Update on passage at Columbia and Snake river dams
 

The Northwest Steelheaders were one of the founding members of the Save Our wild Salmon coalition, and maintain an active presence on the SOS Board. We have also been very involved in lawsuits to improve passage at Columbia and Snake River dams. The start of 2012 is a good time for an update on this campain.  

Momentum to restore Columbia and Snake River salmon, while boosting clean energy, better transportation, and jobs in all three sectors in the process, grew markedly in 2011.  The Pacific salmon states enter 2012 with the best opportunity in a decade to begin a collaboration that finally achieves a lawful science-based plan that helps people in all six states. 

• In August, a U.S. District Court ruled the Obama Administration's Columbia-Snake salmon plan illegal, the fourth in a row to meet that fate.  The court provided two years to create a new plan - enough time for a stakeholder-based solutions process to parallel the legal process.
• The court ordered that "spilling" of water over Columbia-Snake federal dams, in order to boost survival of ocean-bound salmon, continue through 2013.  That will mean eight straight years of spill; the six years so far have led to higher salmon returns, showing that improvements in migratory habitat at federal dams and reservoirs pay off promptly.  Spill is helping wild salmon stocks and the thousands of people in our salmon economy.
• Spill, coupled with high flows, led to more than 60 percent of ocean-bound Columbia-Snake salmon migrating in the rivers in 2011 - not in barges or trucks.  This is the lowest level of barging and trucking in 20 years.  Doing less of it, and instead providing a healthier river for salmon, is a basic principle of salmon science that is now proving to work.
• Restoration of the Elwha and White Salmon Rivers in Washington began, via the largest and third-largest dam removals ever done, as did restoration of 60 miles of the San Joaquin River in California.  These projects all created jobs, are restoring important salmon rivers, and featured broad agreements built by people and communities for themselves as well as for salmon.
• From August through November, support for a stakeholder solutions process on the Columbia-Snake was voiced by 1140 businesses, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, Idaho Senator Jim Risch, daily newspapers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, the New York Times, and 52 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, They join Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the Nez Perce Tribe, and thousands of people in and beyond the salmon states to support a process to find shared lawful solutions for fish, energy, transportation and jobs.

Support for Columbia-Snake stakeholder talks will keep growing in 2012.  It's a commonsense alternative to repeating a tightly held agency process that has produced four illegal plans in a row and divided the salmon states.  It has worked on other salmon rivers and other tough natural resource conflicts.  We hope you will voice new, or continued, support for bringing people and interests together to talk, listen and work jointly to craft a shared solution.