The bottom line is that the 'ghost' biological opinion involves a plan that is much more in line with the science than the draft biological plan that is out on the streets.
Somewhere in the system you need to make significant changes. If the dams are not removed, we may well be forced to acquire 1 million acre-feet of water from Southern Idaho irrigators, taking up to 643,000 acres of land out of production, eliminating more than 6,500 jobs and eliminating as much as $430 million in income.
This petition should be a wake-up call to those claiming that the Columbia Basin salmon can be recovered without significant change. We should focus on identifying solutions to the challenges we face, such as improving water use efficiency and finding alternative means of providing the economic benefits of the lower Snake River dams.
If we're going to have more supply available both for in-stream and out-of-stream uses, it's going to require those tools. It's not going to be massive new storage projects.
It's a step forward for water management along the Columbia River.
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