Suit can?t keep river from rising
A controversial move to save an endangered fish by artificially raising water levels on the Missouri River will go forward despite a lawsuit to halt it, the Army Corps of Engineers announced.
Attorney General Jay Nixon filed suit Friday to stop the release of water from reservoirs along the upper Missouri River over concerns it would flood farmland. The Corps of Engineers said Monday it would go forth with its plan, anyway, though it is unclear precisely when.
Paul Johnston, an Omaha, Neb.-based spokesman for the corps, said the release was dependent on water temperature, current and forecast river flows and rain. It is to happen sometime before May 19.
The plan is the result of a 2003 Fish and Wildlife Service opinion that calls on the corps to protect the endangered pallid sturgeon by attempting to replicate the way melting mountain snow made the river rise each spring before dams were built.
The corps? plan had called for two spring rises this year, but the first was canceled because water levels in reservoirs feeding the river were too low. The corps said the reservoirs now have more than enough water.
There is wide dissent over artificially increasing the river level. Along the river?s northern reaches, in Montana and the Dakotas, there are worries it will drain reservoirs too much to sustain normal boating and fishing interests. Here, along its lower banks, there is concern crops could be flooded and barging could be sidetracked.
U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, a Democrat, said he was disappointed with the corp?s decision. ?The spring rise policy is bad for Missouri, with potentially devastating impacts for farmers who work the land along the river,? he said.
Most environmental groups see the plan as a good way to protect the river?s wildlife. And Brig. Gen. Gregg Martin, the corp?s northwestern division commander, said all those concerns were considered.
?The corps worked closely with the Fish and Wildlife Service, basin tribes and stakeholders to develop a plan for spring pulses that benefits the fish with the least possible impact to other users of the river and reservoirs,? he said.
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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) ? Property rights advocates joined commercial fishermen in a federal appeals court to argue that hatchery fish should be counted along with wild fish in deciding whether to restrict the commercial ocean harvest of Klamath River fall chinook salmon.
But lawyers for the government and Indian tribes argued Monday that the law that sets the minimum number of salmon returning to the Klamath cannot be changed simply to boost the total number of fish when the wild fish run declines.
?To come in 17 years after the fact and challenge the framework upsets the entire system,? said Mark Haag, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.
A 1989 law set a minimum of 35,000 wild chinook returning to the Klamath River each year.
For the third straight year, NOAA Fisheries has projected those returns below that, leading to a decision to practically shut down commercial salmon fishing on 700 miles of the Oregon and California coast.
Russell Brooks, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights public interest law firm argued that NOAA Fisheries has the authority to include hatchery fish in that number.