The National Marine Fisheries Service on Tuesday listed nine salmon runs seven in Washington, including the once-mighty Puget Sound wild chinook run, and two in Oregon as threatened or endangered. More than half the state's 5.6 million people depend on watersheds essential to the Puget Sound chinook, said Curt Smitch, Gov. Gary Locke's adviser on salmon issues. The fish are at risk every time a person builds a home or parking lot too near a stream, pumps too much water from rivers or the ground, flushes a toilet into a substandard sewage-treatment or septic system, or wastes electricity generated by hydropower dams that block spawning rivers. All those actions will come under new scrutiny, beginning in two months. The listing could even have implications on the region's high-tech manufacturers, which produce runoff that's almost always warmer than streams.
Higher temperatures can harm aquatic life by reducing dissolved oxygen.
Efforts to control runoff into streams where the salmon spawn could lead to reductions in the amount of land available for logging and home building, and affect the fertilizers and pesticides people spray on their lawns. Government officials also predicted that hydropower generators and waste-treatment operators will spend millions to meet the new regulations and ultimately pass those costs on to consumers. All of this won't mean a shortage of salmon for consumers. Many retailers rely on farm-raised salmon, said Harry Calvo, manager of Pure Food Fish Market in Seattle's Pike Place Market. All Rights Reserved.