Lawsuit Forces EPA to Help Salmon Migrate a Hot Columbia River
Helping Salmon with Cool Water Refuge
After 18 years, and two NWEA lawsuits, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally issued a draft plan to protect and restore cold water refuges to help salmon migrating through the hot waters of the Columbia River. NWEA recently submitted detailed comments on the plan to EPA. Despite the victory of getting a draft plan, it is not a “plan” in the sense of a series of steps that lead to achieving a goal. Instead, it is some very interesting science and a compilation of many other plans that are already gathering dust on agency shelves.
The 14 cold water refuges that EPA identified on both the Oregon and Washington sides of the Columbia River are tributaries. In order to keep tributaries cool or to restore cooler temperatures, these rivers and the streams that feed into them need to be fully shaded wherever trees will grow. However, despite the fact that farming and logging are the leading causes of inadequate stream-side trees, neither Oregon nor Washington regulates pollution from agriculture and both regulate logging poorly. In fact, EPA has already formally determined that Oregon’s logging practices are inadequate to protect water quality. But that did not stop EPA from urging Oregon to use its existing logging practices to protect the cold water refuges along the Columbia. That is just one example of how EPA’s plan to protect the cold water refuges upon which the Columbia River fall Chinook and summer steelhead rely to migrate through the hot waters of the Columbia river is a big fail.
