Campaign Opposes Barging Salmon Sportsmen, Conservationists Petition Kempthorne, Crapo

Idaho sportsmen and conservationists are escalating their campaign against barging salmon and steelhead around Columbia River Basin dams, calling for a legislative ban on the technique.

“It’s clearly an experiment that has failed,” said Charles Ray of Idaho Rivers United, citing the steady decline in the runs over the 20 years barging has been employed.

On Tuesday, a coalition of seven groups launched a campaign to deluge U.S. Sen. Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Rep. Michael Crapo with postcards asking them to introduce the legislative ban when Congress reconvenes next month.

Kempthorne, who is leaving the Senate to run for governor next year, and Crapo, who is running for the Senate seat, were targeted because both explicitly supported Gov. Phil Batt’s proposal last winter to using barging to move only a third of the migrating fish downriver and letting the rest migrate in the high natural river flows from the heavy snowpack.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, which is responsible for salmon and steelhead recovery, ignored Batt and did exactly the opposite, barging two-thirds of the fish. The coalition said the service intends to barge 80 percent next spring.

“As long as the Clinton administration is able to hide behind barging, they will do nothing to fix the dams, and the fish runs will continue to decline,” Ray said.

Neither Crapo nor Kempthorne has made any commitment, but Ray speculated that that would change once each is swamped with 15,000 cards demanding barging be banned.

A legal challenge to barging by environmental and commercial fishing groups is still pending in federal court.

Barging supporters, almost exclusively downstream interests with a stake in preserving the dams and reservoirs, have argued that natural flow migration exposes the fish to lethal dissolved gases below the dams and that more barged fish return to spawn in upstream tributaries than those that migrated naturally.

But critics point to experts who have maintained that no matter what the return of barged fish is, it is not sufficient to allow restoration of the runs.

Some have argued that breaching the dams, particularly the four on the Lower Snake River in eastern Washington, is the key to revitalizing the endangered runs.