Bonneville Power Administration's Unlawful Defunding of the Fish Passage Center

In Nov. 2005, Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) inserted remarks into a conference report accompanying a federal appropriations act in an attempt to zero out funding for the Fish Passage Center. The Fish Passage Center, a well-respected independent research center that has been collecting and analyzing data on salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin for over 20 years, was targeted by Craig because it doesn't count fish in a manner that suits him.

Regrettably, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) had been treating Senator Craig's remarks as binding legislation, and even refers to them as such on its website. Senator Craig's remarks, however, do not carry the force and effect of law. As a result, BPA's actions to defund and transfer responsibilities away from the Fish Passage Center are in contravention of the Northwest Power Act, the 2000 Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, and the 2003 Mainstem Amendments to that program.

In its January 24, 2007 decision, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reiterated its directive to BPA to fully restore funding for the Fish Passage Center, and found BPA's actions arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law. The court characterizes BPA's faulty reliance on Senator Craig's remarks as "slavish adherence to a sentence in a legislative committee report".

NEDC was represented in this matter by Stephanie Parent, of the Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center.

View a copy of the Ninth Circuit's January 24th, 2007 order.

View a short news story by the Associated Press that ran in several regional papers on January 25, 2006.

Read the transcript of an OPB story from January 23, 2006.