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Hi John |
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350 Eastside Community Meeting Date: Wednesday, July 20th, 2022 Time: 7-8:30pm Online link: Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82877073725?pwd=TWNTeUp3Z0NJekRsWUVNb1VwandnUT09
Meeting ID: 828 7707 3725 Passcode: 798154
Focus: Snake River Dams conversation Presenter: Marilyn Mayers: Marilyn will share her experience in and reflections on the recent Rally for Salmon kayaktivist action in Portland, OR. Her presentation will be followed by group discussion of the role and impact of grassroots political action expressed in demonstrations, marches, rallies, political theater and art. Film: Dammed to Extinction, a Film by Peterson Hawley Productions. We will be viewing the documentary during our meeting together. Some background information: Here's the link to Inslee and Murray's Lower Snake River Dams: Benefit Replacement Draft Report.
We are including the suggested public comment letters from the coalition of 350 Washington groups and from the Earth Ministry/Washington Interfaith Power & Light group. Republican elected officials and corporate utilities have been getting a lot of attention focused on the up to $27 Billion estimated cost to replace all the public benefits now provided by the dams, an easily misunderstood number that has nothing to do with the actual estimated cost of removal. Our position reflected in these draft letters is that we stand with the Columbia Basin Tribes and support their call for a “basin-wide recovery plan - comprehensive enough to ensure the salmon survive for those generations yet unborn – in which breach of the Lower Snake River Dams is an essential component”.
Dear Senators Murray and Cantwell,
We write to you as a community of independent 350.org-affiliated community climate organizing groups located across the Pacific Northwest with a call for climate justice for tribal nations in our region, whose wellbeing are closely tied to the wellbeing of salmon in the region. Human-driven climate change threatens the livability of our planet for all humans, and other species. But the threat is gravest and most immediate for communities historically marginalized or disadvantaged. We are at a unique moment that is full of possibility - now is the time to follow the leadership of the ongoing intertribal campaign to restore a free-flowing Snake River.
The treaties Northwest Tribes reluctantly signed almost 170 years ago guaranteed the right of tribal citizens to fish, hunt and gather in their “usual and accustomed places”. Those rights – and, particularly, fishing rights -- have too often been compromised, ignored or outright violated (and, occasionally, vindicated). But now climate change, on top of other challenges to the survival of Northwest salmonids, threatens to render tribal fishing rights meaningless by the outright extinction of salmon and steelhead.
Nowhere is that threat more imminent than in the basin of the Columbia River – once the planet’s premier salmon river – and its main tributary, the Snake River. Between 1991 and 1999 a dozen stocks of Columbia-Snake salmon and steelhead were listed as either threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Those listings came even before the impacts of anthropogenic climate change began to become undeniably apparent. Now, with extreme weather events common, with reservoirs regularly hitting temperatures lethal to these cold-water species, the threat to these iconic, endangered creatures – central for millennia to tribal culture and economies – is existential. All of these listed runs are closer to being on a path to extinction than on a path to recovery.
Tribes across the region and the nation have issued a call for urgent action to recover abundant, harvestable populations of salmon and steelhead (and endangered, salmon-dependent Southern Resident orcas). In resolutions adopted last year by the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and the National Congress of American Indians, the Tribes issued a clear demand for concrete and effective action, centered on restoring a free-flowing lower Snake River by breaching four federal dams on the river.
We do not presume to speak for the Tribes, but we do speak on behalf of non-tribal Washingtonians who recognize and honor the just claims of Northwest Tribes. The time for justice, including climate justice, is now – not later, but now.
We ask you to work with sovereign Indian nations, and other stakeholders, to urgently develop and implement comprehensive salmon, steelhead and orca recovery plans centered on restoration of a free-flowing lower Snake and replacement of the services the lower Snake dams now provide. With the recent release of the Lower Snake River Dams: Benefit Replacement Draft Report showing a clear and practical pathway forward for this, and with the climate crisis posing an immediate threat to the health and wellbeing of all of us who call this region our home, we urge you to restore this river and its inhabitants.
With care,
Dear Gov. Inslee and Sen. Murray,
As a person of faith, I see salmon recovery as not just a biological necessity or legal obligation but a moral responsibility. Restoring a free-flowing Lower Snake River is crucial if we are to strive toward right relationship with Native neighbors and respond to our call to care for our common home. Thank you for addressing this moral imperative to restore abundant salmon in the Lower Snake River through the draft Lower Snake River Dams Replacement Report. I support your commitment to a comprehensive salmon recovery plan and ask that it include the removal of the four Lower Snake River dams in combination with a set of investments for our communities and infrastructure that moves everyone forward together. Of particular interest to me as a member of the multifaith community is the spiritual and cultural benefits that a free-flowing Lower Snake River would begin to restore to Northwest Native Nations. The draft report states that breaching the dams “would allow tribal peoples to renew their close religious and spiritual connection with approximately 34,000 acres of land where their ancestors lived and are buried and allow them to properly care for their grave sites. They could return to more than 700 locations where they were accustomed to live, fish, and hunt, harvest plants, roots and berries, conduct cultural and religious ceremonies, and pursue other aspects of their normal traditional lives. (Page 3) There is no cost too high for fulfilling our treaty promises and honoring the inherent rights of the first stewards of these lands and waters. As a tool for comparison, I would like to see the final report include a high-level cost analysis of a status quo scenario that includes dam maintenance and fish recovery efforts. The report shows that the approach of the past three plus decades has had both a significant fiscal impact on taxpayers in addition to the ethical impact on our relationship with Native Nations and wild fish. We’ve already spent $24 billion alone on restoration that has not recovered one imperiled fish population, how much more would we invest in aging dams and inadequate attempts to prevent extinction?
Personalize your message Thank you again for your leadership on behalf of salmon and communities!
Sincerely, Governor Inslee and US Senator Patty Murray announced a year ago a process for determining whether Lower Snake River dams should be breached. They also released a draft report on June 9, 2022, and a call for public comments through July 11. Our comments are part of the process for determining their recommendations in the final report which will be issued later this summer. Here's a good overview of the draft report from NPR - https://www.kuow.org/stories/new-draft-report-says-removing-the-snake-river-dams-would-be-best-for-salmon There are other links in this alert which provide an array of information. You can choose to open/read all or any of them. Or you can go directly to the highlighted paragraphs/options at the end of this alert. However you do it, SEM encourages everyone to submit comments by the 5:00 pm deadline on July 11.
Here's an 11 page executive summary of the draft report - https://www.lsrdoptions.org/ Here's the full 116 page report - https://www.murray.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/LSRD-Benefit-Replacement-Draft-Report_20220609.pdf Here's a June 9 Seattle Times article about it - https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/new-state-federal-report-puts-10-27-billion-price-tag-on-lower-snake-river-dam-removal/
Many of us have probably seen the daily TV ads on why the dams should not be breached. Here's an article which explains why public utilities have spent $2 million on those ads - https://www.union-bulletin.com/news/northwest/power-utilities-are-pouring-cash-into-supporting-lower-snake-river-dams/article_102e87f7-a5f1-552a-a3cb-dbfca5bd5a6b.html Here's why Reps. Dan Newhouse, Cathy McMorris Rogers, Jaime Herrera Beutler and others introduced last month the "Federal Columbia River Power System Certainty Act" to prevent the dams from being breached - https://www.eenews.net/articles/republicans-reject-lower-snake-river-dam-breaching-plan/ and https://newhouse.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/newhouse-introduces-bill-protect-four-lower-snake-river-dams-clean Here's why Earthjustice advocated removing the dams a couple of years ago - https://earthjustice.org/features/remove-four-lower-snake-river-dams And here's what US Rep. Mike Simpson's (R; Idaho) proposed last year - https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/feb/07/rep-mike-simpson-of-idaho-releases-plan-calling-fo/ Salmon are central to culture and wellbeing in tribal nations throughout the Pacific Northwest, and the Nez Perce Tribe, Yakama Indian Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and Shoshone Bannock Tribe are significantly impacted by the Lower Snake River dams. Here's more about their treaty rights courtesy of American Rivers - https://www.americanrivers.org/2021/07/snake-river-vision-tribal-rights/ and Eli Francovich - https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/may/09/the-us-promised-the-nez-perce-fishing-rights-but-w/
You can submit your own comments on this form Lower Snake River Dams Benefit Replacement Report – Lower Snake River Dams Benefit Replacement Report which is also available in the executive summary document above.
OR use the already drafted the Earth Ministry comment form in this link, which is what I used - https://earthministry.org/governor-inslee-and-senator-murray-release-lower-snake-river-dams-report/?emci=abc76545-74ee-ec11-b47a-281878b83d8a&emdi=fb635fe7-3ff7-ec11-b47a-281878b83d8a&ceid=8297887 You can either click on "SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS TODAY!" or access it here Comment on Draft Lower Snake River Dams Replacement Report Lon Dickerson On Behalf of Sacred Earth Matters
3rd ACT This has been an astonishing few weeks. Many of us still feel shock and grief from the reversal of Roe v Wade, loosened gun restrictions amidst continued mass shootings, and the attack on our climate and the Clean Air Act of 1970. Let's channel that energy and be the backlash. At our monthly call on July 13th https://default.salsalabs.org/T766be390-4b54-476d-b00d-d3a0b4256396/3879df49-2a0d-4e56-9707-f20f8db9284c we’ll talk about the moment we're in and the next steps we can take together.
Wishing you good health and exciting adventures this summer, Emily, Lin, Lynn, Marilyn, Phil and Sara
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