A district judge dismissed a lawsuit against Eugene Water and Electric Board from environmental groups that claimed the utility has been violating the Endangered Species Act for 16 years.
The lawsuit was filed by Cascadia Wildlands, the Willamette Riverkeeper, Oregon Wild and the Native Fish Society as a response to the delayed construction of a fish passage at the Trail Bridge Dam by EWEB. The environmental groups claimed that the utility has been dodging multiple federal laws that require fish passages to compensate for blocked bodies of water, like dams.
Bethany Cotton, conservation director at Cascadia Wildlands, said that EWEB initially made an agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a fish ladder during the Trail Bridge Dam’s relicensing process in 2008, but backtracked several years later and decided to do trap-and-haul operations instead…