Saving Fish Could Be Too Costly Gorton Sees Extinction As A ‘Clear Possibility’

Faced with the prospects of spending hundreds of millions of dollars more to save Northwest salmon, Sen. Slade Gorton said Thursday it may be necessary to let several species of the fish go extinct.

“It is a clear possibility. It is possibility anyway no matter what we do,” Gorton, R-Wash., said.

“There is a cost beyond which you just have to say very regrettably we have to let species or subspecies go extinct,” he said.

Gorton emphasized that he had not decided what amount of money is reasonable to save the salmon. He also said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would allow for more consideration of economic impacts when addressing fish and wildlife under the Endangered Species Act.

Congressional sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday the government will propose that water flows be increased on the Snake and Columbia rivers, at the expense of hydropower production, to help save the troubled fish.

The National Marine Fisheries Service tentatively has settled on a plan in the form of a “biological opinion” that would cost at least $120 million a year, they said.

Randy Hardy, head of the Bonneville Power Administration, said Thursday that he expects overall costs associated with the new biological opinion to be in the neighborhood of those of the Northwest Power Planning Council’s plan. The council’s plan would cost an estimated $175 million to $180 million annually.

“I don’t expect the numbers to be terribly different,” Hardy told reporters after a breakfast meeting with the Washington delegation.

“In all likelihood, there will be some significant increases in salmon costs,” he said, noting BPA already spends $350 million a year on fish and wildlife.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., said he is certain the costs will exceed $100 million a year.

“I’m told this proposal will be slightly less” than the price tag of the council’s plan, Dicks said.

“We know the entire impact of this can’t be placed on Bonneville,” Dicks said.

Gorton, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the interior, said the Northwest will have to decide whether it is worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars to save the salmon from extinction.

He said it will be difficult to persuade Congress that taxpayers, rather than Northwest ratepayers, should pick up the bill.

“I don’t see it at all easy to ask the federal government to take on a new responsibility that will cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars when almost everything else is being cut,” Gorton said.

Dicks said he too wants to examine the tradeoffs involved in saving the salmon in the Snake and Columbia rivers. He said $100 million would go a long ways toward improving fish habitat elsewhere in the region.

Aides to three members of Congress, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency is expected to propose to a judge in Portland next month that the expensive water-flow changes be made in the operation of fish-killing dams.

The comprehensive plan is expected to be made public in draft form on Monday. It proposes flushing some water out of storage reservoirs in Idaho and Montana and drawing down the reservoir level at one dam on the Columbia River to provide young salmon with additional water they need to migrate.

That would mean less water to churn the turbines on the hydroelectric dams that provide the Northwest with more than half its electricity. It also could mean less water for irrigation, farming and shipping.