567 



STATEMENT OF KAREN GARRISON 



Ms. Garrison. Good morning. I apologize for being late. I have 

 not been feeling well, so I took a break but I clearly underesti- 

 mated your capacity to keep this hearing on schedule. 



I would like to begin by thanking the ChEiirman and members of 

 the Task Force for this very well-timed inquiry. 



At the most fundamental level, the crisis you address is not 

 about stocks or species, but about river ecosystems and the failure 

 to sustEiin them, in some ways, the region is closer than ever to re- 

 versing salmon declines, having adopted a strategy that acknowl- 

 edges the importance of the ecosystem and particularly safe in- 

 river migration. 



In practice, however, prospects for resolution look dim as long as 

 the federal agencies implement the strategy selectively, use any 

 vagueness as an excuse for inaction and duplicate or seek to undo 

 decisions about fish measures made properly by the Council. The 

 federal agencies have been guilty of all those things. 



The task force would play an enormously effective role if it got 

 Bonneville and the other agencies back on track to implement the 

 Strategy. We echo the suggestions of others to reconvene this task 

 force or extend its life, to allow you to ensure the effectiveness of 

 your actions over time. 



We believe the Strategy is a useful firamework. Its strengths in- 

 clude consensus support and the fact that it puts ecosystem im- 

 provements at center stage, calling for measures that could provide 

 sufficient migration flows. Another plus is the expansion of the 

 scope of the Council program to include water management im- 

 provements that could oe vital as part of the bigger picture. 



The chief weaknesses are the lack of specificity regarding imple- 

 mentation. Specifically, the Strategy fails to anchor its measures in 

 flow objectives or travel-time objectives. It has no detailed imple- 

 mentation schedule or milestones for progress towards drawdowns, 

 and as yet, it has no fi-amework of rebuilding schedules for salmon 

 with survival objectives or performance standards. In short, the 

 program lacks teeth for implementation. 



These faults are serious, but they need not condemn the Strategy 

 to failure. The agencies have a clear mandate under the Power Act 

 to mitigate and protect fish and wildlife and not just the endan- 

 gered ones. But the agencies have not taken the initiative to move 

 forward with the essential or long- or even mid-term plan. The 

 transfer of funds and the responsibility for a detailed implementa- 

 tion plan to a fish agency such as the Fish & Wildlife Service could 

 facilitate implementation of the program funded by Bonneville. We 

 support such a step and we were pleased to hear Randy Hardy sup- 

 port it also. We urge the task force to make sure it happens. 



But that step will not affect other crucial pieces of the program 

 such as river operation and drawdown decisions. The task force 

 should give the Strategy more teeth in that area. To do its job well, 

 the task force has to understand the reasons for intense resistance 

 to operations changes. 



Full implementation of the Strategy conflicts with the imperative 

 to optimize river operations for power, in Bonneville's case, or irri- 

 gation, in the Bureau of Reclamation case. As you know, these 

 agencies are no longer authorized to make power production or irri- 



