According to this article, in The Columbian, the Bush Administration had decided to appeal the judges ruling to stop the Columbia River draw downs


http://www.columbian.com/08052004/clark_co/173855.html

I must be confused. I thought that Mr. Bush came here 4 years ago and said "I will be an environmental president."

I think we need to take ol' President George on a fishing trip where he slams into some giant king and gets to fight it for awhile.

Maybe then he'll understand...

Did anyone read this article?

"The Army Corps of Engineers and National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday filed the appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. "


Even as all-knowing and all-powerful as President Bush is, I sincerely doubt he has given this issue much thought lately. So if we are to blame him, would someone please point out exactly who in his administration ordered the Army Corps of Engineers and the Marine Fisheries Service to file this appeal? :rolleyes:

ET,

I would agree that the president probably doesn't know everything that his various agency heads do. However, policy direction comes from the top and those agency heads are following the lead and philosophy of the republican administration.

For the record, I am not a liberal, I just don't like GB's environmental stance at all.

ET,

There are several "Administrative Assistants" in the employ of NMFS who were appointed by the Bush Administration. They are not answerable to Regional Administrator Bob Lohn - also a Bush appointee -, or anyone else in the NMFS / NOAA Fisheries chain of command. Their job appears to be to support administration goals, not NMFS' legislatively mandated mission to conserve public trust living marine resources.

You can be pretty sure that NMFS staff biologists did not recommend an appeal of Judge Redden's order.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

The secretary of the interior Gayle Norton has spend a lot of time in the Northwest and is VERY anti sallmon!!

as far as i can see Bush's administration hates salmon and wants them gone so they can do whatever they want in the northwest.

maybe i am a terrorist but quite frankly every time i drive past the dams i imagine a couple of the f-15's from the portland Air national guard dropping a few of thoes MOAB bombs.

Hah i tried to used the acronym for air nationa guard A.N.G hmm without the periods it comes up as *** i wonder why *L*


also i bet tom ridge is reading this right now because i used the words Bomb and Bush in the same post..

hey who's that knocking on my door??

So the bottom line question is $18 to $28 million in revenue versus how many salmon saved?

Some people say lots of salmon are saved by the water releases, some peole say few salmon are saved. So seeing as we really don't know, how much is a salmon worth?

Let me say... $100 per fish... Are 180,000 -280,000 fish saved by the water releases? I don't think so.

What price are you willing to pay?

ET thoes are prices in lost profit to BPA it affect the consumer not one bit.. with the increased profit do you really think they'd lower energy prices?? NOT!!

so out of their profit the extra 10 million is worth whatever it buys. if it saves one wild fall chinook then it's worth it..

the people who say spill doesn't help only look at fish that outmigrate in the spring. fall chinook however outmigrate in the summer when flows are lowest and thats why there has been all the talk of summertime spill...
summer time spill will save LOTS of fall chinook.

ET,

If you want to use a strictly economic analysis and approach, then the salmon and steelhead are finished. The river can generate so much energy that is worth so much money that even the historic Columbia River fish runs could not win that race.

The issue in my estimation is whether we allow BPA/USACoE/BOR to externalize the environmental costs of their project impacts by not fully mitigating them. Without mitigation, the fish - and their owners, U.S. citizens - pay. If the river and its fish were a private property resource, dam owners and operators would be required to fully mitigate at 100% value, the impacts of the hydropower projects. But they are publicly owned resources. Why are we so willing to sacrifice public resources, yet we are absolutely protective of private property resources?

Mitigating project impacts should be simply another part of the cost of doing business. If that principle is good enough for private property, then surely it is good enough to enforce for public property.

Now, why is it BPA should be allowed to kill more publicly owned salmon so they can generate more energy to sell? If you saw yourself as owner of the river and its salmon, would you still be so generous?

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Salmo G you are right on

However one thing is very plain to see. mitigation does not work. from now on we need to not do the damage to begin with.

we should have a just say no policy to anything that has a measureable negative impact on wild salmon and steelhead populations