Term Paper on USA Environmental
Policy
The U.S. federal government has never adopted an overall, comprehensive
environmental strategy. The first broad environmental initiatives were taken in
1969-1971. The National Environmental Policy Act was adopted in 1969, but
opinions vary as to how effective an instrument it has been in actually
protecting environmental quality. The creation of the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) in 1970 was an attempt to unite certain federal environmental
regulatory responsibilities in a separate agency whose administrator would
report directly to the president. In retrospect, the policy areas not included
in EPA's mandate principally natural resource snare conspicuous by their
omission: forests, water resources, parks and other protected lands, public
lands, and energy regulation. Also left out were certain aspects of
environmental assessment, monitoring, information gathering, and planning, which
were reserved to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Created through the
same legislation in early 1970, CEQ was given a broad mandate that also included
coordinating federal agencies' actions with respect to the environment,
performing studies for the president, and making recommendations to the
president and departments regarding environmental priorities. In its early
years, CEQ coordinated the administration's legislative program, and through the
Carter administration the Council was a vigorous and often visionary advocate
for the environment. In 1981 CEQ's budget and staff were cut so sharply by a
hostile Reagan administration that the agency ceased to function effectively.
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Formation of Special Interest Groups [SIGs]
The American Educational Research Association (AERA), a professional membership
organization, strives to improve the educational process by encouraging
scholarly inquiry related to education. AERA offers a comprehensive program of
scholarly publications, training, fellowships, and meetings to advance
educational research, to spread knowledge, and to improve the capability of the
profession to enhance the public good.
AERA was founded in 1916 and currently is in its 86th year. The AERA central
offices are located in two adjoining townhouses near Washington's Dupont Circle,
an area within the Nation's Capitol that is home to many education-related
organizations. The office is housed in the William J. Russell Building, named in
honor of an executive director who served AERA for 29 years. AERA is governed by
a legislative and policy-determining body called the Association Council, which
is comprised of elected members and consists of the President, President Elect,
Immediate Past-President, three Members-at-Large, Vice Presidents of each of the
12 Divisions, chair of the SIG Executive Committee, and a Graduate Student
Representative. Both the AERA Executive Director and the Director of Social
Justice serve as ex-officio members of the Association Council.
The failure to consolidate environmental responsibilities under one agency has
perpetuated the fragmentation of environmental regulation especially in the
arena of natural resources across numerous federal agencies, many of which serve
conflicting interests. The leaders of ten nonprofit environmental and
conservation organizations collaborated in 1985 on An Environmental Agenda for
the Future. The book addressed the failures of U.S. environmental policy and
provided a concise menu of necessary reforms. Problems were described and broad
policy changes were recommended in eleven principal areas: nuclear weapons,
population, energy, water resources, toxics and pollution (air, water, hazardous
substances), "wild living resources" (biodiversity, wildlife, and habitat),
private lands and agriculture, "protected land systems" (parks, wilderness
areas, national wildlife refuges), public lands, urban environmental problems,
and international (i.e., global) environmental issues. Although often drafted in
general terms, the recommendations however addressed policy changes over the
entire range of environmental and resource issues.
Special Interest Groups
Special Interest Groups (SIG's) provide a forum within AERA for the involvement
of individuals drawn together by a common interest in a field of study,
teaching, or research when the existing divisional structure may not directly
facilitate such activity.
The primary responsibility of a SIG to the Association is to maintain a
professional support system for its membership consistent with the purpose of
the Association as a whole. All responsibilities, including financial, placed on
SIG's by the Association are meant to avoid potential conflicts with existing
structure and to partially reimburse the Association for expenditures incurred
in the support of the SIG's.
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Lower Snake River dams breaching issue:
Four dams on the river are as follow
• Ice Harbor (1962)
• Lower Monumental (1969)
• Little Goose (1970)
• Lower Granite (1975)
Location: Washington
Operator: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Issue: The dams hinder the migration of endangered salmon to and from Idaho,
especially downstream. Their reservoirs cover spawning habitat.
Benefits: Bonneville Power Administration markets 1200 megawatts of electric
power from the dams to aluminum companies, public utilities in Oregon,
Washington, Montana and Idaho to California utilities on the open market. This
represents about 1.4 percent of the region's electricity and generates $250
million in revenues a year. (Bluefish notes that the Bonneville Power
Administration, marketing electricity from 29 Northwest dams, is the second
greatest producer of revenue for the U.S. Government). About 35,000 acres of
croplands owned by 13 farmers is irrigated by pumping water from the four
reservoirs.
The reservoirs allow the Port of Lewiston to ship grain and wood products
downriver by barge to Portland, bringing $34 million into the Lewiston economy.
Water-skiing and boating are popular on the reservoirs, with recreation
responsible for up to $60 million of income to the local economy. Lewiston and
Potlatch pollution discharges are diluted in the reservoir, saving each millions
of dollars in treatment costs.
Costs: Snake River Coho salmon have gone extinct. Steelhead trout, sockeye and
Chinook salmon are threatened and endangered. Other ocean-going fish, such as
sea lamprey, are in decline. Economic studies by the Columbia Intertribal Fish
Commission and the Fish and Game Foundation estimate $248 million in economic
benefits would be realized if salmon were restored to 1960s. Locks and dam
maintenance and irrigation pumping are subsidized, costing taxpayers more than
$98 million dollars a year. Spending on programs to save endangered salmon
exceeds electricity revenues from the dams by $300 million to $900 million,
according to estimates from the BPA printed in the Portland Oregonian. The dams
cost $29 million a year in operation and maintenance.
Special Interest Groups involvement regarding dam breaching issue:
Factors favoring dam removal
Natural river migration advocates suggest that salmon would benefit by removing,
or breaching a passageway through, or constructing bypasses (and decommissioning
the dams) to allow the river to flow past the four dams on the Lower Snake
River. The reason that these dams are a problem to salmon is related to climatic
conditions. This is a dry region with little rainfall. Compared to the dams on
the Columbia where water is abundant, less water passes by the Lower Snake dams,
and less water is spilled over the spillways. It is important to note that the
potential energy of water passed over the spillways is not converted into
electrical power because it does not flow past the turbines.
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During times when water is not spilled, the salmon’s molts coming downstream
from Idaho are diverted into a system of tunnels and collected. Then they are
transferred to barges or trucks and transported around the dams where they are
released below Bonneville Dam. Many salmon advocates believe that the collection
and transport process in especially harmful to the molts
Those that advocate removing or breaching or making a year-round passage way
around the dams maintain that the four Lower Snake River dams produce much less
power than the other dams and that only a few farmers that rely upon the
reservoirs behind the dams for irrigation water for their crops would be
affected. They also maintain the navigation industry is subsidized by taxpayers
and other cost effective alternatives to barging products from Lewiston to
Portland are readily available
Conservation, fishing and environmental organizations have raised and spent
millions of dollars over the last five years trying to convince Congress and the
nation to take out the four dams that plug the Snake from Pasco to Lewiston.
Apparently, the group's message of river restoration echoes with an increasing
number of Americans -- including corporate supporters such as Alaska Airlines,
Microsoft, Nordstrom and Office Depot. From 1994 to 1997, the most recent years
for which numbers are available, gifts and grants to American Rivers climbed
from $2.1 million to $3 million. Including dues from 30,000 members, the
organization's most recent tax form shows $4.2 million in revenues.
Factors opposing dam removal
Bruce Lovelin, director of a Portland-based industry alliance that opposes dam
removal, said, "This whole issue is big business, it's an industry for the
environmental groups, and they are profiting from it." Pat Ford, director of
Save Our Wild Salmon, challenges any assertion that conservation groups somehow
are getting fat by sucking money from members. "That's not how it works," he
said. "What we try to achieve is ... set by our members (who are) deeply
attached to the restoration of salmon on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. That is
our job." That job sometimes pays very well. Neither Save Our Wild Salmon nor
Idaho Rivers United report any employees making more than $50,000. But American
Rivers President Rebecca Wodder draws a $108,000 annual salary to lead her
group, which is at the forefront of the dam-removal effort. American Rivers
participates in lawsuits and pays for anti-dam advertising in major newspapers
on both coasts.
The Direct Services Industries do not support removing or breaching Columbia and
Snake River dams. Scientific evidence demonstrates that healthy salmon
populations can co-exist with dams, and there is no scientific basis for dam
removal. Northwest citizens concerned with the environment need to remember that
hydroelectric power is the only available large-scale renewable electric
resource. Even with a societal commitment to conservation, nearly every kilowatt
of electric capacity removed from the Columbia River is ultimately made up
through increased electric production from other sources, principally fossil
fuels. The Federal government has never prepared an environmental impact
statement to assess the environmental costs of removing hydroelectric capacity,
even though over one thousand megawatts of energy (enough to serve the city of
Seattle) has already been removed through operational changes with apparently
little or no benefit to salmon.
American Rivers’ budget for 1998 included $1.1 million for media efforts,
newsletters and mailings about threats to the nation's waterways. About
two-thirds of the group's expenses were for pursuing policies to protect the
nation's rivers, reform hydropower rules and defend endangered species.
Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., Snake River dam removal was
important enough to list as a major program on the group's Internal Revenue
Service form. The group, which saw a nearly threefold increase in contributions
from 1996 to 1999, said it spent $218,000 on its 1999 campaign to remove the
Snake dams and end "wasteful, unneeded projects" by the Corps of Engineers.
Idaho Rivers United, which also wants the dams out, spent $448,000 in 1999
distributing information and advancing its agenda to recover salmon and improve
river systems. The foundation, supported by old Northwest timber money, gave at
least $400,000 in 1999 to dam-breaching advocates such as Idaho Rivers United
and Save Our Wild Salmon. "That creates a pretty large funding source that
really is difficult for us to compete with," said Lovelin at the industry-port
alliance. "We are really getting outspent on this issue."
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Save Our Wild Salmon -- a coalition of several dozen conservation and
sport-fishing groups is the organization most closely aligned with efforts to
remove the Lower Snake dams. It formed in 1991 and grew significantly in the
late 1990s as it geared up for the Clinton administration's decision on dam
removal. Despite the sharp increase in grants to Save Our Wild Salmon, Ford said
money doesn't come easy. Part of the reason is that his alliance doesn't compete
with member groups for dues-paying members, focusing instead on attracting
foundation grants. "There is an awful lot of interest in the Northwest among
people generally in ... salmon recovery," Ford said. "It's high visibility and
pretty popular if you care about the environment He anticipates the alliance
continuing to grow at least through 2005, largely in an effort to monitor and
influence pending decisions about the future of the Snake River dams. At a
handful of checkpoints over the next several years, fish agencies will review
salmon recovery efforts to determine if the dams should be breached. "We don't
intend to shrink back into the lower levels of funding and resources," said
Ford, acknowledging that fund raising likely will be more difficult with dam
breaching off the front pages. "It's a matter of convincing potential donors
that this is a long-term effort ... and that we are making progress."
This whole thing salmon has the Northwest spooked. Interest groups are jumping
at every twitch of the great federal nose as anticipation builds for decisions
about salmon and dams "The danger is not from ordinary citizens but from special
interest groups that will somehow detect subtle signals that don't really exist
as we begin to formally discuss this matter," said Brian Gorman, spokesman for
the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. "People have to focus on the
principal issue before them and before the region - that is that if we do
nothing, salmon will go extinct very soon, in some cases within 10 years." NMFS
released a working draft called Four H paper it addresses critical issues in the
salmon life cycle: hydropower, habitat, hatcheries and harvest. The Four H
report, along with an environmental impact statement of dam breaching being
prepared by the Army Corps of Engineers, will eventually provide the basis of a
recovery plan for the salmon and other fish stocks It is the first of a handful
of critical documents about fish, that lays out options for salmon recovery. It
comes just in time - much more of a wait threatens to send river watchers
spinning in speculation That said, interest groups have much at stake and good
reason to be vigilant about a decision that will shape the Northwest for decades
NMFS' revised and renamed All H paper. This document shows trade-offs the region
faces between hydropower, habitat, hatcheries and harvest if salmon and
steelhead are to be revived. Changes largely will be the inclusion of scientific
analysis. A "biological assessment" by federal agencies of how the hydroelectric
system is run. It is the preliminary document to the Biological Opinion that
NMFS uses to balance hydropower and fish needs in the river system. Though much
has been learned in recent years about the "delayed mortality" of barged fish,
considerable disagreement remains. The NMFS tends to believe it is not as great
a problem as some say, while the Fish and Wildlife Service leans toward leaving
the fish in the river.
The fisheries service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, both of which have
jurisdiction over threatened and endangered species on the rivers, are at odds
over proposals to breach the four lower Snake dams. And an independent panel of
scientists, in an as yet unreleased analysis, questions some of the fisheries
service's scientific methods and warns the "apparent drift toward delay of
actual decisions" could be a mistake. "To say there is a big dispute between two
federal agencies administering the Endangered Species Act is a huge
overstatement," said Bill Shake, assistant regional director of the Fish and
Wildlife Service based in Portland. Brian Gorman, a fisheries service spokesman
in Seattle, said it was no more than a scientific disagreement and should not be
blown out of proportion. "If you want, you can describe it as an honest
difference of opinion between scientists, but not a split,” Others, however,
said there was a growing tension between the two agencies and that they had
become openly critical of each other.
In a final effort to influence the Clinton administration, several Northwest
environmental groups are appealing for public support to tear down the four
lower Snake River dams in five years, barring unforeseen salmon recovery They
launched newspaper and radio advertising campaigns across Western Oregon and
Western Washington. "We're calling on the president to do the right thing before
he leaves office," said Jeff Curtis of Trout Unlimited. "Even with all of the
conjecture around presidential politics these days, one thing is certain:
President Clinton's environmental legacy will be largely shaped and remembered
in history based on his administration's handling of the Northwest salmon
crisis."
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The message is clear. In the print version of the advertisement, a young girl is
peering at a fossilized salmon in a museum. Below the drawing is a clip-out
coupon that readers can mail to President Clinton, urging him to breach the dams
in five years if nothing else restores salmon. Don't let a museum be the only
place our grandchildren see wild Snake River salmon," the text says. "Tell
President Clinton we need his leadership to save them. The Federal agencies have
been struggling to find a way to restore the fish populations, while at the same
time not crippling the hydroelectric system on the river, not interfering with
barge traffic that carries wheat downstream from as far away as Montana and the
Dakotas on cutting off a prime source of irrigation water for farmers throughout
the Columbia Basin. Environmentalists have insisted breaching the four lower
Snake River dams would be the best way to restore the fish stocks. But
scientific opinion is mixed, with the National Marine Fisheries Service
apparently more interested in exploring other possibilities and the Fish and
Wildlife Service more supportive of dam breaching.
Environmental groups blasted the plan for putting off breaching for perhaps 15
years while agencies looked for alternatives and prepared for the complex task
of removing the decades-old hydropower dams. According to one group's "doomsday
clock," that would delay breaching to about the same time that Snake
spring-summer Chinook will go extinct.” It’s letting people know just how high
the stakes are," said Rob Masonis at the Seattle office of American Rivers.
"It's easy to lose that amid the flurry of processes, scientific reports and
statements from various interest groups."
A report released by the country's oldest think tank has stirred the leftovers
of the dam breaching debate in the Northwest. The RAND Corporation report,
commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trust, says the four dams on the lower Snake
River could be removed "without negative consequences to economic growth and net
employment." But Northwest critics of the $75,000 report say the findings are
skewed by many assumptions, especially the future cost of natural gas. The
report, which took eight months to complete, also does not deal with the
biological consequences of breaching on ESA-protected salmon and steelhead
stocks.
The Northwest's most contested environmental issue seemed resolved when a White
House official announced that the U.S. government would not order the removal of
gigantic dams on the lower Snake River as a measure to save salmon George
Frampton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said
that instead of removing the dams, the federal government would pursue other
salmon-saving steps, such as restoring streams and cutting fishing. Only if
those steps failed, he said, would the government consider stronger actions --
including, again, a consideration of removing the dams.
The RAND study used the US Army Corps of Engineers' environmental impact
statement on the lower Snake dams to obtain estimates of costs and economic
benefits from taking out the four dams. Depending on assumptions about costs,
results would be slightly positive or negative, Bernstein said. "But in the big
scheme of things, the differences that we're talking about--about plus or minus
2 percent of the gross regional product--we can't say that's any different than
zero."
Several conservation organizations, including Save our Wild Salmon and American
Rivers, ran full page ads in seven Northwest papers, including The Oregonian,
calling for a recovery plan that prepares to remove the four Snake River dams in
five years unless salmon are recovering.” This issue is still in play," said
Chris Zimmer, a spokesman for Save Our Wild Salmon. "The president can certainly
step in and do the right thing for fish."
References
Baker, Rocky. (July 2, 1999) Dam Breaching is Complex Issue Idaho Statesman
Lee, Mike. (5/26/2001) Snake issue spawns millions Herald staff writer
Blumenthal, Les. Report on salmon sure to spawn debate Herald Washington, D.C.,
bureau
Unreleased federal plan calls for dam breaching Unreleased federal plan calls
for dam breaching
Davis, D, Howard (January 1, 1998) American Environmental Policy: Wadsworth Pub
Co; ISBN: 0830415181; 1 edition
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