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Faulty Solution by Dick Dahlgren The Idaho Statesman, September 10, 2003

Dubya is clueless about Northwest salmon. Or he simply is not telling the truth. There he was, at Washington´s Ice Harbor Dam, proclaiming he has saved the fish from extinction, proud of the returning hatchery chinooks, proof his recovery plan for balancing dams and salmon works.

He never told us the rest of the story. Like the federal courts calling his plan a failure and ordering him to develop a new one. That this run represents less than 1 percent of historic runs, runs that numbered 20 million wild fish, not fish spawned in plastic buckets, incubated in trays, and reared in concrete raceways.

He puffed on, said the dam produces ´lectricity, as he pointed at BPA´s Ice Harbor. He probably didn´t know, as he spoke, the dam was barely generating a pathetic 70 megawatts of power.

He never mentioned BPA power pricing is no longer competitive. He never mentioned BPA is deeply in debt. He never mentioned taxpayers pay hundreds of millions of dollars to cover BPA losses. He never mentioned salmon recovery costs will be $900 million annually for 10 years.

He never mentioned breaching the four dams would be best for the salmon and best for taxpayers.