Appeals court rejects federal salmon plan

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- A federal appeals court Monday strongly rejected the Bush administration's 2004 plan for making Columbia Basin hydroelectric dams safe for salmon, saying it used "sleight of hand" and violated the Endangered Species Act.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld U.S. District Judge James Redden's order requiring the dams to sacrifice power production to help juvenile salmon migrating to the ocean.

It also keeps open the possibility that Redden could order four dams on the lower Snake River in Eastern Washington breached to restore salmon -- a step he has said he would be willing to take if needed.

"Under this approach, a listed species could be gradually destroyed, so long as each step on the path to destruction is sufficiently modest," Judge Sydney Thomas wrote of the Bush administration's approach to balancing dams against salmon. "This type of slow slide into oblivion is one of the very ills the ESA seeks to prevent."

Michael Garrity of American Rivers, one of the salmon-conservation groups that filed the original lawsuit, said the ruling made it clear that "small tweaks to the system" are not going to save salmon.

Larger steps, such as breaching the four lower Snake River dams and taking more irrigation water from Idaho farmers, need to be seriously considered, he said.

Thirteen species of salmon and steelhead that pass over the dams are listed or threatened or endangered.