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Actions to Save Our Orcas
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🚨CALL TO ACTION!🚨
The EPA suggested that Oregon and Washington change the designated “uses” of the Columbia & Snake Rivers so they are “no longer expressly for salmon” because they can’t meet the environmental requirements to cool the river to 68f, the maximum temperature salmon can survive.
It’s difficult to cool a river that’s dammed with 14 dams all with sun heated slack water reservoirs languishing behind them, heating the water and killing salmon. So, the EPA suggested lowering environmental standards when they are too difficult to meet instead of the obvious solution: breaching the lower four snake river dams.
This is unacceptable.
Let’s all write a public comments (email) using the template (Microsoft Word Icon).
Send by Aug 20 and sign the petition.
🐟2 million salmon return to the Columbia & Snake rivers supporting the ecosystem and SRKW.🐬
The EPA’s court-ordered report concluded the main culprits heating the rivers are the 14 dams and the warm reservoirs behind them.
This conundrum falls into the Clean Water Act which requires the federal government to measure pollution and determine Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) that’s allowed while still protecting salmon. In this case the pollutant is heat and the maximum water temperature that ensures salmon survival is 68 degrees.
Washington requires the US Army Corps to cool the rivers to temperatures salmon can survive.
The rivers could be cooled by increasing amount of water dam operators spill over instead of sending to turbines.
Or by breaching the 4 Lower Snake River dams.
Called for by Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s Orca Task Force who determined the main problem facing #SRKW is lack of Chinook salmon.
A 2019 economic study by ECONorthwest found that the economic benefits of breaching the dams far outweighed keeping them operating.
The US Army Corps draft EIS found that breaching the 4 dams on the Snake River would “provide the highest benefits” to endangered salmon.
The rate of return for young salmon & steelhead migrating out to sea from the Lower Snake River would improve by 170%.
Let’s all send our public comments email & stop this mindless extinction of salmon and the southern resident orcas.
Contact Elected Officials and Communicate:
"We need your help to bring people together to develop a comprehensive solution that includes removing the lower Snake River dams as soon as possible so that the extraordinary potential of the Snake River Basin for people and fish can be realized while protecting the southern resident orcas and wild salmon from extinction."
Rep. Mike Simpson
Phone: (208) 334-1953
Fax: (208) 334-9533
Address: 802 West Bannock
Suite 600
Boise, ID 83702
E-Message: Click Here
WA. Governor Inslee
Phone: (360) 902-4111
Fax: (360) 753-4110
Address: 416 14th Avenue SW
Olympia, WA 98504
E-Message: Click Here
WA. Senator Cantwell
Phone: (202) 224-3441
Fax: (202) 228-0541
Address: 915 Second Ave., Suite 3206
Seattle, WA 98174
E-Message: Click Here
WA Senator Murray
Phone: (425) 259-6515
Fax: (509) 624-9561
Address: 2988 Jackson Federal Building
915 2nd Ave.
Seattle, Washington 98174
E-Message: Click Here
Corps of Engineers
Attn: Gen. Semonite
Phone: (202) 761-0000
Address: PO Box 3755
Seattle, WA 98124-3755
(206) 764-3742
E-Message: Click Here
OR. Governor Kate Brown
Phone: (503) 378-4582
Address: 900 Court Street NE, Suite 254
Salem, OR
Petitions
STOP THE NAVY'S "51Take" Proposal!
72 Southern Resident Orcas and 294,715 marine mammal species in the Salish Sea will be impacted by Navy training and testing activities.
Let’s all send a letter to NOAA. Signing petitions is helpful and individual letters are even more powerful! 30k individual letters are far more powerful than a petition signed by 30k people.
We need to STOP this. All Together. Let’s all send a letter to NOAA.
📝Link in our profile to download a letter template to NOAA that you can print out and send via snail mail to:
✉️Jolie Harrison, Chief Permits and Conservation Division,
Office of Protected Resources National Marine Fisheries Service
1315 East-West Highway Silver Spring, MD 20910
🔺Here are some Navy training Facts:
🔺The Navy’s application and NOAA’s proposed rule would allow for 51 instances of level B harassment affecting Southern Resident Orcas every year for the next seven years.
🔺As the proposed rule notes, that means that 68% of the endangered Southern Resident orcas could be affected.
🔺This is just the Southern Residents. In total, they estimate 149 killer whales impacted during training & 325 from testing.
🔺Those numbers account for total from 4 different populations (Alaskan Residents, ENP Offshores, West Coast Transients/Bigg’s & Southern Residents
🔺294,715 marine mammal species in the Salish Sea will be impacted in total.