, saying that it was made "more in cynicism than in sincerity."...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062301915.html

[swag]

1. Very funny. I worked at FPC a few years back, moving their databases

to an open architecture, revamping their data collection infrastructure and, travelling around the Columbia/Snake River basins to get the client software and transmission routines in place.

The hostility to the science and hard data approach of the FPC is nothing new. Bonneville Power has been trying to 86 the FPC for years, and they and many Republican politicians have been heinously slandering FPC for even longer.

All the FPC does is provide data. They've passed several hostile data audits spearheaded by people aiming to do them in. And they stand on the side of fact and science.

http://www.fpc.org/

It is no surprise that somebody like Larry Craig finds himself an adversary of the reality-based community.

[pfitz59]

2. Craig belongs to Simplot.....

Irrigation water for potatoes. Fuck the fish!

[kwolf68]

3. Not sure

If Larry Craig or James Inhofe is the biggest wise-use fascist operating in the Senate, but I am convined that Craig is the devil himself.

This guy is a heartless bastard who is ruled by power, greed, money, corporations and hatred for anything that pays any modicum of respect to the environment.

If we put a bill in the Senate to literally remove every animal from earth, he'd be one of the few that would support it.

[swag]

4. This part of the article is pure Michele DeHart -

She takes shit from nobody (and delights in being "that awful mouthy woman") :


The manager of the Fish Passage Center, Michele DeHart, said her staff collects "data that is accurate and, yes, it does show that the federal hydro system kills fish."

The federal court order that requires summer spill over dams in the Snake River means that some of the electricity that could be generated by those dams is being forgone -- at an estimated cost of about $67 million over the three summer months. Much of the data on fish survival that supported the order, which was made last month by a federal judge in Portland and has been appealed by the Bush administration, was gathered and analyzed by the Fish Passage Center.

"Maybe this is one of those deals where when you don't like the message, you kill the messenger," DeHart said.

[not fooled]

5. A FINE example of 'puke problem-solving skills!

If you don't like the policy, just get rid of the agency!!! Brilliant! Geez, those 'pukes really know how to solve problems!

Gov't-funded climate research next. :shrug: :nuke: :silly: :crazy:

[acmavm]

6. Dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=26048&mesg_id=26048

[swag]

7. not in LBN

[quiet.american]

8. If destruction is the aim, there's an (R) after the name. n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

9. How Johnnie-Cochranesque! Very good. nt

[quiet.american]

10. Love your description, lol -- thanks. n/t :)

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

11. I imagine there's quite of few sports fishermen in Idaho

Does Mr. Craig want to piss off his constituancy?

The Republicans seem hell bent on suicide these days.