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<DIV>In a message dated 6/28/2012 9:52:10 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
andrew@wildcalifornia.org writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#1f497d size=2 face=Calibri><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Just
for clarification then, Condit did involve a settlement agreement, but
Congress was not asked for $$.</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Andrew... correct. But of
course no Congressional money is being asked for dam removal <EM>per
se</EM> in the Klamath either... dam removal and related mitigation
measures necessary from dam removal are being funded mostly by Company
ratepayers, with some remaining second-tier funding (if needed) to eventually
come (by 2020) from California, where most of the economic benefits from dam
removal will be. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><STRONG>About $35 million
dollars</STRONG> is now in that dam removal Klamath Trust Fund, cumulative
collected from ratepayer surcharges that amount to about $1.61/month per average
residential customer in northern California -- less than the price of a
decent cup of coffee a month. And it builds up at about $1
million/month until 2020 and the target removal date. A total of $200
million is to come from that source by 2020, and we are pretty much on
track. Current delays in Congress do not hurt this effort in any way so
long as those funds continue being collected.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Congressional approval <U>is</U>
required, of course, for the process of removing jurisdiction from FERC,
and for the transfer of Keno Dam and a few other elements of the Klamath
Hydropower Settlement Agreement (KHSA). But NO federal money.
This is to prevent what happened with the Elwha dam, which was actually
authorized by Congress for removal but then kept Congressionally unfunded (for
purely political reasons as a bargaining chip in Congress on unrelated issues)
for more than a decade. (And even the Elwha dam eventually came down
(this year) in spite of Congressional resistance.) The KHSA dam
removal components only need to come through Congress once and only once.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Many Settlement
Parties' overarching goal is and always has been Klamath salmon
restoration. Dam removal is only one element, though an essential one, of
that 50-year watershed restoration program. Dam removal is thus a
necessary -- <EM>but in itself not sufficient</EM> --prerequisite to that
salmon restoration. Much more than mere dam removal is necessary to
restore healthy salmon runs to an over-appropriated river with much of its
salmon habitat severely damaged. Can't get there from dam removal
alone. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Federal funding is, of
course, required for the long-term salmon watershed restoration efforts in
the parallel KBRA. This is, of course, the rub in a Congress
committed to pinching every penny. My own view -- and the numbers
substantiate this -- is that investing a little more in the basin to
fix its water over-allocation and habitat problems once and for all is
<U>far cheaper, in the long run</U>, than spending federal money in
periodic disaster assistance programs caused nearly every year by the problems
that need fixing. And far more certain than trying to get these water
reforms through litigation.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Last decade nearly $15 million/year
went to the Klamath Basin <EM>in federal disaster assistance
alone!</EM></FONT><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial> The economic
price to the basin and coastal communities of the back-to-back water crises
of 2001 and 2010 and fish kills (2002, leading to fishery closures
2006) to the region was in the hundreds of millions of
dollars!<EM> </EM> Lurching from disaster to disaster is not the
way to run things, and is not sustainable!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>Suppose we were able to get the dams
down without that Restoration Agreement (the KBRA)? The lower river would
still be starved of water, much of the spawning and rearing habitat still
damaged, and salmon highly unlikely to recover to any major degree. This
is why the KHSA is tied to and part of a much broader watershed restoration
plan. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>The KBRA is very like the San Joaquin
Settlement Agreement, seeking to restore salmon to the completely dewatered San
Joaquin River in northern California for the first time in 60 years. That
also took some years longer to get funded through Congress than originally
anticipated. But once the San Joaquin Settlement Act began to move, it
took only three weeks to become law! </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>One is nearly always better off
having tried something and failed rather than having tried nothing and
succeeded. A 50-year watershed restoration plan like the KBRA is
ambitious, yes, but it is in fact what the Klamath salmon runs need to fully
recover. And all the science says that the kind of restoration and water
reallocation programs embodied in the KBRA and KHSA will be moving us very far
along indeed in the right direction.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT lang=0 size=2 face=Arial
FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">======================================<BR>Glen H.
Spain, Northwest Regional Director<BR>Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's
Associations (PCFFA)<BR>PO Box 11170, Eugene, OR 97440-3370<BR>Office:
(541)689-2000 Fax: (541)689-2500<BR>Web Home Page: <A
href="http://www.pcffa.org/">www.pcffa.org</A><BR>Email:
fish1ifr@aol.com</FONT></DIV></FONT></SPAN></FONT></BODY></HTML>