Joan Dukes elected Council Vice Chair

The Council unanimously elected Joan Dukes, an Oregon member of the Council, vice chair this week for the remainder of 2011. Dukes replaces Dick Wallace, a Washington member, in the position. Wallace resigned from the Council in June.

This is Dukes’ third term as vice chair of the Council. She also served in that capacity in 2006 and 2007. Currently she is a member of the Council’s Fish and Wildlife and Executive committees.

Dukes has been a member of the Council since January 2005 after being appointed by then-Governor Ted Kulongoski. Dukes resigned her seat in the Oregon Senate, where she had served since 1987, to join the Council. She is a resident of Svensen, a community near Astoria.

Dukes, who served a four-year term as a Clatsop County commissioner before being elected to the Senate, has a broad base of experience in budget, education, transportation, forestry and fisheries issues at the local, county and state levels, including having served as chair of the Pacific Fisheries Legislative Task Force, an association of western legislators that works on regional fish issues. She is a graduate of the Evergreen State College.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council is a compact of the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington and is directed by the Northwest Power Act of 1980 to prepare a plan to assure the Northwest region an adequate, efficient, economical, and reliable power supply and, as part of the plan, a program to protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and wildlife of the Columbia River Basin affected by hydropower dams.