[1] West Coast Salmon Recovery Fund Fully Restored . . . For Now
Western Washington politicians got together last month to praise the efforts of Sen. Patty Murray for restoring millions of dollars to the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund in the latest appropriations fight in Congress. It's part of a large effort to improve salmon numbers that was developed during negotiations over the renewal of the U.S.-Canada salmon treaty in 1999, and given every year to West Coast states, Idaho, some tribes, and Alaska for restoring salmon runs.
But the fund was pared back in this year's White House Budget to $67 million from its $90-million request in previous years, and the House version of the spending bill contained only $20 million for the fund. Last year, Congress approved only $67 million, compared to $88 million in 2005. However, the $80 million designated for FY 2007 could still be cut by conference committee.
Through FY 2005, Congress has appropriated $377 million for the fund, with states contributing nearly $200 million on their own.
What has the region received for those millions?
In a 2005 report to Congress, the National Marine Fisheries Service said more than 3,000 stream miles in the Northwest have been restored and over 3,500 fish blockages have been removed.
Last year, Washington and Alaska received the lion's share of the funds, $24.6 million, and $23.2 million, respectively. Oregon and California each got $12.8 million, while Columbia River tribes received $2.8 million, and other coastal tribes got $1.3 million.
But the White House Office of Management and Budget has generally given the PCSRF a poor performance rating, noting that the program has only recently developed performance metrics. Up to now, the fund has also not been able "to allocate funds to address the recovery needs of specific salmon while regions with no threatened or endangered salmon species have received significant portions of funding."
However, an independent review of the fund commissioned by NOAA Fisheries, and released last April, found the program hasn't been around long enough for its effects on salmon populations to be judged.
The review, by Ross and Associates, said that many of the PCSRF investments are "producing the intended programmatic outputs and therefore contributing to the program's long-term goal of ensuring the sustainability of Pacific salmon." It also said that significant work was needed "to refocus some current activities and pursue future activities."
The state of Oregon got into hot water last year when NOAA Fisheries accused it of backfilling its fish and wildlife budget, including salaries, with money from the fund.
Meanwhile, Alaska has used millions in PCSRF dollars to pay for salmon marketing efforts, and to pump fish sales from Southeast Alaska stocks to Yukon River chinook, which sells in Seattle for $25/lb.
Mike Carrier, natural resource policy director for Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, told NW Fishletter that the recovery funding issue has been "all straightened out" with federal funds now dedicated to monitoring Oregon's listed runs and developing recovery plans.
The Ross and Associates report said Alaska, "especially," needed to prioritize its funding to focus on the goal of sustainable salmon. It noted a list of projects that ranged from designing a $3-million-plus hatchery for the city of Fairbanks, more than $1 million to begin building a new small boat harbor at Adak in the Aleutian Islands, and using $144,000 to develop a program to buy back boats in the over-capitalized southeast Alaska purse seine fishery.
The report found that Alaska paid for three marketing projects and three product quality projects in 2004, seven fishing industry projects and 12 others that focused on salmon enhancement and harvest management.
Marketing projects included a $5 million campaign to boost salmon sales, and another $2 million to fund a wild salmon "consumer education campaign."
The report recommended, particularly for Alaska, the development of a transparent and consistent approach for prioritizing types of salmon enhancement and harvest management efforts.
Idaho has tapped into the program late. In 2004, it used more than 90 percent of its $4.7 million share on habitat restoration
In Washington, the PCSRF funding provides the backbone for statewide recovery efforts led by the state's Salmon Recovery Funding Board, which adds some state money derived from general obligation bonds.
About $11 million of the board's $26 million was doled out among the six counties in the Puget Sound region this year. There, the Shared Strategy participants are in the midst of an exercise to develop more realistic funding parameters after announcing in late June that the cost of implementing the three-year work plans for the Sound's 14 watersheds would add up to $432 million.
No funding decisions have yet been made, said Shared Strategy associate director Jagoda Perich-Anderson, who added that a regional watershed council is working to come up with a plan that will cost about half of that $432-million estimate over the next three years.
The recurring theme of salmon recovery groups is one of chronic underfunding. American Rivers estimated last February that the PCSRF should be funded at no less than $200 million per year. In the past, the group said Senators Wyden (D-Ore.), Smith (R-Ore.), Crapo (R-Idaho), Craig (R-Idaho), Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Boxer (D-Calif.) have supported legislation authorizing the fund at $350 million per year.
Now, another new process has developed in Western Washington called the Puget Sound Partnership, which has just delivered an interim report to Gov. Gregoire on the health of Puget Sound. The report found that current restoration efforts aren't even maintaining the present quality of its waters.
Puget Sound Partnership is calling for a new ecosystem-based approach to protect and restore the region, and for new flexibility in the next state budget to accomplish it, because the $570 million now dedicated each biennium to conserving the Sound, its species, and to reducing pollution isn't enough.
The partnership said 70 percent of that $570 million is in the form of loans and grants to local governments, and is allocated for upgrades or construction of wastewater treatment plants. The second largest category is mitigation for transportation projects. "A much smaller remainder" is for direct protection and restoration actions in Puget Sound.
The PSP report says the state will need to spend more to ensure ecosystem results. They say implementing the regional salmon plan will "significantly contribute" to the overall health of the region, but funding for the plan is "largely absent" from the state budget. Without a "significant infusion of funding, they warned that salmon recovery expectations and timelines "will need to be adjusted."
But the Puget Sound group may have a whale of a job trying to sell the plan to the public, regardless of the fact that local killer whales are now listed under the ESA and Puget Sound chinook have some of the highest PCB levels of salmon anywhere on the planet.
An opinion poll commissioned by the group last spring found that three out of four people rated the environmental health of Puget Sound "pretty good" (66 percent) to "excellent" (7 percent). The polltakers said after respondents heard messages about the Sound's environmental health, 58 percent still rated it in the "pretty-good" and "excellent" categories.
The report said most "opinion leaders" polled in the region considered the Sound's condition to be "average" or "good," and that other issues like transportation, education, population growth and housing were more important concerns. The PSP has given the green light for Seattle public affairs firm Cocker-Fennessy to develop an "ambitious" public education plan, according to the May 25 opinion survey that can be viewed on the PSP's Web site ( pugetsoundpartnership.org).
But with state fish managers announcing an extension of the Lake Washington sockeye fishery because of a 466,000-fish return (more than double the preseason estimate), it may be tougher than ever to convince the public that the Sound and nearby waters are in a state of crisis. -Bill Rudolph
The following links were mentioned in this story:
Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund
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