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Strong Regional Leadership Needed to Restore Resource by Benton Williams Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 11, 2003

Dictatorships get things done in a hurry, albeit with unpopular results. Here in the land of the free, we've blundered the salmon-conservation issue now for several years, resulting in a fizzled fiasco because the Army Corps of Engineers has insisted on a barging program costing taxpayers billions of dollars with little to show for it but some dyed Atlantic salmon raised in a fish pen. We have received little help from our governor or the congressional delegation, who have preferred a stagnant hiatus rather than a critical call to action.

The Army's plan is based on bad politics, not on recommended science. Now that we have won a court battle in Oregon, calling the present method illegal, we need strong regional leadership to restore native salmon to reconsider the scientific recommendation to remove four Snake River dams and to promote HR1097, a plan that will help salmon, farmers and the economy.