Obama officials visit to learn more on salmon
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 11:21 AM PDT
GRANTS PASS (AP) — Two top members of President Obama’s environmental team are in the Northwest this week, listening but pointedly not speaking about the tense conflict between salmon and hydroelectric dams in the Columbia Basin.
NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco and White House Council on Environmental Quality chairwoman Nancy Sutley attended closed-doors sessions in Portland on Tuesday with scientists, government officials and Indian tribes, and were scheduled on Wednesday to tour one of the lower Snake River dams in Eastern Washington that conservationists and some Indian tribes want removed to restore endangered salmon.
‘‘The purpose of this trip here is to listen and learn,’’ Lubchenco spokesman Justin Kenney said from North Carolina. Afterward, Sutley issued a written statement saying the session helped them better understand the science behind the Bush administration’s 2008 plan for balancing salmon against dams, known as a biological opinion, which a federal judge is considering accepting or rejecting under the Endangered Species Act.
‘‘We share the court’s concern for a final outcome that respects the law, the science and the salmon,’’ the statement read. ‘‘It’s only by recovering these protected salmon that once again fishermen, tribal and non-tribal alike, and all of us concerned about the environment will be able to properly enjoy the Northwest’s bounty.’’
Sport and commercial fishermen were shut out of the meetings, and some paraded their boats on trailers around the Portland hotel where the meetings were held.
