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There is a saying in Congress that “No bad idea ever really dies.” This is especially true in the Congressional budgeting and appropriations process. All the worst cracked-brain ideas of the session, bills so bad they could never get even a Congressional hearing, can revive zombie-like in the appropriations process as “riders” to massive funding bills. So too do pork-barrel projects for everybody’s home district and federal giveaways to special interest groups, regardless of whether such programs are necessary or even useful.
Unlike the regular progress of a bill through Congressional subcommittees and committees, which is designed to winnow the good ideas from the bad and the ugly, an appropriations bill MUST pass by October 1st of each year or the government itself would be shut down. Because they must be passed in some form, these bills soon look like Christmas trees, with dozens of “rider” ornaments added to them behind closed doors by powerful committee chairmen as political favors, often with little or no debate.
Sometimes riders just mysteriously appear during the free-for-all dickering sessions called “Conference Committees” -- closed door meetings between members of the House and Senate which are supposed to reconcile differences between competing versions of the same bill. There are no rules in Conference Committee; political favoritism abounds, there are no records of votes, and the public is excluded.
This is the Congressional “silly season” -- mid- to late summer -- in which all this happens. The most common targets of riders are the Interior Department and Commerce Department Appropriations Bills and the funding bill for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Several of the current batch of riders directly affect the west coast fishery, including Columbia River salmon restoration. Here are the worst:
Washington’s Senator Gorton, ignoring fishermen and emerging as a champion for fish-killing dams everywhere, has taken portions of his outrageous Colombia River/Elwha hostage tradeoff bill (S. 1904 -- See “Saving Dams by Killing Fish,” FN May '98) and made them into Section 343 and Title IV of the Senate Interior Appropriations Bill (S. 2237). Essentially Section 343 would lock in all existing dam and barging practices on the Columbia River, prohibit any changes that may be necessary (including any structural or operational modifications) in order to restore beleaguered salmon runs, and would effectively prohibit most salmon restoration efforts in the Columbia. His language also overrides the requirements of several federal laws, including the Federal Power Act, which requires that fish and wildlife be given “equal consideration” with power values; the Endangered Species Act, which requires listed salmon runs to be recovered; the Clean Water Act, which protects water quality in the river, and; the Northwest Power Planning Act, which balances the region’s needs for power with the needs for salmon and other aquatic species.
Senator Gorton’s ludicrous rider is a straight faced effort to freeze-out all efforts to modify the federal dams in the Columbia to save salmon and steelhead -- without public debate. Even the most damaging dam practices would be impossible to modify under his language without full Congressional approval -- an approval which any Senator (presumably Senator Gorton himself) could block in the Senate through parliamentary tricks or a filibuster.
Gorton’s rider even prohibits water releases for flow augmentation to aid migrating juvenile salmon which are already required in the current NMFS Biological Opinion. The language also threatens negotiated agreements to improve fish passage at non-federal dams in the Columbia, such as the Mid-Columbia Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) affecting the Chelan and Douglas Public Utility Districts or the agreement to modify operations at PacifiCorp’s Condit Dam. It would also prohibit any reduction in power generating capacity at any of the federal dams as well as all other FERC licensed private dams in the Columbia basin. No dam could be retired, no dam could be changed, no salmon-saving measures could be taken without full Congressional approval! This, coupled with an unprecedented regional exemption of an entire multi-state region from several environmental laws, amounts to a death warrant for wild salmon in the Columbia and Snake River.
Title IV of the Senate Interior Appropriations Bill also includes changes to the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act (the law that authorized the removal of the two Elwha dams in 1992, but which Senator Gorton has systematically blocked from funding every year since then). These changes would require yet more studies to be done before any action could be taken. This undermines implementation of the bipartisan Elwha Act, even as Senator Gorton continues to block the release of $86 million for Elwha dam removal already appropriated from the Land and Water Conservation Fund in Fiscal Year 1998. At least in Gorton’s S.1904 he was promising some money for the Elwha removal. This rider, however, would halt both Columbia and Elwha salmon restoration efforts permanently.
PCFFA and many other organizations have written to the White House demanding a veto of this bill as it stands, and received assurances that a veto would be forthcoming. Given the devastating economic and ecological consequences of Senator Gorton’s anti-salmon rider to our industry, removal of this rider should be a non-negotiable priority for the Administration in the upcoming veto fight.
Both the Senate and House Interior Appropriations Bills contain riders attacking the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP). This is a long-term watershed planning effort seeking to assess the ecological health of the upper Columbia Basin (where a lot of salmon runs still come from) east of the Cascades -- some 75 million acres of federal lands in seven western states. Instead of managing these federal lands piecemeal through this large region, as was always done in the past, the Administration wants to look at the overall health of the forests and river systems of the region and to assess the cumulative effects that decades of excessive logging, mining and grazing have had on salmon and other aquatic resources. Surprise! The study’s blue-ribbon independent scientific team concluded that past land practices indeed have all but destroyed many of these once-major salmon runs, and recommended that in order to avoid the ultimate extinction of salmon east of the cascades (not to mention the elimination of most other aquatic species) these practices would have to be controlled and their “cumulative impacts” reversed.
Naturally the science did not sit well with traditional Congressional defenders of federally subsidized logging, mining and grazing. Every year since the 4 year project began, there has been a rider effort to pull the plug on the program and return to the good ol’ days of massive clearcuts, strip mining and overgrazing. This year Senator Gorton once again led the charge in the Senate with a rider (Section 337 of the Interior Appropriations Bill) that would simply allow such activities as timber sales to go forward even if the cumulative effects of those activities would jeopardize the future existence of species. His rider essentially means the end to efforts to restore salmon runs in the Upper Columbia -- salmon would become exempt from Endangered Species Act protections that are now driving watershed reforms.
The House Appropriations Bill is even more straightforward -- it would simply defund the whole program and muzzles the scientists by prohibiting the ICBEMP Project from ever publishing their results as a final decision document. Washington Representatives Doc Hastings and George Nethercutt introduced that rider in the House. So much for making policy based on science -- at least when the science criticizes federally subsidized destruction of watersheds for profit.
In another stunning effort by Congressional leadership to muzzle scientific debate at the request of well heeled industrial polluters, the latest draft of the House Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding bill now contains a rider inserted by Rep. Knollenberg (R- MI) at the request of industrial oil and coal interests that prohibits the use of federal funds “for the purpose of implementation, or in contemplation of implementation, of the Kyoto Protocol” to reduce carbon dioxide and other pollutants that contribute to global warming. Essentially this rider would prohibit the federal government from taking any steps to reduce U.S. production of these pollutants -- even if it will benefit the economy or human health.
The EPA funding bill Committee Report (generally also considered to be part of the law) even contains language that directs the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to refrain from educating the public in any way (even prohibiting providing scientific information or conducting seminars) about the issues, potential impacts and solutions of global climate change. EPA Administrator Carol Bowner said of this rider, “The bill could stifle any informed debate on global warming.” While several aspects of the global warming issue are controversial, it is hardly likely that deliberately muzzling all discussion of the issue in any government forum is going to produce informed policy.
Additionally, $200 million was eliminated in the House funding bill to fund federal energy efficiency programs and research into renewable energy technologies -- efforts that could reduce our national addiction to coal and oil uses (and consequently reduce greenhouse gas emissions) but which would also be beneficial to the economy as a whole. More efficient use of energy in manufacturing, for instance, is always good for the economy.
The EPA funding bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 11th (S. 2168) also contains language prohibiting any use of funds to support activities related to the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol prior to its ratification by the Senate -- even when those measures would reduce air pollution or benefit the economy.
Until a few years ago it was customary for Congress to adopt annual timber harvest targets for federal forestlands, at the behest of the timber industry lobby. These were mandatory quotas the U.S. Forest Service was simply required to meet, and were a way to federally subsidize the timber industry regardless of the environmental consequences to salmon, clean water or any other natural resource. Fortunately, the current Administration has put an end to that practice, in favor of a much sounder ecosystem protection approach -- or so it thought!
In a wonderful march into the past, Alaska’s Senator Stevens recently inserted Section 338 into the Senate Interior Appropriations Bill (S. 2237) that would require 40% more logging in the Tongass National Forest (SE Alaska) than even the timber dominated U.S. Forest Service believes is environmentally appropriate.
Furthermore, Steven’s rider would make this mandatory quota a legally enforceable right to use public lands -- in other words, if the Forest Service failed to produce the quota then the timber industry could take them to court. Even if serious damage to Alaska’s salmon runs were inevitably to occur, as most scientists believe -- many key salmon runs are dependent on spawning and rearing streams within the Tongass -- this mandatory cut would still have to proceed regardless of the consequences.
On top of that, Section 340 of the same bill would maintain the Tongass National Forest as the nation’s top money losing timber program by requiring all timber sold in Region 10 (Alaska) to utilize an antiquated log appraisal system that grossly undervalues the timber costs charged to companies for the use of public logs.
In other words, these two riders combined amount to a huge mandatory giveaway of public resources at the expense of Tongass salmon runs, taxpayers and the watersheds that fishermen coastwide have fought for so many years to protect.
There are many other riders likely to be tacked on to these bills which also qualify as serious attacks on the west coast fishing industry, but which are likely to appear on these bills later. Among the worst of this batch are these:
The timber industry particularly has gotten itself all in a dither over the provisions of the newly authorized Sustainable Fisheries Act which allow federal fisheries management councils to designate and comment on activities within ?Essential Fish Habitat (EFH).’ (16 U.S.C. 1853). Fishermen have been fighting for years to have at least some input into upland watershed practices that devastate salmon runs, and these new provisions are the result. Among other things these provisions would require at least some scrutiny (albeit a very weak one) by fisheries managers and by the councils of these upland and in-river activities.
Lobbyists for Big Timber, grazers, mining corporations and other habitat destroyers have been trying to derail the Essential Fish Habitat designation process all along. They want to keep fisheries managers out of the business of protecting watersheds by restricting the EFH designations to the marine environment. They were successful in gaining support from many western state members of Congress for language in the House Commerce Appropriations Bill Report to the effect that “NMFS may have exceeded its statutory authority” and calling for a Government Accounting Office (GAO) investigation of how the money has been spent, but protecting fish habitat is so obviously needed that they could not convince their east coast colleagues to restrict EFH to the oceans.
It has been rumored that a rider will be tried that would prevent designation of inland salmon streams as EFH. However, fishermen wrote the EFH habitat protection section in the first place, fishermen lobbied heavily for it to pass, and fishermen will vehemently fight any effort to undercut its implementation.
Another likely rider may be offered by Representative Tom Campbell (R-CA) in the form of his draft “Farm and Ranch Habitat Protection Act,” which would provide a broad exemption of all farming and ranching practices from the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This would exempt all agricultural activities including livestock grazing, application of pesticides, logging and land and water conversions to these uses -- in other words, it would exempt the major activities that destroy salmon habitat and dry up fish-bearing rivers. There is some precedent -- a similar though less broad exemption was recently jammed through by ranchers and farmers in the California ESA. If the same thing is done on the federal level, then once all the real habitat degraders are exempt about the only people who would be left to regulate under the ESA would be -- you guessed it! -- fishermen!
Fortunately news of Campbell’s draft bill was leaked and the resulting firestorm of protest and bad publicity caused him to pull it from the House floor at the last minute before filing. However, this does not prevent its reappearing as a special interest rider on any of a number of bills. Indeed, the fact that his bill is too radical to pass muster as a bill makes it a likely candidate for the rider route.
The rider game is a huge game of “chicken,” especially in an election year. Each side will try to embarrass the other with a media barrage or with vetoes. However, it is clear that the Congressional leadership are still in the grip of large corporate polluters and pursuing a rabidly anti- environmental agenda on their behalf that is opposed by the vast majority of Americans. That’s why they now disguise their attacks as obscure provisions of weighty funding bills. They figure that if they can just pull the plug on funding programs they don’t like or block implementation, then they will put an end to them -- but quietly and away from the public’s eyes.
Many of those riders are direct attacks on the natural resource base that supports our industry. Whenever and wherever we see such shenanigans, fishermen MUST (for their own survival) speak out and educate the public about the high economic cost failure to protect fish habitat will eventually extract -- first from fishermen, then from coastal communities and then from the pockets and mouths of virtually every American.
Getting Bill Information on the Internet: THOMAS (Library of Congress), http://www.thomas.loc.gov.
Calling your member of Congress: (202)224-3121 and ask for your member by name or tell them your ZIP code and they will connect you to the appropriate office.
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