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Nik Blosser found a new job after all.
The Biden administration has tapped Blosser, former chief of staff to Gov. Kate Brown, to serve as the executive director of the new federal Columbia River Task Force.
The task force, a partnership of various federal departments and agencies, including the Department of the Interior, Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, will work to restore wild salmon and other native fish in the Columbia River. Upon announcement of the task force, the Biden administration also released a report “acknowledging the harms that the federal dams have inflicted and continue to inflict on Tribes in the region”—a nod to the ongoing tension between the clean hydropower the dams supply and the way they’ve wrecked tribal waters.
The efforts are part of an agreement the Biden administration made with a number of Native American tribes last fall to reintroduce salmon in the Upper Basin, and another agreement the president made with tribes to restore salmon and other native fish in the Lower Basin. Those agreements paused tribal legal actions against the dams.
Blosser, husband of former Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, left Brown’s office to assist President Joe Biden’s transition team in 2021, where he worked as a special assistant and deputy cabinet secretary, Blosser then worked at Portland General Electric as vice president in charge of public policy, government affairs and communications. More recently, he publicly mulled a run for Portland City Council, but decided against it after he learned he would have had to give up his ownership stake in a family winery, as WW first reported last month.
The new job also signals Blosser’s return to environmental work: For years, he ran Chinook Book, a coupon book filled with deals offered by businesses vetted for their sustainability.