570 



ms 



Natural Resowvcs 

 Defense Council 



71 Stevenson Street 

 San fmncisco. CA 94t05 

 415 777-0220 

 TESTIMONY OF KAREN GARRISON Fi,x4l5 495-D99c 



BEFORE THE BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION TASK FORCE 

 OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES 



September 24, 1993 



This testimony offers the views of the Natural Resources Defense 

 Council (NRDC) on efforts to rebuild Columbia Basin salmon 

 stocks, in response to Chairman DeFazio's invitation of August 

 11, 1993. NRDC is a national nonprofit environmental group with 

 about 160,000 members, more than 8,000 of whom reside in the 

 Pacific Northwest. We have worked for a decade to reform western 

 water policy, and have a longstanding involvement with energy 

 conservation and fisheries protection in the Northwest. I direct 

 NRDC's Northwest Water Project and serve as co-chair for Save Our 

 Wild Salmon, a coalition of about 40 fishing and environmental 

 groups in the region. 



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

 Task Force for conducting this exceedingly well-timed inquiry. 

 Despite an extensive federal presence in the Columbia Basin and 

 required yearly reports to Congress on implementation of the 

 Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act, federal 

 agencies have operated dams in the Columbia system over the past 

 decade with little systematic oversight from Congress. Without 

 the benefit of such oversight the enormous public investment in 

 the Columbia River system, though premised on the protection of 

 much-prized salmon runs, may continue to promote the very 

 practices which cause the steady demise of public resources. 



Your hearing occurs at a time when salmon in the Basin face an 

 unprecedented crisis. At its most fundamental level, that crisis 

 is not about a particular stock or even a particular species; 

 it's about river ecosystems and the failure to sustain them. In 

 some respects, the region is closer than ever to reversing 

 fishery declines, having adopted a strategy that acknowledges the 

 central importance of providing safe in-river migration 

 conditions. In practice, however, the prospects of a resolution 

 to the problem look dim as long as the federal agencies fail to 

 implement critical elements of the strategy and use any vagueness 

 as an excuse for inaction. This Task Force would play an 

 enormously helpful role if it put the Bonneville Power 

 Administration back on track to implement the Northwest Power 

 Planning Council's Salmon Strategy. My testimony will suggest 

 ways to do that, as well as to address the Strategy's omissions. 



The salmon protection efforts of the 1980s provide extensive 

 evidence of the need for an ecosystem approach, and the poor 

 bargain that substitutes provide. Nevertheless, historical 



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