[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 26, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: January 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
COLUMBIA RIVER SALMON
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, later this week the National Marine
Fisheries, Service is expected to announce a decision that will have a
tremendous impact on how people in the Pacific Northwest benefit from
the Columbia River. Though the details of the decision are not yet
known, the position that NMFS reportedly is adopting is further
indication the Endangered Species Act is broken and needs fixing.
At issue is the biological opinion that determines whether Federal
actions on the Columbia River will jeopardize the continued existence
of threatened and endangered salmon runs.
As it stands now, the act requires Federal agencies to consult with
NMFS on all actions that might jeopardize the survival of listed
species. In the case of Columbia River salmon, NMFS must each year
render a jeopardy or no-jeopardy opinion on an operating plan that
determines, among other things, how the Federal dams on the Columbia
River will be managed. In developing this opinion, NMFS must use the
best scientific and commercial data available.
Early reports are that in the name of salmon recovery, the National
Marine Fisheries Service [NMFS] is demanding flow levels on the river
that will cost Northwest families and businesses hundreds of millions
of dollars per year in higher electric power bills. There will also be
costs for people who boat, fish, irrigate, or ship goods on the river,
as well as for other fish and wildlife that have thrived under existing
river conditions. Given our knowledge of the relationship between flows
and salmon survival, the agency's position is indefensible.
In 1993, NMFS issued a no-jeopardy opinion on a river operating plan
that increased energy costs in the region by $100 million. This
increase was itself controversial, but was ostensibly based on the
agency's reading of existing salmon science. Now NMFS is developing its
biological opinion on an operating plan that will govern river
operations from 1994 to 1998. NMFS is reportedly asking for flows
during these years that would cost ratepayers an additional $55 million
to $300 million per average water year, over the previous $100 million
figure, depending upon the accounting methods used. One would assume
that NMFS is basing this costly new demand on fresh scientific
evidence, but it is not. To the contrary, what new science has arisen
in the last year supports flow levels less costly than those used in
1993.
The most critical new scientific document on salmon recovery in the
last year is the recovery team plan.
This plan is the result of nearly 2 years of work by a team of
eminent, NMFS-appointed fisheries scientists. The plan was drafted to
serve as the basis for the official recovery plan which NMFS is
required to produce by the Endangered Species Act.
The official recovery plan will eventually replace the consultation
process as the primary regulator of river flows. As such, the plan must
not only not jeopardize the continued existence of the salmon, but must
also lead to the recovery of salmon populations.
The recovery team plan recommends a number of costly and ambitious
recovery measures. But despite the more exacting recovery standard, it
does not recommend flows anywhere near those now being proposed by
NMFS. Regardless, NMFS has chosen to ignore the recovery team plan
because it does not agree with the preconceived notions of some of the
agency's scientists.
Senator Craig and I recently wrote Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown to
express our concern about NMFS's position. In that letter, we cautioned
the Secretary:
If NMFS ignores the Recovery Team's plan in developing its
biological opinion or radically revises the plan in drafting
its own plan, it will reduce the Recovery Team process to a
cynical exercise in public involvement. NMFS will be viewed
as an agency pursuing its own political agenda in the face of
good science and regionally developed solutions. This would
further disintegrate what regional consensus remains on
salmon recovery.
There is plenty of room to debate what is required to protect the
wild salmon, but we cannot afford to let one Federal agency force the
expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars for salmon recovery
based upon a whim, a hunch, or a political agenda. Both taxpayers and
ratepayers in the Northwest have limited resources.
Regional electric power rates are rising sharply as a result of
salmon recovery and other factors, and energy-dependent industries that
employ tens of thousands of Washington workers are struggling to
survive. Aluminum companies are laying off employees in response to low
aluminum prices, pulp and paper mills are reeling from the timber
supply crisis, and even industrial giants such as Boeing are trying
desperately to remain competitive. We simply cannot allow NMFS to load
additional costs on these industries and individual ratepayers without
solid scientific support.
I intend to push for changes in the section 7 consultation process
that will prevent this type of agency freelancing in the future.
Legislation I have introduced with Senator Shelby would allow customers
of Federal agencies to participate in the consultation process. The
bill would also allow non-Federal parties to consult with Federal
agencies to determine whether prospective activities will jeopardize
listed species or their habitat. If jeopardy is found, the agency would
be required to suggest reasonable and prudent alternatives. During
consultation, each Federal agency would also be required to consider
its other obligations and responsibilities under statutes, treaties,
interstate compacts, and contractual agreements.
Mr. President, I do not know whether or not this Congress will
address the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act. The
administration and the leadership in Congress are both reluctant.
People in the Northwest and throughout the country are growing
increasingly frustrated with the Endangered Species Act. People are
frustrated not because they want to exterminate species, but because
the act is not working. They are frustrated because the act places
astronomical economic and social costs on families and communities, but
has very little in the way of recovered species to show for it.
I wish with all my heart that the Clinton administration could make
the Endangered Species Act work for both species and people. But I have
read the act. I have seen the destruction it has wrought in Northwest
timber communities. Now it may add communities dependent on
agriculture, aluminum, and transportation to that list. I simply do not
think the act can be made to work.
The manner in which the National Marine Fisheries Service appears to
be applying the act with respect to Columbia River salmon is further
evidence that the act requires major changes. Enacting these reforms
will continue to be one of my highest priorities.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Chair recognizes
the Senator from Idaho [Mr. Craig].
Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Chair recognizes
the Senator from Idaho [Mr. Craig].
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho has up to 5 minutes
under the previous order.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me first of all associate myself with
the remarks of my colleague from the State of Washington, who, as he
referenced, with me signed a letter to the Secretary of the Department
of Commerce, who has the ultimate responsibility over National Marine
Fisheries in the application of the Endangered Species Act on the Snake
and Columbia River systems as it relates to these particular species of
salmon that are in question at the moment and have been listed as
threatened or endangered.
The issue here has been well outlined, and the issue is very critical
at this moment and over the next 24 hours. We have an agency of the
Federal Government which, by law, is required to use science as a
determining factor in making decisions that will have ultimate impact
upon the Snake River and the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington
and Idaho and their usage and all who are associated with it.
My colleague from Washington has outlined the process very clearly.
What is at hand here is not a question of this administration versus
the last administration. This is a problem that was existing and
started with the Bush administration. It is largely a question of
preexisting law. We are talking about the Endangered Species Act.
What we are also talking about is a team of scientists that were
selected by the National Marine Fisheries, who spent 2 years and
countless thousands of hours reviewing and interviewing and examining
the science and the region and the fish and the economics, and they
made a finding. That finding was that about 8 million acre feet of
water was necessary or should be used in the process of moving these
fish down the river.
But because that science had not been peer reviewed, National Marine
Fisheries staff is saying they know better. Now this is the same staff
that worked with the team, helped select the team, brought the team
together, and facilitated the team in its overall observations. And yet
the very facts that the staff of National Marine Fisheries are at this
moment trying to use to make an entirely different decision have not
been peer reviewed either.
Why will they not err on the side of the very scientists they put in
place to establish the proposed recovery team on these fish? Well, it
appears that they are willing to err on the side of politics instead of
the side of science.
Mr. President, what really then is at hand here is not only a
decision that might have phenomenal impact on Idaho and Oregon and
Washington, as outlined by my colleague from Washington, but also what
is at hand here is a question in the reauthorization of the Endangered
Species Act itself. Now the Clinton administration has been saying and
has made a great effort in expressing its desire that the act not be
changed, but it is merely a matter of the proper administration of the
Endangered Species Act.
Let me suggest that the very action of National Marine Fisheries
today and tomorrow and for the balance of this week may, may--and I
repeat, may--clearly call into question the ability of any agency to
manage this act as it currently exists if they will in fact ignore the
science of the scientists that they themselves selected.
If they bring before us a jeopardy opinion that ignores the
consultation of the Bonneville Power Administration, the Bureau of
Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and a whole host of users up
and down the river and the very science of a scientific team that said
8 million acre feet of water is adequate until further science is known
or proved to be different, then they are in fact walking on the side of
politics instead of on the side of science. And, as result of that, a
case can be clearly built to go before the Environment and Public Works
Committee, where this law is now up for reauthorization, and argue that
this law must be changed.
So while the impact of this decision could be tremendous on my State
of Idaho, it may establish a very dangerous, dangerous precedent that
will cry out for substantial reform in the Endangered Species Act
itself.
The Governor of Idaho, Cecil Andrus, of the other political party,
wrote a similar letter to the National Marine Fisheries as did the
Senator from Washington and I, and argued a similar kind of argument:
That this clearly has to be something in which it is found based on
what is available now, and that to use unnecessarily high Snake River
and Columbia River flows in its section 7 consultation for 1994 actions
would be--and these are the Governor's words--``inconsistent with the
council's plan,'' and we are talking about the regional power council
and, of course, the scientific team itself, who has proposed a draft
management plan for the river for the fish and the saving of this
important resource for the region.
Mr. President, I say to the chairman, let me thank you for allowing
us time to talk about this very necessary and important topic. We hope
that National Marine Fisheries will listen and, more importantly,
respond to science instead of politics so that we could go on about the
business of working together cooperatively to save the salmon and to
allow our region to manage itself appropriately and to not throw into
jeopardy an act that, while it deserves certain amendments, it deserves
also to stand on its feet. And the science of that act, as directed,
deserves to stand on its feet.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
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