[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 96 (Thursday, July 1, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8064-S8065]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        RECOVERY OF SALMON RUNS

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, a thoughtful and detailed article appeared 
about a week ago in the Portland Oregonian indicating public 
expenditures of close to $1 billion during the current year directed at 
the recovery of salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest. That is an 
extraordinarily large amount of money for a purpose of that nature.
  A modest portion of it comes from State appropriations of the four 
States in the Columbia River drainage area. The largest single share of 
that almost $1 billion is paid for through the charges for electric 
power produced by the Bonneville Power Administration and others, and, 
therefore, by the residents of the region, but a very substantial share 
of that money comes from appropriations approved by this Congress.
  As recently as 1 year or 18 months ago, I and many others in the 
region were critical of the billions of dollars of spending for this 
purpose on the grounds that they had shown few, if any results, and 
that, in fact, salmon runs had declined during that period of time.
  That criticism is no longer entirely correct. We have had some recent 
successes, and I will mention a few of them in just a moment. But I 
think all would agree that those successes are not at this point a 
proper return on an investment of almost $1 billion a year.
  For example, with the aid and assistance of my friend and colleague, 
the senior Senator from West Virginia, the Interior appropriations bill 
for the current year included $20 million appropriated to the State of 
Washington for these purposes. And this Senator has to confess that he 
is not entirely certain what the people of the United States have 
gotten for that $20 million at this point.

  This Senator cannot point to a single significant success as a 
result. Part of the reason, of course, is that in the current year, the 
spending of that money has not been completed. Part of it is that the 
programs which it funds are new, and part of it is the fact that the 
very nature of the salmon resource requires a number of years to tell 
whether or not any positive results will take place. But nonetheless, 
we are faced with that very real challenge of determining whether or 
not we are getting our money's worth out of these investments.
  For the next year, for fiscal year 2000, I can identify in our own 
work in this body significant amounts of money coming from the energy 
and water appropriations bill, especially through the Army Corps of 
Engineers, through the agriculture appropriations bill, through the 
Commerce-State-Justice appropriations bill, particularly

[[Page S8065]]

close to $100 million for the enforcement and maintenance of a recent 
treaty signed with Canada on the subject of salmon in the Northwest, 
through the Environmental Protection Agency, and once again, through 
the appropriations bill the Senator from West Virginia and I will 
manage for the Department of Interior and related agencies.
  In addition, of course, there will be those huge amounts of money, 
close to half a billion dollars a year, through rates charged for 
electricity by the Bonneville Power Administration and somewhat 
enhanced appropriations from the four States.
  There are many, and I have been occasionally tempted toward this 
position myself, who will say that if we are not getting our money's 
worth and if there are so many different entities spending money on 
salmon recovery, would it not be appropriate to have a single federally 
appointed salmon czar who would determine how all of this money would 
be spent.
  The argument for that proposition, I think, would be much stronger if 
there were a single salmon science; that is to say, if we knew 
precisely what we were doing, if there were one accepted way of getting 
the most for our money in connection with salmon recovery.
  Of course, at this point, there is not. There are serious, well-
founded debates throughout the country and in the Pacific Northwest as 
to various, widely different policy prescriptions for salmon recovery.
  To have one decisionmaker for all of these expenditures is perhaps 
not wise, at least until we have learned a good deal more about how we 
go about attaining our goals.
  I do think, however, there could be considerably more coordination 
than there is at the present time. Three years ago, I persuaded the 
Congress, as a rider on an appropriations bill, to create an 
independent scientific review board to advise the Bonneville Power 
Administration on how to spend the more than $100 million a year in 
actual cash grants that it gives for salmon recovery. I had learned in 
the previous year that those decisions were made by various self-
interested parties who awarded almost all of the money themselves 
without any discernible positive impact at all, and the situation with 
respect to that roughly 10 percent of the money spent on salmon 
recovery has been considerably improved by that independent scientific 
review.
  I introduced a bill this year that would expand its authority to all 
the decisions made by the Bonneville Power Administration, not just 
direct money grants, but revenue foregone from its power cells, and I 
hope that the Congress will soon consider and pass that proposal.

  Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of room for additional 
experimentation in connection with salmon recovery.
  The bill which will be presented by the Senator from West Virginia 
and myself in a few weeks for the Department of the Interior will 
include a modest $4 million figure that will not go directly to the 
State of Washington, in this case, but will go, I hope, through a 
nonprofit organization which tells us that it can more than match the 
amount of money that we will appropriate and will direct most of its 
money at private volunteer citizen organizations.
  I have found that those organizations do give us very much value for 
the money. Earlier this year, one local group of salmon recovery 
volunteers joined forces with a landowner on Snow Creek in my State. 
They received the cooperation of the Association of General Contractors 
in the State of Washington, an association that has a huge investment 
in connection with salmon recovery because of the impact of the 
Endangered Species Act on its ability to build.
  Together, these volunteer organizations and private donors and 
representatives of the building industry have come up with an extremely 
constructive and almost certainly effective salmon recovery plan for a 
single stream. Like them, an organization of volunteers called Long 
Live the Kings is one of the dozen or more such organizations in the 
State of Washington, each of which is working on a single stream or 
group of streams with tremendous volunteer labor and great enthusiasm. 
Aid and assistance to them without detailed regulation from the State 
seems to me to be a wise investment of a modest portion of our money in 
this respect.
  There are some in this body and others who say this is a regional 
problem and it should be paid for entirely by the region itself. And 
certainly the people of the Pacific Northwest put a very high value on 
salmon recovery.
  But the way in which they must approach that salmon recovery is 
governed almost entirely, some would say distorted, by the Endangered 
Species Act, an act of the Congress of the United States which is both 
broad in one sense and very narrow in another sense in its scope, and 
governs many decisions in the State far beyond simply the management of 
our waters and of our salmon recovery itself.
  So the Federal Government, having imposed these requirements, has an 
obligation at least substantially to help fund them. Nevertheless, I am 
here today to say that while this is a very high priority of the 
Congress, an extremely high priority of the people in my State and the 
other States in the Columbia River Basin, it is one on which we know 
and believe we should be held accountable by the Congress. We will do 
the best job we possibly can with the moneys appropriated by Congress 
or directed by Congress to see to it that we are successful.
  Recent listings in the Puget Sound area now have the Endangered 
Species Act, for the first time, as having an immense impact on a major 
metropolitan area in the United States. The people of my State are 
eager to take on that task. They have asked for modest help from us 
here. We are giving them that modest help. We will keep Congress and 
the people of the United States advised of how well we are doing with 
the generous assistance that my colleagues have helped me to provide.

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