But the new plan won't go into effect until April, and if the region can't meet crucial power needs, a 1995 biological opinion currently in place can be waived, he said. Jim LeBret, spokesman at the BIA Northwest regional office in Portland, said yesterday the agency is reviewing the documents and hadn't decided whether to sign. Tribes, environmentalists and others have lamented the agencies' reluctance to breach the Lower Snake River dams while continuing to truck and barge threatened and endangered fish around the four structures. A group of about 200 scientists on Monday wrote a letter to President Clinton, advising him to breach the dams as the soonest, best hope for Snake River salmon and steelhead. They say the federal plan puts too much emphasis on tributaries and estuaries and not enough on corridors through which salmon travel to and from the ocean.
Dams block the corridors.