SALMON: Obama admin delays Columbia River plan (05/04/2009)
A top White House official has requested further evaluation of a Bush administration plan to balance the needs of salmon and people near the Columbia River.
A letter sent Friday by the Justice Department to U.S. District Judge James Redden in Portland, Ore., requested a delay of up to two months to "more fully understand all aspects" of the plan, which environmentalists have argued would do little to help salmon.
The Bush administration submitted the plan last May to Redden, who had set a Friday deadline for the government to respond to the long-running case.
Environmental groups have argued that salmon populations will not recover until some of the hydroelectric dams in the area are removed. Four dams on the Lower Snake River in Washington state have created a migration bottleneck, threatening imperiled salmon and steelhead.
Todd True, an attorney for the National Wildlife Federation, along with other environmental groups, said the two-month delay was encouraging (Matthew Daly, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, May 1). -- PT