PSP/Fed/Tribal Caucus

PSP/Fed/Tribal Caucus

April 21, 2011 Tukwila

Tribal Participants: Terry Wright, Ken Currens, Jeff Dickison, Paul Williams, Merle Hayes, Tom Ostrom, Randy Kinley, Alan Chapman, Mike Grayum, Billy, Terry Williams, Dave Herrera, Fred Dillon, Shawn Yanity, Pat Stevenson, Doug Morrill, Chad Bowechop, Fred Felleman (Makah consultant), Dave Troutt, Jim Weber, Randy Harder

Pre-meeting Tribal Caucus:

Mike – message from NWIFC meeting, developing specific requests, moving forward with litigation option development, need to have the Feds be in charge of salmon recovery, don’t have a czar in mind yet, things aren’t getting better. Getting worse. Need to focus on the treaty right and restoring salmon so that treaty right can be exercised. Recovery Plan based on resulting in harvestable numbers. Now, not only are they not implementing the recovery plan, but the way they are implementing the ESA undermines the Recovery plan. PSP lacks the wherewithal to accomplish the plan. Will take combination of feds and law suit.

Terry Williams – Will and FEMA still haven’t decided how to make that process work yet. General theme of lot going on with no direction. Recognize that they need consultation with tribes and are confused. CEQ is supposed to be heading this all up, but they’re confused too. We need to guide the agencies to some priorities. Can we adequately describe the trust obligation? We can’t get recovery on current habitat conditions. We need a net gain. Need someone to stand up front and say that this is a net gain process. We are planning without the PSP until they figure out how to lead so we’re trying to find a way to get them there.

Jeff Dickison – don’t think any of these folks are capable of the necessary leadership. We may need the military kind of leadership. Since ElliottBay, I can call the Corps and get things shut down consistently. There is a command structure and folks are held accountable. We need someone or something to hold folks accountable.

Dave Herrera – when we talk about going to the White House and educating them, then we need to have a clear message about what authorities these agencies have and what we need them to do. Will and Dennis McLaren won’t be able to sort these things out themselves.

Mike – we intend to put together a paper describing the problem and describing the solutions. We need to define actions and that’s what we’ve struggled with – developing the specificity that is appropriate for the White House.

Terry Williams – Dennis willing to do a pilot project here with co-management. Need to work with him and Will and CEQ. They are frustrated too.

Dave Troutt – also likes Jeff’s suggestion. We need someone to give guidance and keep the agencies together. We need a salmon czar.

Randy Kinley – Governor told PSP that she wants 3 things done this year, but no one talked to us.

Chad Bowechop – Coast Guard does rulemaking on marine transportation and every time they say there is no impact on tribal governments and we know that’s not the case. We need to establish clear expectations about consultation. They don’t understand their trust responsibility.

Dave T – we need someone to tell Will what the treaty right means and they need to work to achieve that. The Feds don’t know what it means and someone needs to tell them.

Tom Ostrom – the Elliott Bay case set a very low threshold for what treaty rights mean, but the Corps acts on that definition. You can rely on that case.

Billy – we need a general whose orders will be obeyed. We have treaty rights.

Shawn Yanity – confusion may come from lack of leader and lack of court decision. If you look at the pop growth, economic development, and the interests of our children who go elsewhere when they grow up. Many influences pulling our kids away. We need a court decision to set the standard so that we know what we’re trying to achieve and know the history.

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Enter the Feds and PSP

Norm Dicks, Martha Kongsgaard, Gerry O’Keefe, Dennis McLaren, Tom Eaton, Mary Mahaffey (USFWS), Elizabeth Babcock (NMFS), Will Stelle, Mark Carey (FEMA), Sarah Crumb (Dicks aide), Bob Turner, Ken Murphy (FEMA), LeslieDierauf(USGS), Neal Jander(Snoqualmie Tribe), Donna Turnipseed(Joint Base Lewis McChord), Linda Anderson Carnahan (EPA), Robin Slate (NRCS)

Dennis McLaren – we know that folks are frustrated and that in some ways we’re going backwards. There’s more stuff coming down the pipeline that isn’t helpful. We are trying to focus the dollars on the right things.

Will – Agree with Dennis. I hope we take advantage of this time to try to listen and work things out together. At the end of the day, it’s our obligation to take those challenges and turn them into our resolve and mutual commitment. I don’t say that as happy talk but as real. People outside of Puget Sound will want to throw rocks. Don’t want to stray from the core commitment and resolve personified by my friend Billy and our congressman Dicks.

Martha – thanks to Norm for laser focus on issues important to us. Want to hear about setting targets. We are behind; about a year and a half behind under our statute. Targets will be aggressive, not merely status quo plus. Concerned about timeline and making sure that tribes have a voice in setting targets. Also, who’s in charge of salmon, not merely ESA, but also tribal treaty rights. We need your help to better integrate salmon recovery into the Action Agenda. It should be the guts of the plan. I think we’ve done a lot since January. We had a victory yesterday when we signed the oil spill bill with the Governor.

Gerry O’Keefe – I think we’re making progress. Moving fast on targets. We’re doing them and will do them in June. Please join us in getting this done in this timeframe.

Norm – I’m a Keynesian. Most of these cuts will be felt in the out years. I’m now Ranking Member of the House App. Committee. Ban in both houses on earmarks. Many of the things we’ve done have been in earmarks. EPA here is not earmark. Intended this year that Puget Sound get 46million (?). Got 80million for PCSRF. Very pleased. Will be a tough period. EPA has taken some tough hits. Safe Drinking water funds can now be forgiven in low income areas. WDOE and EPA can help you sort that out. This will help Shelton, Hoodsport, and Belfair. There are 614 projects, $400+ million and jobs. Lots of this done by earmarks so we’re going to have to figure out how to fund these in the future. Probably looking more at competitive processes. We want to make sure the money is spent on implementing the action agenda. Don’t want to use it on tangential things. We have a problem with salmon dying between the NisquallyRiver and the TacomaNarrowsBridge. We need to work with EPA and USFWS to figure out what’s causing this. And they’re not getting fish back. However the Nisqually is doing very well at getting Chinook back. The state is in a tough spot. Being forced to reduce their budget. Governor very supportive. Nearshore program by the Corps …where the agencies can be helpful to accomplish the action agenda, they’ll do their best. The Nisqually delta is magnificent and I’ll take some credit for that. We gave money to the tribe to buy the land. Stimulus money used for boardwalk and it gives people a chance to see what we’re doing. Increased estuary in Puget Sound by 30%. Then the Elwha dam removal is this summer. I put up the $300 million. Got a hatchery for tribe and 2 water facilities for free from fed government for Port Angeles. Murrayvery important being on Senate Appropriations committee. We work with the tribes, mass marking, HSRG is doing very good oversight work, we continue to support salmon recovery funding and we doing as much as we can in a tough climate.

Will – your point about implementing the action agenda. Why do you make that point?

Norm – people want to use that money for stuff other than what its intended for. Learned a lot about HoodCanal and dissolved oxygen. We’ve got institute at Urban Waters. Don’t want to see money get siphoned off. On these projects, it’s the local governments and communities that have to do these water restoration projects and storm water and septics and we need grant money and it can’t all be loans. Got to have the communities on the Sound do these projects if we’re going to clean it up.

Dennis – concern about current budget efforts to limit funds for local communities. State Tribal assistance Grants (STAGs) have taken a hit. Puget Sound is lumped in with Chesapeake and Norm is fighting for a specific amount for PS. There was $20 million in the President’s budget. $50 last year. Now there’s $117 to divide up and we’re not sure how that’s going.

Norm – Murray and I are working the issue with OMB. Doing the best we can.

Terry Williams – stimulus grant helpful for NW Straits Commission

Norm – that was Senator Murray earmark.

Terry –local governments need to up the levels of protection. That will need some funding. We need to boost their ability to improve shoreline protection.

Norm – agree – just a question of where the money will come from.

USGS – how does Congress view Puget Sound?

Norm – House Appropriations Chair Simpson is aware. The great lakes have 10 states. Chesapeake Bay surrounded by a number of states. So we’re at a disadvantage. But we’re trying to educate the President and this will be on my agenda for my dinner with the President.

Randy K – we’re concerned about the lack of leadership. There’s a lot of things that we think we can do without the money. If we’re serious about PS, then we don’t have to rely on the Fed money. A lot of us perceive that things are top down rather than bottom up. Lot of process out there, but the tribes want results. We need to figure out a strategy with folks like you and others regarding what can be done without money. If the salmon lose, we lose.

Norm – that’s why we’re worried about the diseased smolts. I agree that we need to do things without money.

Randy – a lot of what we can do is to start enforcing the laws we have. We don’t want to go to court, but we’re getting to the point that we have no choice. A lot of the projects are politically driven and divert resources.

Norm – we want EPA and the PSP to make sure that money is properly spent. We’ve always had a group of scientists on salmon recovery projects to evaluate them.

Randy – we need scientists to help us know how many fish are being produced by x habitat.

Norm – orca issue is another issue. NMFS will study this for 2 years and then we’ll see.

Shawn – doing the projects and doing the science, but we’re still losing the habitat due to development and agriculture. We’ve been working with Ag to farm and fish together, but that’s been very difficult. We think there need to be stronger standards from county and state.

Norm – Conservation reserve has been one way of getting resources to conservation districts. I also hear you’ve beenworking with farmer s to educate them about how to keep waste and cows out of rivers.

Shawn – But their farm plans get approved but we don’t get to review them.

Norm – That’s a problem on Chesapeake Bay. And enforcement appears to be difficult for local governments.

Shawn – We don’t want to push people out of biz. We’re all farmers. We too are farmers. Folks would be mad if people were poisoning fields and super markets.

Norm – I agree . Septic tanks are big problem too. [Norm leaves]

Dave T – Joint federal tribal caucus habitat focus – idea from last January’s caucus.

We’ve had a net loss of habitat since 1999. This group could help turn that tide. I think what Randy was referring to regarding issues that don’t require money are issues where we have to stop doing things that put us behind.

Bob Turner and Will – we dropped the ball on getting back to you on this.

Will – we have a strategic review of how we’re doing around PS. The Millie Judge Report. We’ll be posting that on the web next week. It gives some pretty specific quantifications on trends in various landscapes and they are all negative. Not good. The facts are the facts. Terry talks about no net loss. Well we’re not at that. We’re losing. We have a huge river of activity called economic development and that river flows everyday. If we can’t change that river….that investment dwarfs what we can bring to the restoration table.

Let’s not take that as an opportunity to beat ourselves up, but instead redouble our collective resolve. Let’s get on with where we need to go.

We need to catalog our assets in the habitat world. What can we bring to bear on this river of activity? We need to assess our regulatory actions. Are we deploying them properly? We need to look at state assets too.

Dave T – we see inconsistencies in regulatory actions that are inconsistent with salmon recovery. Are these actions consistent with treaty rights?

Martha – there is legislation that requires the PSP to do this, too.

Dennis – getting the various state agency heads together to address Ag issues. Need to improve state coordination. Those state agencies and local governments that apply the critical areas ordinances aren’t here with us today. We can use some of our residual regulatory authority.

Terry – we haven’t yet had a local government do what is required to protect salmon. Political problems. How do we unravel the political problems to do something constructive? Real issue is how do we sit down and discuss forestry, development, and agriculture in a way that constructive results will result?

Randy K – there’s a disconnect as to what treaty rights mean. Federal agencies have a trust responsibility to tribes as part of treaty rights.

USGS – would like to help with fundamental science and monitoring with respect to progress on restoration.

Gerry – The PSP is the trustee or steward for the Action Agenda which is owned collectively by the region. That AA should, over time, become a tool for holding the region accountable. We’re setting targets for what a healthy ecosystem should be. Have to know where you want to go before you can get there. Encourage you to engage in that work with the staff that we have and the process we have. It is part of our obligation to identify actions that are inconsistent with the AA. Want to use the AA as a managementtool to see whether we’re doing what we said we’d do. We want specific goals to manage for and to set priorities based on the resources we have.

Jeff D – there is a range of perspective and emotion on the tribal side as to whether these kinds of exercises are ultimately effective. [referring to Dave’s committee idea]

The tribes have dramatically reduced their increment of mortality on salmon with the hopes that this would put more fish into the habitat and recover the runs. But Will has told us and documents in the Millie Judge report that while tribes have been reducing their mortality, action affecting habitat have been systematically increasing their mortality. The loss of habitat is killing fish. It’s an incremental mortality on the fish that you talk about saving. Where’s your outrage? Meetings and process won’t get us there.

Dave T – that’s not a lone voice in the tribal community. That’s felt broadly.

Shawn – I agree with Jeff. We stopped fishing before the listing. We’ve had to justify that to our membership which is sitting on the beach. We now even have a chum problem. Even with all the work we do in estuary and putting in log jams, we still see an increase in habitat issues, still see increased flood levels and increased landslides.

Dave T – question is what we do in response to the Millie Judge report. Tribes will have little patience with efforts for more process.

Eaton – I invite you to the next Fed caucus meeting which will be on May 19.

Mike G – Jeff D is echoing the sentiment that all our tribes have. Degradation is happening faster than we can stop it. If Congress found this out, they’d probably stop appropriating money. The treaty right is in jeopardy here. This isn’t an ESA issue. This is a treaty rights issue. We can put numbers on our harvest reductions. Then you come at us with the orca thing. Where’s the habitat action? Insult to Injury. Lack of leadership that is focused on issue of concern to the tribes, which is the treaty right. We think that the feds should step in here and they can’t delegate their trust responsibility to the state. We need someone in charge. So many state, fed, and local entities. Too diffused. Where is the focus on the tribes’ treaty rights? There’s a lot of good stuff going on, but it’s still just a downhill slide in harvest and we need a solution. The process that Dave T. is proposing could be a piece of that, but from our perspective there needs to be something more. We worked really hard with the Shared Strategy process that Ruckelshaus was involved with and we started with perspective of depressed salmon and treaty right and we agreed to focus on Chinook and on a process that would link ESA and treaty rights and result in harvestable numbers of fish and then NOAA adopted the Recovery Plan and now these aren’t being merely ignored, but actively undermined by the federal government. We’ve got to find a way to stop this.