The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

306 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
agreed to its removal, but urged a 12-year study of the habitat restoration
effort before making a decision on the fate of the up-river dam at Glines
Canyon.
Over the next 18 months, as dam-breaching advocates gained steam
nationwide, Gorton grew increasingly worried. He tried to use his support
for the Elwha project as a bargaining chip. Flexing the muscle of
his subcommittee chairmanship in what one critic described as his
“typical slimy fashion,” Gorton threatened to withhold the funds for
removal of the Elwha Dam unless the administration agreed to surrender
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s power to unilaterally
remove 250 smaller, nonfederal dams in the Northwest. “The subject is
dams,” Bruce Babbitt shot back, “but the issue is using them as a straw
man to have a wholesale exception to the environmental laws of this
country.” On the contrary, Gorton said, the issue was whether a federal
agency should be able to make wholesale changes to a region’s livelihood
without a vote of Congress or permission from state or local
officials. 5*
“Determining what is best for salmon is an important question,” Gorton
said in 1998 as the battle reached a boil, “but it is not the final question.”
The final question, in his view, was how society valued the various
uses of the river—power, irrigation, flood control, transportation and,
yes, fish. The challenge was to make the interests as compatible as possible.
Everyone might have to settle for less. Maybe in the end, society
would conclude the dams were expendable. “I think it is perfectly appropriate
to debate the proposition that fish are more important than agriculture
and transportation and electricity combined.” 6
Gorton introduced a bill that would have required congressional approval
of any plan to dramatically alter any of the hydropower dams on
the Columbia-Snake system, even if a federal judge ruled such action was
mandated by the Endangered Species Act. When the Seattle City Council
endorsed breaching the Snake River dams, he mused bitterly, “How easy
it must be for downtown Seattle liberals to cast aside the lives and concerns
of people in Eastern Washington’s agricultural communities.” 7
* The federal government purchased the Elwha River dams in 2000. Removal was scheduled
to begin by 2012. Gorton maintains that the cost of dam breaching in the Northwest
is now even more prohibitive: “The removal of so many kilowatts of hydropower will necessarily
be replaced by the same number from the most polluting marginal producer. The
argument that we can just conserve is false because no amount of conservation will ever
replace the final marginal production that will always be coal.”