Saving The Salmon Isn’t All Or Nothing

Can the Pacific Northwest save both its threatened salmon runs and its hydropower-dependent economy?

Rhetoric in the salmon debate sometimes implies we can save only one, not both. Wrong. Gradually, federal policy has begun moving in a direction that’s encouraging for both the salmon and the economy.

A crucial victory occurred this month when the Clinton administration agreed with the Northwest’s congressional delegation that federal taxpayers should pay part of the cost of upcoming salmon restoration measures. After all, it is federal laws and treaty commitments that create the duty to save salmon. And it was largely federal policy - involving dams, fisheries and habitat management - that placed wild salmon runs in jeopardy.

A concern remains: How well will the White House and Congress follow through on this federal commitment? Salmon restoration costs surely will rise, but the Northwest’s ability to pay them is limited. The region pays through Bonneville Power Administration electrical rates. But if rates rise too dramatically, the BPA’s industrial customers will leave the region or switch to competing private power providers. Then, BPA would have less revenue to spend on salmon restoration.

Only part of the financial help the White House recently pledged actually is cash; some of it is in the form of permission for BPA to borrow more money, which Northwest power users eventually would repay, with interest. The federal help, therefore, is at least a good start but one that should be improved upon.

There is a similar kind of progress in the federal government’s recently announced plan for salmon restoration.

Crafted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the plan is appropriately broad in scope. It would improve spawning habitat, limit harvests of wild salmon, cap the overproduction of hatchery fish and begin to change dam operations.

Changes at the dams are crucial. Barging young salmon around dams has not improved the runs. Conditions for in-river migration should be improved, and the results should be monitored. But the National Marine Fisheries Service plan moves slowly into this controversial, costly realm. What’s worse, there’s talk in Congress of cutting funds for the scientists whose research will tell us how salmon are doing and which tactics work best.

Disappointing? Yes. But the federal government is moving, mostly in the right direction, and that’s to be applauded.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board