Time to sue, again

Just under 11 years ago, then Gov. Marc Racicot sent a 60-day notice that the State of Montana intended to sue nearly a dozen federal agencies for violating the Endangered Species regarding the proposed management of Libby and Hungry Horse Dams under the biological opinion for endangered salmon in the Columbia River.

I bring this up because two residents asked the county on Wednesday to consider such a move. Rightfully so, the county commissioners said they needed to contact the governor's office because this was the state's responsibility. This time, local residents are concerned about the management of Libby Dam in response to the sturgeon biological opinion.

Back in his May 30, 1995, letter informing the federal government that State of Montana was going to court, Racicot said, "A recognition of fisheries values in the Montana reservoirs and a balanced protection of their ecosystem is absolutely necessary. If not, the efforts to protect and recover the salmon will have the ironic and unjust result of jeopardizing the continued existence of other species, specifically the bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout, and result in the destruction or adverse modification of the species' critical habitat."

If you replace reservoirs with waters and salmon with sturgeon, the concern is the same.

At that time, Racicot was trying to get the federal action agencies — the Corps and Bureau of Reclamation — to recognize the value of integrated rule curves (IRCs), which was a water modeling to protect Montana's resources while providing the federal agencies with the water needed to protect salmon living a long way downstream from western Montana.

Brian Marotz, a special fisheries projects director for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, has already offered a proposal to the feds for providing amble flows for endangered sturgeon in the Kootenai River. And Marotz' proposal doesn't exceed powerhouse capacity — which means it doesn't involve spill.

That first salmon bi-op back in 1995 didn't take a balanced ecosystem approach to protecting species — all species — and neither does the latest sturgeon bi-op, which includes a big spill scenario at Libby Dam and provides an incidental take of endangered bull trout.

We hear all this rhetoric about state's rights and sovereignty from state politicians, well it's time to put up or shut up. — Roger Morris