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December 02, 2005
How Idaho's Senator is screwing Northwest salmon
In a surgical strike from Capitol Hill, Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) has eliminated a little-known agency that counts endangered fish in the Columbia River.The Fish Passage Center, with just 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. "False science leads people to false choices."
Here in Portland, 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.
"I have never met the man," she said. "Never talked to him. No one from his office ever contacted us. I guess I am flabbergasted. We are biologists and computer scientists, and what we do is just math. Math can't hurt you."
But the mathematics of protecting salmon swimming in the nation's largest hydroelectric system can hurt your pocketbook -- particularly in the Northwest, where dams supply power to four out of five homes, more than anywhere in the country.
Salmon math has clearly riled up Craig, who in his last election campaign in 2002 received more money from electric utilities than from any other industry and who has been named "legislator of the year" by the National Hydropower Association.
No doubt Craig has been raking it in from the energy industry. The following is a list of the type of corporate donations Craig received during the 2002 election cycle:
Larry Craig (R)*
Electric Utilities $166,736
Forestry & Forest Products $138,817
Retired $125,520
Crop Production & Basic Processing $113,205
Oil & Gas $111,950
Mining $102,093
Lawyers/Law Firms $81,878
Health Professionals $75,600
Insurance $71,350
Securities & Investment $65,062
Leadership PACs $62,839
Lobbyists $60,609
Food Processing & Sales $59,615
Real Estate $54,450
Misc Finance $52,400
Agricultural Services/Products $50,100
Livestock $46,490
Republican/Conservative $40,372
Business Services $38,699
Automotive $38,250
Larry Craig knows where his wheels are greased. Water going over the dams to allow fish to get through is less electricity generated for energy companies.
Craig's defunding of the Fish Passage Center has as much to do with the GOP war on science as anything else. The science behind what the Center does was making Craig's utility pimps unhappy. The answer? Get rid of good science:
On the Senate floor this month, he justified elimination of the Fish Passage Center on the grounds that "many questions have arisen regarding the reliability of the technical data" it publishes. Craig quoted from the report of an independent scientific advisory board that in 2003 reviewed work done by the Fish Passage Center.But one of the report's authors, Charles C. Coutant, a fishery ecologist who retired this year from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said Craig neglected to mention that the board found the work of the center to be "of high technical quality."
"Craig was very selective in reflecting just the critical part of a quotation from the report," said Coutant, who has worked on Columbia River salmon issues for 16 years. "It did give a misleading impression about our board's view of the Fish Passage Center."
Craig also said on the Senate floor that "other institutions" in the Northwest now do "most" of the data collection work done by center. He said getting rid of the center would reduce redundancy and increase the efficiency of regional fish programs.
But according to another recent independent scientific assessment of the work of the center, there was little duplication of data collection between the center and other organizations; it recommended that the center continue to receive funding to meet a substantial need in the Northwest for information on salmon survival.
Fish and game agencies in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, Indian tribes with fishing rights on the river and the governors of Oregon and Washington have all said that eliminating the Fish Passage Center is a bad idea that would reduce the quality of information on endangered salmon.
Craig used a source citation to eliminate the Center which actually recommended the Center stay open..because its does a good job with the science.
Well hell..maybe if Craig had been told that the salmon were on the campaign donation list and the voter roles..the science would have mattered.
(hat tip: Washington Monthly)
Posted by Carla at December 2, 2005 11:48 AM