If you have trouble viewing this video, click here. Otherwise click on the Read More button to see the video.
If you have trouble viewing this video, click here. Otherwise click on the Read More button to see the video.
Judging by the love fest inside the Capitol Rotunda this morning, it’s hard to imagine that the Klamath water wars ever existed.
The room was filled with smiles, applause and some humor courtesy of Governor Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger joked it was finally time to say, “Hasta la vista to the dams.” The crowd ate it up.
Portland’s City Council got plenty of advice, but no consistent message, from people testifying Wednesday night about a plan to restore the North Reach of the Willamette River. Businesses worried about how much it will cost and urged the council to move slowly. Environmental groups said the time for action is now.
Running from downtown to the Columbia River, the North Reach is the industrial heart of the city. A busy harbor, generating billions of dollars worth of business, and providing some of the best paying jobs in Portland.
But it’s also something of an environmental mess. The North Reach has suffered from years of pollution and habitat degradation that put this stretch of the Willamette on the Superfund list. Endangered salmon, steelhead and other species either live here or migrate through the area.
THURSDAY:
Klamath Basin Agreements
Decades of fighting over water, salmon and dams in the Klamath Basin could come to a close Thursday in Salem. Governor Kulongoski, Governor Schwarzenegger and Interior Secretary Salazar will take part in a ceremony to sign two agreements that are designed to make sure there’s enough water for farming and salmon, while laying out a plan to remove four dams from the Klamath River,
Despite the historic nature of the agreements, they’re unpopular with Oregon’s environmental community. Oregon Wild says the deals don’t do enough to protect salmon, and allow farming on two wildlife refuges.
The ceremony is Thursday morning in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Salem.
Cruise the Willamette downstream from central Portland and you’ll soon realize this is not the wild river our city founders knew. Shipping terminals, cargo vessels, scrapyards, oil tanks, warehouses and gazillions of imported cars line the riverbank. This area, as city officials like to describe it, is a working river. An important area for business and for jobs.
But it’s home to wildlife as well. Herons, sea lions, otters and fish spend some or all of their lives here. Fall salmon numbers in the upper Willamette system have been surprisingly robust, giving hope that the endangered fish might be making a comeback. For that to happen, salmon and steelhead have to migrate at least twice through the dirtiest section of the Willamette. The working part of the river. A Superfund site.
Soon, the Portland City Council will hold a public hearing on a plan to reconcile all these different demands. Two of Portland’s best known environmental groups, Willamette Riverkeeper and the Audubon Society, are concerned over industry attempts to weaken some of the environmental protections in the plan. Those industry objections led Mayor Adams to cancel a public hearing that was scheduled for last month. It could also be the reason why Thursday’s planned hearing was put off as well.
One of the first environmental actions taken by Portland’s new city commission was to create an Office of Healthy and Working Rivers.
That was less than two months ago, so it’s not surprising that a public meeting about the new office was short on details. City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who’ll oversee the office, says plans are at the “fifty-percent draft” stage.
Instead, the meeting was a chance for Fritz to meet some of the people and businesses who live and work along the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, and community groups interested in helping clean them up.
Fritz says that for too many years, “we turned our back” on the Willamette River, and wants a river that’s “not just free of disease, but healthy.”
At last night’s meeting the audience was clearly more focused on the Willamette River. Several audience members said cleaning up the Superfund sites on the river should be the first and most important goal of the new office.
The Office of Healthy and Working Rivers will oversee the city’s efforts to:
Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz is holding meetings next week to outline her plans for the new Office of Healthy Working Rivers.
Creating the office was one of the first acts of the new administration at city hall. All of the city’s various efforts to protect and improve the Willamette were combined into one office, under a single commissioner. As the Oregonian put it, Fritz is the city’s new “River Czar”.
In broad terms, the job of the new office is to:
Fritz meets Tuesday with other government officials, then with the public on Wednesday.
Here’s the details:
Office of Health Working Rivers Community Meeting
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
Development Services Building
1900 SW 4th Avenue, Room 2500A
Portland, Oregon
The news this week about the Klamath River dams is so huge, it’s almost impossible to believe how far we’ve come in the past seven years.
The headline is this. Pacific Power, which owns the four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, has agreed to their removal. It’s an agreement in principle. There are many obstacles to overcome. It’ll take years to implement. But if this goes through one of the great salmon rivers of the west coast could be running free from headwaters to the ocean.
This is THE Klamath we’re talking about. Low salmon numbers from this river led to a near closure of the commercial salmon season across most of Oregon and Northern California in 2006. Bitter water wars erupted in 2001 when farmers were denied irrigation water in favor of salmon and other fish. The farmers got their water after the Bush administration intervened, and the following year tens of thousands of salmon died in warm, shallow waters.
So why would any salmon respecting green group be opposed to such a deal?
For Oregon Wild, this deal amounts to little more than a last minute attempt by the Bush team to reward its friends. Oregon Wild says the deal relies on getting $1 billion from the federal government, a four year cost-benefit analysis by the Interior Department, and other conditions it describes as “highly unlikely” to be met. Meanwhile, work on removing the dams wouldn’t even begin until 2020.
Oregon Wild also complains that the deal gives too much water to agribusiness, doesn’t preserve enough water for salmon, and grants another 50-year extension of agriculture development on the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges.
Other environmental groups are not so cynical. The Wild Salmon Center in Portland told the Oregonian that this is as big as anything they’ve seen to restore a river. The group’s President, Guido Rahr, is quoted as saying “You really are giving a river the chance to come back.”
Sustainable Northwest called the agreement a step in the right direction. This group was involved in the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, which is based on seeing the dams removed. Sustainable Northwest called on the federal and state governments to implement the entire Klamath Basin agreement and to remove the dams quickly enough so that salmon will benefit.
12 years is a long time to wait for dam removal to begin. Much of the costs of dam removal will fall on the shoulders of Oregon customers of Pacific Power. A deal that removes dams, but still doesn’t provide the water needed by salmon isn’t much of a deal at all.
Powerful political forces are lining up behind this. We hope they get it right.
