Buck In Brief

Cheney and the Klamath Fish Kill

In Brief: Report shows Bush administration interfered with Klamath river flows, destroying thousands of fish and ruining livelihoods of fishing communities from California to Oregon

07/20/07

According to a long, fascinating, and ultimately infuriating series that ran in the Washington Post at the end of June, Dick Cheney was the key administration figure in decisions that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of chinook and coho salmon in the Klamath River in 2002. Earthjustice has been battling to rescue the Klamath, its fish, and the coastal communities that depend on both for years now. We've won a series of legal victories (thanks to the hard work of the team in our Seattle office, led by attorney Kristen Boyles), but the Bush administration has done everything in its power to deprive the river of its water.

Cheney's involvement, as revealed by Post reporters Jo Becker and Barton Gellman, is news. The Wall Street Journal in July 2003 detailed involvement by Karl Rove, Bush's political guru, but we didn't know about Cheney's meddling until now.

According to the Post, Cheney was called by Robert F. Smith, an old friend he had served with in the House of Representatives. Smith was then working with farmers in the Klamath basin, which was suffering from a devastating drought. The feds had just turned off the spigot to keep protected fish from possibly going extinct. What could the vice president do to help? Cheney was keen to help his old friend because the Bush/Cheney ticket only won in Oregon in 2000 by one percent, and Republican Senator Gordon Smith was coming up for re-election in the 2002 midterm elections.

Dead chinook salmon

Photo by The Wilderness Society

First, Cheney considered empaneling what's known as the God Squad, a committee that can be convened in the face of extreme emergency and can issue exemptions to Endangered Species Act protections. Cheney rejected that route as too risky politically. Instead, the VP, according to Smith, phoned the National Academy of Sciences (an academy spokesman said the call came from the Interior Department) and asked that a special panel review the work of scientists who predicted that continuing withdrawals of Klamath water for irrigation would jeopardize salmon and other fish. Four months later, the academy issued an interim report that said the science wasn't conclusive. That was all the feds needed to open the floodgates for irrigation. Estimates are that between 65,000 and 77,000 salmon perished. With them died the salmon they would have produced in the future and the hopes for many family-wage jobs tied to the salmon industry in coastal communities stretching from central California to northern Oregon.

Chagrined but undaunted, the fisheries service embarked on a new biological opinion calling for phasing in protection of salmon over a ten-year period. Michael Kelly, an agency biologist, objected that this was inadequate, that more water was needed immediately to avert further disasters. He was overruled by Jim Lecky, his boss, who said there was interest in the matter "all the way up to the White House."

Was that Cheney again? We don't know. The vice president has been invited to appear before the House Resources Committee on July 31 to shed light on the subject. It'll be big news if he shows up.

Fortunately, our lawsuit stopped the flawed ten-year biological opinion, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just rejected a last-ditch attempt by the Klamath Water Users Association to ensure that irrigation takes precedence over fish. The Klamath salmon have a fighting chance -- for now.  We expect a replacement biological opinion sometime in 2008; if the administration's suppression of science continues, we will go back to court.

And Cheney's meddling hardly stops there. The Post series also named the VP as the driving force behind the administration's attempt to replace the national forest roadless protection rule with one that could throw those precious areas open again to rampant destruction. Earthjustice has fought back in that battle, successfully so far, for a half-dozen years.

Never a dull moment.

Vawter "Buck" Parker, Executive Director
buckparker@earthjustice.org