Puyallup Tribe sues Electron Hydro, alleging violations of the Endangered Species Act
The Puyallup Tribe has sued the company that runs a hydropower dam on the Puyallup River, alleging the dam has violated the Endangered Species Act.
A maintenance outage in July at the Electron Dam outside Orting “stranded, suffocated and pulverized thousands of adults and juvenile fish,” the Tribe said in a news release. “… In the same month, the dam’s owners deliberately placed thousands of square yards of artificial turf in the Puyallup River as part of a construction project.”
The Chinook salmon, steelhead trout and bull trout in the river are protected by the Endangered Species Act, and the salmon are an important source of food for Puget Sound orcas, the lawsuit said.
“This dam has been killing fish for decades,” the Puyallup Tribal Council said in a statement. “The reckless killing of fish in the forebay this summer in spite of our efforts to warn and guide them to reduce the fish kill and then polluting this sacred river with crumb rubber was the last straw.”
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle names Electron Hydro LLC, Thom Fischer and Tollhouse Energy Company.
“The owners have to be held accountable,” the Council’s statement said. “They are killing fish and destroying natural resources that are here for everyone’s benefit, Native and non-Native alike. Our job is to protect the land, the water and the fish.”
The U.S Justice Department sued Electron Hydro last month for putting the field turf in the riverbed during the construction project.
Thom Fischer, Electron Hydro’s Chief operations officer, told The News Tribune at the time that the incident was a “one-time screw up” and that he agreed the government should investigate.
“I’m going to listen to them and the (Puyallup) Tribe and the county,” he said. “They are all concerned and rightly so, but so are we. Together we could accomplish a lot to make this project the model of how things should operate.”
