Environmentalists Find Salmon Group Fishy Some Say New Group Is Front For Power Utilities, Industry

What’s in a name?

Controversy, if the name is Northwesterners For More Fish and the subject is salmon recovery.

At a video satellite link-up Wednesday, fish conservationists from the Northwest said the group should disband. They said the group’s an industry front using its name to deceive the public.

“This group is an attempt to write off salmon stocks in the Upper Snake River Basin,” said Mitch Sanchotena, co-founder of Idaho Steelhead and Salmon Unlimited.

Sanchotena spoke from a Boise studio. Participants in Seattle, Portland and Eugene, Ore., echoed his view.

But one of the group’s organizers said the fuss is much ado about nothing.

“Part of the humor in all this hysteria is that we’re still refining our proposal,” said J. Vander Stoep, an attorney who represents the Chelan Public Utility District in central Washington. “We haven’t raised any money, put out any press releases or bought any ads.”

The Eddie Mahe Co., a Washington, D.C., political consulting firm, suggested the group spend $2.6 million to push for salmon recovery legislation favorable to industry and power utilities.

But Vander Stoep said the group will spend no more than $800,000 this year to educate the public about a National Academy of Sciences report from last November.

The report said there was more scientific support for barging salmon downriver than for flushing them with water transfers from upstream.

PUDs such as Chelan favor barging putting smolts in barges to get them safely around hydropower dams - because it doesn’t involve redesigning the dams.

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said the group “started in the right direction” by referring to the National Academy of Sciences report. “I find it very amusing that some environmental groups have as one of their primary goals the denial of First Amendment rights for those people who don’t say what they want to hear,” Gorton said.

Gorton gave a briefing on salmon recovery immediately before the group held an organizing meeting at the Spokane Club on Feb. 16.

“Much of Gorton’s campaign apparatus has been part and parcel of this organization,” Tim Stearns, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon, said from Seattle during the conference. “If he hasn’t signed on, his fingerprints are all over it.”

Vander Stoep is a former chief of staff to Gorton and directed the senator’s 1994 re-election campaign.

Greg Casey, chief of staff to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said he attended the meeting to tell the group about Idaho Gov. Phil Batt’s salmon recovery plan, which Craig supports.

Craig said he would “vigorously oppose” the group if it tried to stop the Batt plan. Batt’s plan would barge fewer migrating baby salmon downstream than at present. But it also would regulate the amount of water taken from Dworshak Reservoir to flush salmon that stay in the river.

Craig said he had neither announced his support of Northwesterners For More Fish nor opposed its right to organize.