Columbia River Basin Tributary Habitat Restoration Environmental Assessment
The following comments were submitted in response to the open comment period described below.
Comments are numbered consecutively as they are received. Breaks in the number sequence result when comments are deleted because they
were submitted in error or have inappropriate content (such as SPAM). If you do not see your comment two business days after
you submit it, please contact (800) 622-4519.
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is proposing to implement a programmatic environmental review for tributary fish and wildlife habitat restoration actions throughout the Columbia River Basin in the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah. These actions range from those such as fencing, planting, bridge construction, to instream habitat improvements and stream channel reconstruction. BPA welcomes and requests your comments.
For More Information:
https://www.bpa.gov/efw/Analysis/NEPADocuments/Pages/Columbia-River-Basin-Tributary-Habitat-Restoration.aspx
Close of comment: 11/30/2019
- CRTHR19190001 -
PaceI am a bit concerned that this programmatic environmental review of habitat will likely have at least two defects. First, it will no doubt serve to divert attention from the mainstream to the tributaries. Nothing new here. Second, it could be used to cloak closed door negotiations with litigants in NWF v NMFS so that BPA can continue to divert ratepayers’s funds to secure the “forbearance” of tribes. This has a lot of long-term implications both on and off the various reservations in the basin. Given these dangers, I hope your work will be consistent with, e.g., the Final Guidance For Effective Use of Programmatic NEPA Review provided by then CEQ staffer, Michael Boots. Please see M. Boot, Memorandum for Heads of Federal Departs and Agencies, Dec. 18, 2014. Thanks for considering this comment. I may have others to contribute at future dates.
- CRTHR19190004 -
RaaschSee attachment
View Attachment
- CRTHR19190005 -
JohnsonSee attached
View Attachment
- CRTHR19190006 -
PalmiterI write to ask you to support breaching the four lower Snake River dams to save runs of Chinook so that the Orcas can be saved. There are only 73 left and we need to do everything we can.
Those dams are NOT producing enough energy to make them viable. The BPA is in serious trouble financially and needs to start letting go of some of the cost of running the dams.
Stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars each year in futile fish recovery efforts in the Snake River Basin.
Cool the lower Snake River to its natural free-flowing state.
Begin recovery for the largest historical source of prey for the Pacific Northwest’s endangered Southern Resident Orcas, listed by NOAA in 2015 as one of the eight species most in danger of going extinct in the near future if action is not taken immediately. Their preferred prey is Chinook salmon, historically coming from the Snake River basin.
Create the largest watershed restoration in North America, an incredible environmental legacy.
The real issue for BPA is no longer whether threatened and endangered fish can avoid extinction, but whether BPA can survive and thus meet those “vast public responsibilities”—including wild fish recovery— to which it proudly refers. BPA itself is now on the endangered species list, and like Columbia/Snake threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead and the resident orcas of the Salish Sea, only major changes will ensure BPA’s survival.
Thank you for your help in this vital matter.
- CRTHR19190007 -
Garrity/WDFWSee attached.
View Attachment
- CRTHR19190008 -
BayardSee attached
View Attachment
- CRTHR19190009 -
Anderson/State of Washington Dept. of EcologySee attachment
View Attachment
|
|
|
