Urge Agencies to Envision a Better Future for Salmon and Dams
A NOTE on COVID-19 and the Draft EIS public comment period: In the past several weeks, Portland Audubon joined coalition partners in making repeated requests to the federal agencies to address serious deficiencies of the public comment period given the great importance of the issues at stake AND the major disruption and health crisis posed by the Coronavirus. You can view two of the letters we sent on March 5 and March 11. While the in-person meetings have been cancelled and replaced with teleconferences, the federal government’s public input process remains woefully inadequate. We feel strongly that it must be extended and include public, in-person hearings after the health risks of the Coronavirus have passed. We will continue to press the agencies to address these fatal process flaws given today’s unprecedented circumstances.
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Join Portland Audubon and fellow advocates at a virtual public hearing to urge federal agencies and our state and federal elected officials to save our salmon runs and restore balance to the Columbia River system by addressing the impact of the dams. A federal court ruled in 2016 that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and partner agencies must develop a new plan to protect salmon on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, and advised agencies that it was time to address the dams, the real cause of salmon decline.
