JoseCuervo
New member
Three federal agencies that manage and market electricity from the Columbia and Snake river federal dams continue to have a conversation with residents of the Pacific Northwest about the future of the dams and endangered salmon.
More than 2,000 people have attended meetings where they’ve shared what they think should be the scope of an environmental review ordered in May by U.S. Judge Michael Simon. Despite many improvements, the judge and scientists say more needs to be done to ensure future sustainable populations of wild salmon.
But Darryll Olsen, board representative for the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association, doesn’t want to have that conversation or the environmental review. He and his group have asked the Trump transition team either to intervene directly or to convene the Endangered Species Committee, a little-used panel that he says could decide that the federal agencies status quo plan is enough. The committee is commonly known as the God Squad, because it can play God and allow an endangered species to go extinct. The committee and its exemption process was added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978. Federal agencies under the act must ensure that its actions won’t cause species to go extinct. To grant an exemption, the God Squad must find there are no reasonable and prudent alternatives; must determine that the benefits of the exemption outweigh alternatives; and that the agencies had not already made an irreversible commitment of resources
Better cling to your "guns", because you ain't going to have any fishing if Trump and his supporters are left unchecked.