Pacific Northwest
Center that counts
fish loses funding
U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has eliminated a little-known agency that
counts endangered fish in the Columbia River.
The Fish Passage Center, with 12 employees and a budget of $1.3 million,
has been killed because it did not count fish in a way that suited Craig.
"Data cloaked in advocacy create confusion," Craig said on the Senate floor
this month, after successfully inserting language in an energy and water
appropriations bill that bans all future funding for the Fish Passage
Center.
Michele DeHart, a fish biologist who is the longtime manager of the center,
said she is not mad at Craig.
"What's the point?" asked DeHart, 55, who for nearly 20 years has run the
agency that keeps score on the survival of endangered salmon as they negotiate
federal dams in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
The center has documented, in statistical detail, how the Columbia-Snake
hydroelectric system kills salmon. Its analyses of fish-survival data also
suggests that one way to increase salmon survival is to spill more water over
dams rather than feed it through electrical turbines.
That suggestion, though, is anathema to utilities and to Craig because
water poured over dams means millions of dollars in lost electricity
generation.
