A10
OREGON
East Oregonian
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Congressman hopes politics align on divisive Northwest dams
By NICHOLAS K.
GERANIOS
Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. —
Nearly two decades ago,
Re pu bl ic a n P r e sid e nt
George W. Bush stood on a
bank of the Snake River near
Pasco, Washington, and
declared that four hydroelec-
tric dams would not be torn
down on his watch, though
many blamed them for kill-
ing endangered salmon.
This month, Republican
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson
of Idaho issued a bold plan
that called for removing
those same dams to save the
salmon. In between those
two acts were decades of
litigation that show no sign
of ending and $17 billion
worth of improvements to
the dams that did little to
help fi sh.
Now the question is: Can
Simpson’s plan win approval
from Congress and the
Biden administration and
help save an iconic Pacifi c
Northwest species from
extinction?
Other Republicans are
vowing to save the dams.
Ted S. Warren/Associated Press, File
The Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River is seen from the air near Colfax, Washington. A
Republican congressman has proposed removing four hydroelectric dams in the Northwest,
including the Lower Granite Dam, as part of a sweeping plan to save salmon populations and
provide aid to farmers and others.
Democrats have come out in
support of Simpson’s plan,
which calls for spending
$33 billion to breach four
dams, replace the lost hydro-
electric energy with other
sources and ensure that irri-
gation, river navigation and
fl ood control will continue
as before.
The issue of what to do
with the Snake River dams
has long divided the Pacifi c
Northwest, with Democrats
generally siding with saving
the salmon and Republicans
saying it’s foolish to remove
hydropower resources in the
era of climate change.
But Lindsay Slater, Simp-
son’s chief of staff, said the
political winds are blowing
in favor of a solution to this
decades-long controversy.
For one thing, the Biden
administration is preparing
a massive economic relief
package for the nation, and
Simpson wants the North-
west to designate this solu-
tion to the salmon issues
for the region’s share of the
package, Slater said. For
another, Democratic control
of the Senate has propelled
numerous longtime sena-
tors from the Northwest
into committee leadership
positions for the fi rst time
in years, he said.
“There is all this senior-
ity in the Northwest,” Slater
said, pointing to Washing-
ton Sens. Patty Murray and
Maria Cantwell and Oregon
Sen. Ron Wyden.
“This is lightning in a
bottle. It really is,” Slater
said. “We are telling stake-
holders this is a once-in-30-
years opportunity. Do we
want to grab it?”
Simpson was motivated
by the prospect of continued
litigation even as salmon die
off, Slater said.
Simpson unveiled the
plan in a video posted to
his website on Saturday,
saying, “The current system
is clearly not working.”
Four Republican House
members — Cathy McMor-
ris Rodgers, Dan Newhouse
and Jaime Herrera Beutler,
all from Washington, and
Rep. Russ Fulcher of Idaho
— oppose Simpson’s plan.
“The hydropower devel-
oped in the Pacifi c North-
west benefi ts every resident,
family, and business in our
region,” they said in a joint
statement. “Without it, life
as we know it in our region
would cease to exist.”
McMor r is Rodge r s,
whose district has several
of the dams, has long fought
to preserve the structures.
“Spending more than
$33 billion to breach them
— with no guarantee that
doing so will restore salmon
populations — is a drastic,
fi scally irresponsible leap to
take,” she said.
Oregon releases fi rst missing and murdered Indigenous persons report
By LAUREN DAKE
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — Rosenda
Strong was missing for nearly
a year before her body was
found in an abandoned freezer
on July 4, 2019, near Toppen-
ish, Washington.
“We have her back; not
the way we wanted but we
can after 275 days looking,
wondering, our baby sister,
mother, aunt, cousin, friend is
coming home to our mother,”
Cissy Strong Reyes, wrote in
a Facebook post, according
to reporting by the Yakima
Herald-Republic.
For years, activists have
tried to draw attention to a
growing crisis of missing and
murdered Indigenous people,
particularly women. There
have been many challenges,
including confusion surround-
ing different jurisdictions, a
lack of coordination between
law enforcement entities, not
enough resources and gaps in
data.
Over the period of time
Strong was missing, the
conversation around miss-
ing Indigenous women grew
louder. Reyes started sharing
her sister’s story as loud as she
could, determined to not let her
be one of the forgotten ones.
“I read stories on the inter-
net and stopped to think, like,
there’s these other women
missing, and I can’t let my
sister be one of these people.
She has to be found,” Reyes
told the Yakima Herald-Re-
public.
In 2019, a national strategy
was created in an attempt to
rectify the underreporting of
missing and murdered Indig-
enous people. Last week,
the U.S. Attorney’s Office
released its fi rst annual report.
“For generations, Amer-
ican Indians and Alaskan
Natives have suffered from
disproportionately high levels
of violence. Tragically, this
is not a crisis of the past; it’s
a crisis of the present,” U.S.
Attorney Billy J. Williams said
in a statement.
Under what has been coined
the Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Persons Initiative,
offi cials in 11 U.S. Attorney’s
offi ces, including Oregon, will
create a more coordinated law
enforcement response to miss-
ing persons cases, accord-
ing to the press release from
Williams’ office. The new
effort also calls for improving
data, both collection and anal-
ysis, and for more training for
local response efforts when a
person is reported as missing.
One of the first steps is
to create an overview of
current missing persons cases
connected to Oregon. The
report draws on data from
several different databases and
identifi ed 19 unsolved cases of
people who have connections
with Oregon. The latest infor-
mation, while only considered
a “snapshot” of the full picture,
shows 11 missing Indigenous
persons, six women and fi ve
men.
Of the 11, six are members
of Oregon tribes:
• Two are from the
Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs.
• One is from the Confed-
erated Tribes of Grand
Ronde.
• Two are from the
Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reserva-
tion.
• One is from the Klam-
ath Tribes.
The report identifi es eight
murdered Indigenous people,
three men and fi ve women. Of
the eight, seven are members
of an Oregon tribe.
One of those is Strong,
who was a 31-year-old mother
of four and a member of the
Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Strong’s family is hoping in
2021 they will fi nd out who
killed her and fi nally be able
to bury her body.
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