House panel will hold hearing into Cheney's role in Oregon salmon die-off

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee said today his panel will hold a hearing into the role Vice President Dick Cheney may have played in the 2002 die-off of about 70,000 salmon near the California-Oregon border.

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said the Democratic-led committee has been examining what he called the Bush administration's "penchant to favor politics over science in the implementation of the Endangered Species Act."

In light of allegations made about Cheney's role in developing a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River that courts later called arbitrary and in violation of the Endangered Species Act, a hearing is worthwhile, Rahall said. He and other Democrats charged that Cheney's action resulted in the largest adult salmon kill in the history of the West.

"It certainly appears this administration will stop at nothing to achieve political gain from natural resources disasters," Rahall said. "Ultimately, it will be hardworking Americans and their healthy environment that will lose if we fail to act."

West Coast Democrats called for the hearing Wednesday after the Washington Post reported that Cheney may have played a key role in the 2002 salmon die-off.

"The ramifications of that salmon kill are still being felt today as returns to the Klamath River are so low that commercial, sport and tribal fishing seasons have been curtailed for the past three years," 36 House Democrats said in a letter to Rahall calling for the hearing.

Commercial fishing in California and Oregon was cut by more than 90 percent last year — the largest commercial fishing closure in the history of the country — resulting in more than $60 million in damage to coastal economies, the letter said.

Megan McGinn, a spokeswoman for the vice president's office, said late Wednesday she had not seen the letter and could not comment.

The salmon die-off and water usage in the drought-plagued Klamath Basin have long been a source of political controversy. In 2004, the Interior Department's inspector general found no basis for a claim by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry that White House political advisers interfered in developing water policy in the Klamath.

The inspector general said President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not involved in a 2002 decision to divert water from the Klamath River in Oregon to irrigate farms.

Three months after Rove's meeting in early 2002, administration officials increased the water supply to more than 200,000 acres of farmland in California and Oregon — a decision bitterly opposed by environmentalists and commercial fishermen.

In September 2002, tens of thousands of chinook salmon died in the Klamath River in Northern California. The California Department of Fish and Game laid much of the blame on low water flows controlled by the federal government, saying it created conditions that allowed a fatal gill-rot disease to spread through the fish.