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after examining the biological research from around the world, the Council's 

 contractor Glenn F. Cada concluded that "the general relationship of 

 increasing survival with increasing flow in the C[olumbia] R[iver] B[asin] still 

 appears to be reasonable." The Team claims that the relationship is 

 "uncertain.") 



So environmentalists have doubted that any NMFS Recovery Team, 

 including this one, might maintain such independence as to act as final 

 judge and jury on the biology of salmon recovery. That the members 

 received no compensation for their service on the Team is certainly no 

 guarantee of scientific objectivity. 



On salmon passage in the hydropower system, the Team's expertise 

 resided with Prof. Theodore C. Bjornn, Prof. Peter C. Klingeman, and Mr. 

 James W. Litchfield. Along with harvest, the Team's recommendations to 

 address hydropower impacts have been at the center of controversy in peer 

 review and public comment. 



Clearly qualified to serve on the Team by virtue of his long tenure as 

 Director of Power Planning for the Northwest Power Planning Council. Mr. 

 Litchfield, an engineer, was at the time of his appointment to the Team, and 

 is today, a private consultant to the Northwest electric utility industry. In 

 his own defense, Mr. Litchfield has publicly stated that he purposefully 

 accepted no contracts from any beneficiary of federal Columbia River 

 hydropower during his service on the Recovery Team. However, is it 

 reasonable to believe that Mr. Litchfield, a relatively young man, did not give 

 a thought to future contracts after his service on the Recovery Team? Would 

 the prospects for his consulting practice appear as bright if the Recovery 

 Team on which he served very visibly had reported recommendations which 

 did not meet with such warm approval by the electric utility industry? 



Dr. Theodore Bjornn is a respected, tenured professor of fisheries 

 biology at the University of Idaho, and pillar of the campus' Cooperative Fish 

 and Wildlife Research Unit, who has performed world-class research on 

 salmon passage in the Columbia Basin hydroelectric system. However, 

 through requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Sierra 

 Club has learned that, unlike Mr. Litchfield. Dr. Bjornn during his tenure on 

 the Recovery Team continued to conduct research under two contracts to 

 the US. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration. 

 Photocopies of the relevant pages from the Corps and BPA responses to our 

 FOIA requests are appended to this testimony. 



According to the Corps' FOIA response dated February 14, 1994, the 

 Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of the University of Idaho 

 headed by Dr. Bjornn performed Corps contracts to study adult salmonid 

 passage at mainstem hydroelectric dams for the following years in the 

 following total amounts: 



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