PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge will hear arguments Monday in the suit by conservationists and sport fishermen against the Obama administration’s plan for making the Columbia Basin’s hydroelectric dams safer for threatened and endangered salmon.
U.S. District Court Judge James Redden must decide whether the plan meets the demands of the Endangered Species Act.
In a previous ruling, the plans from 2000 and 2004 were judged to have violated the act.
The arguments are part of the long-running legal battle over balancing the survival of 13 threatened and endangered species of salmon against cheap hydroelectric power from federally owned dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
