“No-recovery plan” for steelhead

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released its new recovery plan for threatened/endangered Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook salmon and steelhead. States NOAA: “This recovery plan contains an extensive list of actions … however, the actions will not get us to recovery.” Unbelievably, NOAA acknowledges its “recovery plan” won’t achieve recovery!

Earlier this year the Bonneville Power Administration raised its wholesale electricity rate 5.4 percent; increases since 2010 total more than 30 percent. BPA cites a major reason for the recent increase: “escalating costs of programs driven by legal requirements,” aka the costs of fish mitigation and recovery. Since 2007 BPA has blown through a $917 million financial reserve and faces decreasing revenues due to lack of demand for electricity and mounting maintenance costs for an aging hydropower system.

If your local utility purchases BPA power, you, your children and your great grandchildren will pay hundreds of millions of dollars for NOAA’s “no-recovery plan.” Ratepayers lose, taxpayers lose, rural economies lose and Snake River fish go extinct.

All the while the government turns a blind eye on what fish scientists repeatedly identify as the single most significant action needed to support recovery: breaching the lower Snake River dams.

What a shameful waste.

Linwood Laughy

Moscow, Idaho