390 



Moreover, this argument from BPA and its customers implicitly 

 deflects blame for any and all salmon recovery failures onto the Council, the 

 fisheries agencies, and the Tribes. Once again BPA conveniently ignores its 

 own role -^ lobbying and negotiating away important recovery measures (e.g., 

 turning the "water budget' into a compromise of a compromise), funding 

 techno-fixes (e.g., building hatcheries and barging juvenile salmon), 

 rejecting the professional judgment of the fisheries agencies and the Tribes 

 (e.g., seeking recently to close the Fish Passage Center), and practicing its 

 own defensive biology. For BPA now to lay the blame on the Council, the 

 agencies, and the Tribes is wrong and indeed ofifensive. 



Bonneville Should Implement the Council's Program and a Major Reduction 

 in Force 



The Bonneville Power Administration is not only failin g to carry out its 

 proper responsibilities to implement salmon recovery in the Columbia Basin. 

 The agency is arrogating decision -making powers unto itself from the duly 

 established fisheries agencies, from the sovereign Tribes, and from the 

 Northwest Power Planning Council. The Congress must put BPA back on the 

 right track. 



Mr. Chairman, throughout these Task Force hearings, you have heard 

 witness after witness call for leadership from the Bonneville Power 

 Administration. Whether in electricity delivery or in fish and wildlife 

 mitigation, Bonneville compulsively rushes forward to write its own policies, 

 convene several new review groups, push its agenda, and otherwise exercise 

 "leadership' to work its will. In knee-jerk fashion, BPA casts itself in the 

 role of bride at every wedding, and corpse at every funeral. 



This brand of Bonneville 'leadership" fostered the tragic WPPSS 

 debacle of the 197C)s. At the brink of extinctions, wild salmon in the 

 Columbia Basin don't need more "leadership" from BPA. I come before the 

 T&sk Force this morning to plead for an end to BPA "leadership." 



Instead, Bonneville should, for once, simply do its job. 



Under the Northwest Power Planning Act established in law by the 

 Congress, BPA's job is to implement the Columbia Basin fish and wildlife 

 program "to the maximum extent practicable." The Northwest Power Plan- 

 ning Council's strategy for salmon candidly has flaws and weaknesses; the 

 Council, for example, has not set escapement goals or rebuilding schedules. 



But it is inappropriate for Bonneville to sit in judgment of the plan's 

 adequacy. It is wrong for Bonneville to dismiss the Council's salmon 

 recovery plan as advisory or discretionary. It is improper for Bonneville to 

 demand its own standards and tests of biological certainty before proceeding 

 with its statutory duty to implement the Council's plan. And it is just plain 



Sieira Club — Page 8 



