| Irrigators Threaten Feds With
Suit
July 31, 2003 By Mark Engler, Oregon staff writer (based in Portland) Capital Press agriculture weekly Salem, Oregon To submit a Letter to the Editor: rleidahl@capitalpress.com Two groups whose members reap their livelihood from the life Columbia and Snake River water gives to their crops and livestock are planning to put as much pressure as they can on the federal government to update salmon and steelhead run-health assessments. "We're looking at the fundamental issue, which is jeopardy," said Darryll Olsen, a board member for the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association. "Everything else comes after that." The Columbia-Snake group and the Eastern Oregon Irrigators Association last week gave a 60-day "notice of intent to sue" NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration "for violations of the Endangered Species Act and arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act." According to a letter accompanying the notice, the irrigators believe that in light of recent salmon and steelhead counts revealing the strongest adult fish returns in decades, NOAA's 2000BiOp has become erroneous and faulty and exaggerates the risks of extinction to salmon and steelhead in the Columbia-Snake River system. "The data excludes runs for 2000, 2001 and 2002, that are generally the highest ever counted since construction of Bonneville Dam in 1938," Portland lawyer James Buchal wrote for the associations. "Any reconsideration of whether (Federal Columbia River Power System) operations jeopardize listed salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin is necessarily arbitrary and capricious, and fails to use the "best available scientific and commercial data" as required by (the ESA), unless it takes account of these increases." The notice comes on the heels of a refusal by U.S. District Court Judge James Redden in Portland to allow the groups to file a brief in the current litigation between several environmental groups, led by the National Wildlife Federation, against NOAA Fisheries. The notice lists several points the irrigator associations say must be addressed to avoid a legal confrontation. Key among their demands is that NOAA take an aggressive approach in reworking and correcting its assertion that the danger of extinction to salmon and steelhead runs is primarily due to the operations of hydroelectric dams. The associations also want to avoid further burdensome regulatory actions on farmers, ranchers and electricity rate payers generally. "Our position is that we shouldn't get the cart before the horse here," said Olsen, who serves as a spokesman for the groups. "If you put the jeopardy standard back into a proper legal perspective, then that might have a significant impact on what measures are looked at to avoid that jeopardy." What's critically needed at this point is for Redden to be carefully walked through the technical information and data that reveal salmon and steelhead runs are improving over time, "because apparently he doesn't understand what is happening in terms of the survival of the species," said Olsen. http://www.capitalpress.info/Main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=792&ArticleID=3509 |