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this vital salmon recovery measure. The Northwest Power Plamiing Council 

 told the Corps and BPA to implement the drawdowns by April, 1995 unless 

 someone demonstrated an engineering, biological, economic, or legal show- 

 stopper. Nobody has. 



Nevertheless, to do our part in averting a public policy "train wreck." 

 salmon advocates proposed as a good-faith ffiret step toward implementing 

 the Council's recovery plan that the Corps immediately proceed with the 

 lowering of John Day reservoir, and modify the Lower Granite dam in order 

 to test reservoir drawdown operation of that project below minimiun 

 operating pool. Our proposal has received support from the governors of 

 Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, and from the regional director of the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service. Nevertheless, BPA has spumed even this 

 relatively inexpensive and prudent first step. 



As its excuse, BPA complains about its perceived biological 

 uncertainties aroimd the drawdowns. Biological uncertainty did not stop 

 Bonneville from laimching a squawfish boimty program that, some biologists 

 believe, has actually increased predation on juvenile salmon. Biological 

 uncertainty did not stop Bonneville from spending $ 10 million annually on a 

 law enforcement program that has yet to snare any significant number of 

 poachers — much less cost-effectively. Biological uncertainty did not stop 

 Bonneville from funding and defending juvenile fish transportation despite 

 the failure of the Corps — after nearly twenty years of bar^g and trucking 

 young salmon — to prepare so much as an environmental impact statement 

 for the program, much less scientifically document its effectiveness. In fact, 

 the scientific evidence grows that barging and trucking juvenile salmon 

 doesn't work, hasn't worked, and can not be made to work. 



But on the drawdowns, BPA along with the Corps has demanded not 

 less than 6 years of additional study and testing which, combined with the 

 Corps' glacial pace to install dam modifications and impact mitigations, 

 would delay this key recovery measure beyond the year 2013. By that time, 

 extinction of the Snake Basin sockeye, if not the chinook, seems a dead 

 certainty. This paralysis by analysis can only yield the best-documented 

 extinctions in history. Militant delay by BPA and the Corps will also lead to a 

 tragic repetition of what Forest Service foot-dragging needlessly inflicted on 

 the region in the spotted owl recovery. 



On drawdowns as with other fish and wildlife measures generally, 

 Bonneville maintains that it must proceed cautiously with funding in order 

 to avoid a repetition of the $2 billion (an exaggerated figure) largely wasted^ 

 in fish and wildlife mitigation over the past decade, and "manage to results" 

 the $300 million (another inflated figure) invested annually today. The 

 Congress never asked BPA to conduct quality control over the fish and wild- 

 life program. The fact of the matter is this: the agency and its customers 

 don't want results, they don't want to SF>end money on fish and wildlife at all. 



Sieira Club — Page 7 



