Senator Aims to Kill Agency That Tracks Salmon

[acmavm]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062301915.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

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

<snip>
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.

<snip>
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.

<snip>
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."
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Gee, the salmon vs. business interests. "Surprise, surprise" as Gomer Pyle would say.

[phantom power]

1. I have a theory.

Whenever push comes to shove between human development and the environment, the environment always loses. Always. The only times we think we're making progress, is when the conflict isn't yet serious. If people decide they need/want a resource badly enough, no amount of enrivonmental regulations or protections will stand in their way.

Domestic oil drilling is an example. Our national parks and wildernesses are supposedly sacrosanct, but at the first sign of difficulty, we rolled over that principle like a bulldozer.

The growing conflict between fish and agriculture in the northwest is another. The fish are going to lose. I'm pleasantly surprised they've held out as long as they have, but when the droughts continue, the farmers will win.

As a species, we have zero self-control. No ability to say "We've taken enough." No ability to say "we have to halt our expansion, even though it will require sacrifice." We can't even do it to save ourselves, forget any other inhabitants of the planet.

Tell me I'm wrong. I want to be wrong.

[acmavm]

2. Wish I could but I know you're right, especially about the lack of

self control. It's a case of cutting of one's nose to spite one's face (like the old adage says).

We'd be better off the find an alernative, to conserve, or to do without but hey, we'd be inconvenienced. Can't have that.

[hatrack]

3. You speak truth here

I put it in a slightly more condensed form: human beings will do anything it takes to protect the environment, so long as it doesn't cost them any money or inconvenience them in any imaginable way.

[Kool Kitty]

4. Didn't Bush say that "the fish and humans

could co-exist peacefully"? Looks like he was wrong.....