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©2007 Cascadia Times

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$10 billion for ... what?

The Yakama Indian Nation says hydro operations on the Columbia have killed 340 to 750 million salmon over the decades, and continue to kill them today. The damages could exceed one trillion dollars, says Yakama consultant Ed Sheets.

In contrast, Bonneville claims its failed efforts to protect the salmon have cost nearly $10 billion since 1978.

That $10 billion includes funds Bonneville claims it loses in power sales when it must comply with environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act, the Northwest Power Act and the Clean Water Act.

“I am not aware of any business or government agencies that calculate the revenues or profits they could have made if they had violated federal laws, regulations or court orders,” Sheets says.

Curiously, the sum includes a $1 billion charge for salmon recovery efforts in 2001, a year when Bonneville found itself in an energy crisis mostly of its own making. That year, Bonneville did almost nothing for fish.

Michael Blumm, a law professor, says the expenditures “are quite misleading, since so much money has been spent on ineffective hatchery and artificial transportation programs that both mask the hydropower system’s operational insensitivity to salmon migration and deceive the public into believing that there exists a functional plan to protect, let alone restore, the salmon runs.”

Bonneville could not legally collect the money it considers “foregone.” To do so, it would have to operate the dams in such an illegal fashion that executives at the Bonneville headquarters in Portland could face criminal prosecution under the ESA.
Said Redden: The federal agencies “and other water users in the Columbia and Snake River Basins could be exposed to liability for taking listed species under Section 9 of the ESA. Given the precarious condition of the Snake River salmon and steelhead runs, the consequences of another failed biological opinion will be serious indeed.”

A failure now will result in vacating the biological opinion, Redden says.
Section 9, the “Take Provision,” of the ESA, makes it unlawful for any person to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” a listed species. Each knowing violation of the Take Provision can result in civil penalties of up to $25,000, criminal penalties of up to $50,000, and imprisonment for up to one year.

Surely, officials at the Bonneville Power Administration and elsewhere are aware of the value of foregone jail time.

Next: Enter the God Squad

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