509 



STATEMENT OF JOE STEGNER 



Mr. Stegner. My name is Joe Stegner, and I am from Lewiston, 

 Idaho, I work for a family-owned grain elevator business with loca- 

 tions in northern Idaho and eastern Washington. Our company 

 stores and merchandises locally produced grains and dry peas and 

 we ship those products on river barges to domestic and export buy- 

 ers throughout the world. 



The issue of drawing down the lower Snake River to increase 

 water flow as a major salmon survival effort has numerous nega- 

 tive disadvantages to my area and as the only representative at 

 this hearing from the Lewiston, Idaho/Clarkston, Washington area, 

 I would like to use my allotted time to express my region's percep- 

 tions concerning drawdowns. 



We perceive the drawdown theory to be a politically motivated, 

 poorly researched, quick fix to the salmon survival effort, which 

 sacrifices our region's economic, recreational and power generation 

 opportunities in an attempt to preserve those same features for 

 other areas. We perceive that the State of Idaho in championing 

 the drawdown theory as the lead point of the Idaho plan, is pur- 

 posely attempting to sacrifice the lower Snake slackwater river sys- 

 tem which runs entirely in the State of Washington in a calculated 

 attempt to limit southern Idaho's contributions to water flow for 

 salmon survival efforts. 



We perceive that the drawdown theory was concocted as an inex- 

 pensive, quickly implementable cure-all solution for salmon recov- 

 ery when, in fact, drawdowns will be hugely expensive, costing bil- 

 lions of dollars. Drawdowns cannot be put in practice for many 

 years because of the need for significant research and the extensive 

 dam modifications required, and that drawdowns have dubious sci- 

 entific benefits which are at best unproven, requiring years of test- 

 ing and at worst, may cause much more ecological damage than 

 they possibly are worth. 



And finally, we perceive that some of the people who adamantly 

 insist that drawdowns are the only best hope for salmon recovery 

 efforts have adopted that position with ambitious agendas other 

 than merely salmon. 



We believe that there are those who are using salmon as a plat- 

 form for preservationist philosophies that include eventually the re- 

 moval of the Snake and Columbia River dams and the punitive de- 

 nial of the benefits of those dams to our region. 



As a grain barge shipper and a representative of the agricultural 

 community of my area, I have concerns about the increased cost of 

 transportation and the effects that drawdown interruptions will 

 have on our abihty to supply the ongoing ejcport marketplace, both 

 of which will surely happen if we lose our river navigation system. 



As a consumer of electricity, I do not want increased power bills 

 because of drawdowns. 



As a tax-paying citizen of this country, I do not want billions of 

 dollars spent on dam modifications for salmon survival when that 

 money is critically needed for other national problems and when 

 there are obviously more cost-effective methods of increasing salm- 

 on numbers to Idaho, such as enhanced smolt transportation sys- 

 tems. 



75-542 - 94 - 17 



