[env-trinity] Washington Post: Dick Cheney Engineered Klamath River Fish Kill

[Dan Bacher]

Good Morning

This story from the Washington Post discloses how Dick Cheney  
engineered the Klamath Fish Kill of 2002, a move that inflicted
irreparable harm on the lives of thousands of commercial fishermen,  
tribal fishermen and recreational anglers, as well as on the economy of
Northern California and Oregon. While an angler will get cited for  
keeping a coho salmon or using a hook that isn't considered barbless  
enough, corrupt officials like Cheney and his underlings can kill  
thousands and thousands of fish with impunity. It is absolutely  
disgusting - and shows you how horribly corrupt the Bush  
administration is.

  Dan

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/ 
index.html

Leaving No Tracks
By Jo Becker and Barton Gellman
  Washington Post Staff Writers
  Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A01

Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the 19th-ranking Interior Department official,  
arrived at her desk in Room 6140 a few months after Inauguration Day  
2001. A phone message awaited her.

  "This is Dick Cheney," said the man on her voice mail, Wooldridge  
recalled in an interview. "I understand you are the person handling  
this Klamath situation. Please call me at -- hmm, I guess I don't  
know my own number. I'm over at the White House."

Wooldridge wrote off the message as a prank. It was not. Cheney had  
reached far down the chain of command, on so unexpected a point of  
vice presidential concern, because he had spotted a political threat  
arriving on Wooldridge's desk.

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost  
by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers  
were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their  
cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered  
Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two  
imperiled species of fish was at stake.

  Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice  
president stepped in.

  First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he  
set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish,  
according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.

  Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself  
and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season,  
declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the  
largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of  
salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.

The Klamath case is one of many in which the vice president took on a  
decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for  
the benefit of business.

  By combining unwavering ideological positions -- such as the  
priority of economic interests over protected fish -- with a deep  
practical knowledge of the federal bureaucracy, Cheney has made an  
indelible mark on the administration's approach to everything from  
air and water quality to the preservation of national parks and forests.

It was Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the  
personal reasons she cited at the time, that led Christine Todd  
Whitman to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection  
Agency, she said in an interview that provides the most detailed  
account so far of her departure.

The vice president also pushed to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain the  
nation's repository for nuclear and radioactive waste, aides said, a  
victory for the nuclear power industry over those with long-standing  
safety concerns. And his office was a powerful force behind the White  
House's decision to rewrite a Clinton-era land-protection measure  
that put nearly a third of the national forests off limits to  
logging, mining and most development, former Cheney staff members said.

  Cheney's pro-business drive to ease regulations, however, has often  
set the administration on a collision course with the judicial branch.

  The administration, for example, is appealing the order of a  
federal judge who reinstated the forest protections after she ruled  
that officials didn't adequately study the environmental consequences  
of giving states more development authority.

  And in April, the Supreme Court rejected two other policies closely  
associated with Cheney. It rebuffed the effort, ongoing since  
Whitman's resignation, to loosen some rules under the Clean Air Act.  
The court also rebuked the administration for not regulating  
greenhouse gases associated with global warming, issuing its ruling  
less than two months after Cheney declared that "conflicting  
viewpoints" remain about the extent of the human contribution to the  
problem.

  In the latter case, Cheney made his environmental views clear in  
public. But with some notable exceptions, he generally has preferred  
to operate with stealth, aided by loyalists who owe him for their  
careers.

When the vice president got wind of a petition to list the cutthroat  
trout in Yellowstone National Park as a protected species, his office  
turned to one of his former congressional aides.

The aide, Paul Hoffman, landed his job as deputy assistant interior  
secretary for fish and wildlife after Cheney recommended him. In an  
interview, Hoffman said the vice president knew that listing the  
cutthroat trout would harm the recreational fishing industry in his  
home state of Wyoming and that he "followed the issue closely." In  
2001 and again in 2006, Hoffman's agency declined to list the trout  
as threatened.

Hoffman also was well positioned to help his former boss with what  
Cheney aides said was one of the vice president's pet peeves: the  
Clinton-era ban on snowmobiling in national parks. "He impressed upon  
us that so many people enjoyed snowmobiling in the Tetons," former  
Cheney aide Ron Christie said.

With Cheney's encouragement, the administration lifted the ban in  
2002, and Hoffman followed up in 2005 by writing a proposal to  
fundamentally change the way national parks are managed. That plan,  
which would have emphasized recreational use over conservation,  
attracted so much opposition from park managers and the public that  
the Interior Department withdrew it. Still, the Bush administration  
continues to press for expanded snowmobile access, despite numerous  
studies showing that the vehicles harm the parks' environment and  
polls showing majority support for the ban.

Hoffman, now in another job at the Interior Department, said Cheney  
never told him what to do on either issue -- he didn't have to.

  "His genius," Hoffman said, is that "he builds networks and puts  
the right people in the right places, and then trusts them to make  
well-informed decisions that comport with his overall vision."

'Political Ramifications'

  Robert F. Smith had grown desperate by the time he turned to the  
vice president for help.

  The former Republican congressman from Oregon represented farmers  
in the Klamath basin who had relied on a government-operated complex  
of dams and canals built almost a century ago along the Oregon- 
California border to irrigate nearly a quarter-million acres of arid  
land.

  In April 2001, with the region gripped by the worst drought in  
memory, the spigot was shut off.

Studies by the federal government's scientists concluded  
unequivocally that diverting water would harm two federally protected  
species of fish, violating the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The  
Bureau of Reclamation was forced to declare that farmers must go  
without in order to maintain higher water levels so that two types of  
suckerfish in Upper Klamath Lake and the coho salmon that spawn in  
the Klamath River could survive the dry spell.

Farmers and their families, furious and fearing for their  
livelihoods, formed a symbolic 10,000-person bucket brigade. Then  
they took saws and blowtorches to dam gates, clashing with U.S.  
marshals as water streamed into the canals that fed their withering  
fields, before the government stopped the flow again.

What they didn't know was that the vice president was already on the  
case.

Smith had served with Cheney on the House Interior Committee in the  
1980s, and the former congressman said he turned to the vice  
president because he knew him as a man of the West who didn't take  
kindly to federal bureaucrats meddling with private use of public  
land. "He saw, as every other person did, what a ridiculous disaster  
shutting off the water was," Smith said.

Cheney recognized, even before the shut-off and long before others at  
the White House, that what "at first blush didn't seem like a big  
deal" had "a lot of political ramifications," said Dylan Glenn, a  
former aide to President Bush.

Bush and Cheney couldn't afford to anger thousands of solidly  
Republican farmers and ranchers during the midterm elections and  
beyond. The case also was rapidly becoming a test for conservatives  
nationwide of the administration's commitment to fixing what they saw  
as an imbalance between conservation and economics.

"What does the law say?" Christie, the former aide, recalled the vice  
president asking. "Isn't there some way around it?"

Next, Cheney called Wooldridge, who was then deputy chief of staff to  
Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and the woman handling the Klamath  
situation.

  Aides praise Cheney's habit of reaching down to officials who are  
best informed on a subject he is tackling. But the effect of his  
calls often leads those mid-level officials scrambling to do what  
they presume to be his bidding.

That's what happened when a mortified Wooldridge finally returned the  
vice president's call, after receiving a tart follow-up inquiry from  
one of his aides. Cheney, she said, "was coming from the perspective  
that the farmers had to be able to farm -- that was his concern. The  
fact that the vice president was interested meant that everyone paid  
attention."

  Cheney made sure that attention did not wander. He had Wooldridge  
brief his staff weekly and, Smith said, he also called the interior  
secretary directly.

  "For months and months, at almost every briefing it was 'Sir,  
here's where we stand on the Klamath basin,'" recalled Christie, who  
is now a lobbyist. "His hands-on involvement, it's safe to say,  
elevated the issue."

'Let the Water Flow'

  There was, as it happened, an established exemption to the  
Endangered Species Act.

A rarely invoked panel of seven Cabinet officials, known informally  
as the "God Squad," is empowered by the statute to determine that  
economic hardship outweighs the benefit of protecting threatened  
wildlife. But after discussing the option with Smith, Cheney rejected  
that course. He had another idea, one that would not put the  
administration on record as advocating the extinction of endangered  
or threatened species.

  The thing to do, Cheney told Smith, was to get science on the side  
of the farmers. And the way to do that was to ask the National  
Academy of Sciences to scrutinize the work of the federal biologists  
who wanted to protect the fish.

Smith said he told Cheney that he thought that was a roll of the  
dice. Academy panels are independently appointed, receive no payment  
and must reach a conclusion that can withstand peer review.

"It worried me that these are individuals who are unreachable," Smith  
said of the academy members. But Cheney was firm, expressing no such  
concerns about the result. "He felt we had to match the science."

Smith also wasn't sure that the Klamath case -- "a small place in a  
small corner of the country" -- would meet the science academy's  
rigorous internal process for deciding what to study. Cheney took  
care of that. "He called them and said, 'Please look at this, it's  
important,'" Smith said. "Everyone just went flying at it."

William Kearney, a spokesman for the National Academies, said he was  
unaware of any direct contact from Cheney on the matter. The official  
request came from the Interior Department, he said.

It was Norton who announced the review, and it was Bush and his  
political adviser Karl Rove who traveled to Oregon in February 2002  
to assure farmers that they had the administration's support. A month  
later, Cheney got what he wanted when the science academy delivered a  
preliminary report finding "no substantial scientific foundation" to  
justify withholding water from the farmers.

  There was not enough clear evidence that proposed higher lake  
levels would benefit suckerfish, the report found. And it  
hypothesized that the practice of releasing warm lake water into the  
river during spawning season might do more harm than good to the  
coho, which thrive in lower temperatures. [Read the report.]

Norton flew to Klamath Falls in March to open the head gate as  
farmers chanted "Let the water flow!" And seizing on the report's  
draft findings, the Bureau of Reclamation immediately submitted a new  
decade-long plan to give the farmers their full share of water.

When the lead biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service  
team critiqued the science academy's report in a draft opinion  
objecting to the plan, the critique was edited out by superiors and  
his objections were overruled, he said. The biologist, Michael Kelly,  
who has since quit the federal agency, said in a whistle-blower claim  
that it was clear to him that "someone at a higher level" had ordered  
his agency to endorse the proposal regardless of the consequences to  
the fish.

Months later, the first of an estimated 77,000 dead salmon began  
washing up on the banks of the warm, slow-moving river. Not only were  
threatened coho dying -- so were chinook salmon, the staple of  
commercial fishing in Oregon and Northern California. State and  
federal biologists soon concluded that the diversion of water to  
farms was at least partly responsible.

Fishermen filed lawsuits and courts ruled that the new irrigation  
plan violated the Endangered Species Act. Echoing Kelly's objections,  
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit observed that the 10- 
year plan wouldn't provide enough water for the fish until year nine.  
By then, the 2005 opinion said, "all the water in the world" could  
not save the fish, "for there will be none to protect." In March  
2006, a federal judge prohibited the government from diverting water  
for agricultural use whenever water levels dropped beneath a certain  
point.

Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery  
failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook  
returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for  
Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help  
fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million  
that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm,  
in order to reduce demand.

  The science academy panel, in its final report, acknowledged that  
its draft report was "controversial," but it stood by its  
conclusions. Instead of focusing on the irrigation spigot, it  
recommended broad and expensive changes to improve fish habitat.

  "The farmers were grateful for our decision, but we made the  
decision based on the scientific outcome," said the panel chairman,  
William Lewis, a biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  
"It just so happened the outcome favored the farmers."

But J.B. Ruhl, another member of the panel and a Florida State  
University law professor who specializes in endangered species cases,  
said the Bureau of Reclamation went "too far," making judgments that  
were not backed up by the academy's draft report. "The approach they  
took was inviting criticism," Ruhl said, "and I didn't think it was  
supported by our recommendations."

'More Pro-Industry'

  Whitman, then head of the EPA, was on vacation with her family in  
Colorado when her cellphone rang. The vice president was on the line,  
and he was clearly irked.

Why was the agency dragging its feet on easing pollution rules for  
aging power and oil refinery plants?, Cheney wanted to know. An  
industry that had contributed heavily to the Bush-Cheney campaign was  
clamoring for change, and the vice president told Whitman that she  
"hadn't moved it fast enough," she recalled.

Whitman protested, warning Cheney that the administration had to  
proceed cautiously. It was August 2001, just seven months into the  
first term. We need to "document this according to the books," she  
said she told him, "so we don't look like we are ramrodding something  
through. Because it's going to court."

But the vice president's main concern was getting it done fast, she  
said, and "doing it in a way that didn't hamper industry."

At issue was a provision of the Clean Air Act known as the New Source  
Review, which requires older plants that belch millions of tons of  
smog and soot each year to install modern pollution controls when  
they are refurbished in a way that increases emissions.

Industry officials complained to the White House that even when they  
had merely performed routine maintenance and repairs, the Clinton  
administration hit them with violations and multimillion-dollar  
lawsuits. Cheney's energy task force ordered the EPA to reconsider  
the rule.

Whitman had already gone several rounds with the vice president over  
the issue.

She and Cheney first got to know each other in one of the Nixon  
administration's anti-poverty agencies, working under Donald H.  
Rumsfeld. When Cheney offered her the job in the Bush administration,  
the former New Jersey governor marveled at how far both had come. But  
as with Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, another longtime friend  
who owed his Cabinet post to Cheney, Whitman's differences with the  
vice president would lead to her departure.

Sitting through Cheney's task force meetings, Whitman had been  
stunned by what she viewed as an unquestioned belief that EPA's  
regulations were primarily to blame for keeping companies from  
building new power plants. "I was upset, mad, offended that there  
seemed to be so much head-nodding around the table," she said.

Whitman said she had to fight "tooth and nail" to prevent Cheney's  
task force from handing over the job of reforming the New Source  
Review to the Energy Department, a battle she said she won only after  
appealing to White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. This was  
an environmental issue with major implications for air quality and  
health, she believed, and it shouldn't be driven by a task force  
primarily concerned with increasing production.

Whitman agreed that the exception for routine maintenance and repair  
needed to be clarified, but not in a way that undercut the ongoing  
Clinton-era lawsuits -- many of which had merit, she said.

Cheney listened to her arguments, and as usual didn't say much.  
Whitman said she also met with the president to "explain my concerns"  
and to offer an alternative.

  She wanted to work a political trade with industry -- eliminating  
the New Source Review in return for support of Bush's 2002 "Clear  
Skies" initiative, which outlined a market-based approach to reducing  
emissions over time. But Clear Skies went nowhere. "There was never  
any follow-up," Whitman said, and moreover, there was no reason for  
industry to embrace even a modest pollution control initiative when  
the vice president was pushing to change the rules for nothing.

  She decided to go back to Bush one last time. It was a crapshoot --  
the EPA administrator had already been rolled by Cheney when the  
president reversed himself on a campaign promise to limit carbon  
dioxide emissions linked to global warming -- so she came armed with  
a political argument.

  Whitman said she plunked down two sets of folders filled with news  
clips. This one, she said, pointing to a stack about 2-1/2 inches  
thick, contained articles, mostly negative, about the  
administration's controversial proposal to suspend tough new  
standards governing arsenic in drinking water. And this one, she said  
as she pointed to a pile four or five times as thick, are the  
articles about the rules on aging power plants and refineries -- and  
the administration hadn't even done anything yet.

"If you think arsenic was bad," she recalled telling Bush, "look at  
what has already been written about this."

But Whitman left the meeting with the feeling that "the decision had  
already been made." Cheney had a clear mandate from the president on  
all things energy-related, she said, and while she could take her  
case directly to Bush, "you leave and the vice president's still  
there. So together, they would then shape policy."

What happened next was "a perfect example" of that, she said.

The EPA sent rule revisions to White House officials. The read-back  
was that they weren't happy and "wanted something that would be more  
pro-industry," she said.

The end result, which she said was written at the direction of the  
White House and announced in August 2003, vastly broadened the  
definition of routine maintenance. It allowed some of the nation's  
dirtiest plants to make major modifications without installing costly  
new pollution controls.

By that time, Whitman had already announced her resignation, saying  
she wanted to spend more time with her family. But the real reason,  
she said, was the new rule.

"I just couldn't sign it," she said. "The president has a right to  
have an administrator who could defend it, and I just couldn't."

A federal appeals court has since found that the rule change violated  
the Clean Air Act. In their ruling, the judges said that the  
administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid  
"only in a Humpty-Dumpty world."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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