| Bush Extols Dams: White House Tampering May Have Doomed Salmon |
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by Tim McKay
The quest for votes may have been instrumental in Klamath River water decisions that ultimately left more than 34,000 adult salmon dead last year, according to new reports last month.
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March 2003
The revelation inspired angry editorials across the nation, was injected into the Presidential campaign by Democratic hopeful John Kerry and led fish-supporting plaintiffs - including the NEC - to insist on full disclosure.
The Wall Street Journal triggered the furor by reporting that George Bush’s chief political operative, Karl Rove, lectured federal water managers in early 2002 on keeping Klamath flows going to upriver irrigators rather than downstream fish. The reason, he said, was to bolster the political future of Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith.
Three months later, Smith stood side by side with Interior Secretary Gale Norton to flip the switch sending full water deliveries to the Klamath Irrigation Project. Not long after, the federal Bureau of Reclamation announced even more curtailed flows downriver.
By the end of September, rotting corpses of once-robust adult Chinook salmon littered the banks of the lower 40 miles of the Klamath.
Probe?
Following the news reports of White House political intervention in what some were calling “salmon-gate”, Kerry demanded an investigation by the inspector general of the Interior Department.
He said “it is of the utmost importance that our federal agencies carry out their legal responsibilities in a fair and unbiased manner, without seeking to satisfy a political agenda.."
Meanwhile Bush, on a campaign swing in the Northwest, picking an unfortunate site to argue that the region’s fish can be saved without having to tear down a single dam.
He spoke in front of Washington’s Ice Harbor Dam, which for 39 straight summer days has violated water-quality standards - and was so hot at beyond 68 degrees that one fish scientist likened it to a salmon-killing sauna.
Fishy Claim
Yet Bush argued that recent high salmon runs proved that the fish can co-exist with dams. His own administration officials later conceded that improved ocean conditions in the last few years were responsible for the rise in salmon returns - even though they remain way below historical levels.
Another Democratic hopeful, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, commented: “George Bush taking credit for increased salmon populations is like a sailor taking credit for the tides.”
Two years ago, a judge agreed with environmentalists that the Army Corps of Engineers must comply with state water-quality standards for the dam. The court this year said the agency was making progress, a decision the plaintiffs have appealed.
Dam managers still collect about 80% of the salmon runs and take them in barges past fish-killing dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.
Meanwhile back on the Klamath, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) said it will send more water down the Trinity this summer to stave off another fish kill.
The water is behind Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River but was sold to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The district traded it back to BOR for other water, then patted itself on the back in a press release because it “gave up” water for beleaguered salmon.
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Updated Wednesday, September 03, 2003 |
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