A judge has ordered the federal agencies involved with the massive 14-dam hydropower system on the Columbia and Snake rivers to rewrite the "biological opinion" controlling their operationor risk a court takeover of those operations. He also held out an option of breaching the four Snake River dams if the agencies fail to cooperate on saving 13 endangered salmon species.
Required by the Endangered Species Act, a biological opinion (BiOp) describes wildlife status in an area affected by federal actions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers wrote the federal hydropower BiOp that said operational changes or significant dam modifications were not required to prevent salmon extinction in the Columbia River watershed.