And it won't be cheap:
Saving orcas will cost billions, feds say
Expressing "considerable uncertainty" about how to rescue Puget Sound's imperiled orcas, federal fisheries officials on Thursday said the job will take more than 20 years and cost some $50 million.
Even that price tag considers only the extra costs of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency's recovery plan for orcas assumes that billions more will be spent to restore Puget Sound and bring back battered salmon runs -- their main food.
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The plan specifically recommends stationing a fulltime rescue tugboat near Washington's outer coast to prevent an oil spill -- the biggest short-term threat to the orcas. It says "more aggressive initial responses" are needed.
It also calls for "greater efforts ... to minimize pollution," including the stormwater that washes filth into the Sound after every good-sized rain. More
No sir. Not cheap at all:
Culverts add obstacles to salmon, state, politics
It doesn't seem like much, this no-name pipe, sluicing water into an unnamed stream that ripples its way to Bear Slough in the North Fork of the Nooksack River.
But small things can make big problems for salmon. This culvert was placed too high above the stream bed. It's a target no salmon can hit in its journey home to spawn. This pipe, and thousands like it, is as impermeable a barrier to upstream spawning grounds as the thickest, tallest dam.
More than 1,676 culverts from Neah Bay to Walla Walla block more than 2,377 miles of potential salmon habitat...
Last summer, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo S. Martinez agreed with 20 of the state's Indian tribes that the state has a duty to fix problem culverts because they diminish salmon runs, and that violates the tribes' fishing rights guaranteed by treaties signed in the 19th century.
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The state says it wants to fix the culverts, but it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. More
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