Extended Salmon Spending Cap Worries Tribes Northwest Senators Preparing To Keep Lid On Bpa Costs

Indian tribes are warning of dire consequences if Congress extends a $435 million a year cost cap on salmon recovery efforts in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

The 6-year-old cap limits the amount of Bonneville Power Administration money that can be spent to restore the dwindling runs. Northwest senators are preparing to ask that the cap be extended.

“What is of great concern, of course, is what level of funding an extension is going to mean,” Rick Taylor, spokesman for the Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said Tuesday. “If extending the cap means extending it at its current level, it will be disastrous.”

The chairman of the Umatilla Tribe, Don Sampson, already has warned that an extension of the current cap would result in his tribe resigning from the executive committee formed to review salmon-recovery efforts.

It would be likely that the other tribes with salmon treaty rights also would withdraw from the committee. The panel is made up of the tribes, states and federal agencies and formally reviews National Marine Fisheries Service policy.

In a draft letter to Vice President Al Gore, the senators ask to reopen talks on the cap.

Former Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., brokered the agreement among federal agencies, Congress and Indian tribes.

The cap limits the BPA’s salmon recovery costs under the Endangered Species Act. With the cap extended beyond 2001, the federal power marketing agency could set rates and sell long-term electricity subscriptions in a competitive market.

“We believe this is the best way to maintain the financial certainty needed in the fish and wildlife budget without compromising our commitment to salmon recovery,” the senators say, according to a May 5 draft of the letter obtained by The Oregonian.

The letter does not discuss the length of the extension.

The letter was drafted by aides to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and is under review by other senators from Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho. It represents a significant step forward for the delegation, which has deliberated for months over the BPA’s future.

The senators and their staffs have discussed various approaches to restructuring the federal agency. But at a meeting last week attended by five of them, including Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, and Gordon Smith, a Republican, a bipartisan consensus apparently has begun to emerge.

The Oregonian said Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., had convinced the group that legislation would be needed to separate the BPA into two units. One would sell hydropower from federal dams and another would operate the agency’s transmission system.

Such an arrangement was suggested last year by a regional review panel selected by the four Northwest governors.

But Murray warned the group should ask the Clinton administration to extend the administrative agreement that limited the BPA’s cost to restore salmon runs.

An extended agreement could solve two political problems at once by easing concerns of fish advocates, and keeping the BPA profitable, saving the agency from congressional members who propose selling off its assets.

The letter to Gore, who helped negotiate the first agreement, is circulating through the offices of all eight Northwest senators.