NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region, with its Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif., and Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, have released a new blueprint for how the agency will put ecosystem-based management principles into practice on the West Coast.

The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission last week appointed Kelly Susewind of Olympia as the new director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

At the invitation of U.S. District Court in Oregon Judge Michael H. Simon, the Deschutes River Alliance filed an amended complaint last week in a lawsuit that alleges Portland General Electric is violating Clean Water Act rules due to their operations of the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams on the lower Deschutes River.

A June 11 U.S. District Court of Oregon decision ruled against dismissing the 2016 case brought by the Deschutes River Alliance against Portland General Electric. In that lawsuit, DRA alleged PGE is violating Clean Water Act rules due to their operations of the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams on the lower Deschutes River.

Clean Water Act citizen suits, like the suit brought by the Deschutes River Alliance against Portland General Electric for alleged CWA violations at the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams, was intended by Congress to be argued in court, DRA says in its May 30 brief filed in U.S. District Court of Oregon.

In arguments before U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon, defending parties in a two-year court case that alleges water quality violations by Portland General Electric due to operations at its dams on the lower Deschutes River continued to argue that the case should be dismissed.