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[1] NOAA'S LOHN UPDATES POWER COUNCIL ON UPCOMING SPILL EVALUATION, HINTS AT BIOP CHANGES
Regional NOAA Fisheries Administrator Bob Lohn has suggested that major changes may be on the way for the new hydro BiOp. With the current document in remand and being rewritten, flows to augment passage of salmon listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act may be reduced, Lohn suggested at last week's Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting. He also said the agency will take a serious look at the biological value of summer spill.
Lohn said the spill evaluation could go two ways. Researchers could either pit-tag one million to two million fish and measure changes in system survival from adjustments to the summer spill regime now in place at four dams. Or, they could measure survival of smaller groups of fish by using radio-tags at specific projects.
The small-group survival approach to assessing the safest passage for summer migrants would require a prohibitively long study period to reliably discern the small, 3-percent difference expected between spill passage on the one hand, and bypass or turbine passage on the other. Lohn said that up to 600 years of observations would be needed to meet an 80 percent confidence level for the result.
"Which is a polite scientific way," Lohn said, "of telling us that we are unlikely to get system-wide survival data at that level of accuracy capable of measuring those nuances in a time that's going to be important for the decision we need to make."
In contrast, Lohn said radio tags would be ready for use by next summer to begin spill evaluations at the four dams in question--one in the lower Snake and three in the mainstem Columbia River. But Lohn cautioned that such research had its own drawbacks. Researchers must use larger-than-average fish to install radio tags, which leads to an assumption that these fish represent the run at large. Also, tagging fish in late July and August, which has not been done before, can lead to much higher handling mortalities from the warmer summer water.
But even with these limitations, Lohn said the approach could provide valuable information about comparative survivals from different dam operations. And to help get a handle on survival impacts of proposed operational changes, Lohn said NOAA Fisheries' SIMPAS passage model would be updated to include the latest results in fish survival.
Meanwhile, a policy committee is developing biological "offsets" for any losses that reduced summer spill might cause in ESA-listed stocks and other runs, like the recently spectacular Hanford Reach fall run.
One suggestion calls for expanding the current BPA program that offers a bounty for salmon predators like northern pikeminnow, a project the Council itself tried to cut in half earlier this year. Estimates of benefits from such actions are expected in the next few weeks, and any cost savings from spill reduction could be used to expand some offset programs, Lohn said. Federal executives were scheduled to meet Dec. 12 to discuss the evaluation and potential offsets, but were not ready to settle on any particular alternative. Lohn said treaty tribes would be consulted before a final decision is reached.
Washington power council member Larry Cassidy voiced concern about fish from unlisted salmon runs that enter the Columbia below McNary Dam and therefore cannot be barged.
"I'm assuming that we are going to damage fish," he said. Cassidy pointed out that nobody knows how many fish are in the river in August, when spill may be reduced. Until that is determined, there is no way to calculate reasonable mitigation.
Lohn said precise estimates of run passage are not reliable, but "you could develop a pretty good sense of roughly how many fish are in the river at that time, and how many are likely to be affected."
Cassidy pointed out that losses would be much more than the 15 or 20 ESA-listed Snake River fall chinook that Council staffer Bruce Suzumoto had estimated from reducing summer spill.
"You're talking a minimum of 6,000 and some tribal reports show as many as 25,000 adults," Cassidy said. "We don't know where that number is, but it's a significantly greater number. We see too many headlines that say, 'Summer spill is only about 15 fish.'" The tribal analysis to which Cassidy referred has never been released for public review, and was calculated with early estimates of delayed mortality for barged Hanford Reach fall chinook from the PATH (Plan for Analyzing and Testing Hypotheses) process.
Montana council members, who have pushed hard for an evaluation of augmented flows because it depletes two of the state's big reservoirs, seemed pleased with Lohn's remarks. Responding to a question from Montana's Ed Bartlett, Lohn said NOAA's main focus is ecosystem integrity. "It makes very little sense to be damaging one ecosystem to focus solely on benefits in another," Lohn said.
Lohn said his agency will release updated white papers next month (drafts should be available by Dec. 23 at http://www.salmonrecovery.gov) that will include the latest results from flow and survival studies, in both the Columbia and Snake, including several more years of data than earlier papers evaluated. He also mentioned recent work by USFWS researcher Billy Conner, who has been trying to determine whether higher flows help fall chinook through the lower Snake. The issue is confounded because improved survivals also correlate with increased turbidity and temperature and reduced travel time.
Lohn said Conner's results suggest that temperature is a driving factor in the fishes' survival. "Does adding more hot water help fish at all?" he asked rhetorically, indicating the federal agency is seriously questioning the value of adding more water from the upper Snake to aid summer fish passage.
Environmental groups have said recently they will go to court to ensure that the old BiOp target flows are met. But with a new draft BiOp expected by March, those targets may change. -Bill Rudolph
[2] BPA CUSTOMERS CALL FOR MAJOR BIOP RE-WRITE, END TO SUMMER SPILL
A group of public and private utilities have called for an end to BPA's $100-million summer spill program in the Columbia Basin. Citing a recent analysis that estimated only about 15 ESA listed Snake River fall chinook would be lost if the program was canned, ex-BPA administrator Randy Hardy said "We can have it all, both power and fish."
He also called for a major re-write of the BiOp that's now in remand with federal authorities who still haven't decided whether to tweak it to satisfy a federal judge or begin a major overhaul before next June.
At last week's meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Hardy outlined the utilities' plan that calls for ending summer spill, while operating turbines outside of peak operating efficiency to improve fish survival. Hardy said other programs like the pikeminnow bounty program to cut predation of young salmon could be increased to help offset fish losses from ending the spill program. A new agreement to further reduce stranding of Hanford Reach juveniles could add thousands of returning adults. He also pointed to partial harvest buyouts to satisfy fishermen.
But fishing, tribal and environmental interests were quick to challenge the proposal. At the council meeting, Umatilla tribal trustee Jay Minthorn said 11,000 fall chinook would be lost in 2006 and 2007 if only August spill was eliminated.
"There are no actions proven to offset the impacts of eliminating spill," said Minthorn. "There is no evidence that sufficient mitigation exists for a sacrifice of this magnitude. Simply restoring programs and projects that have been eliminated is a shell game and not worthy of our consideration."
Hardy's proposal was also criticized by Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. Spain didn't acknowledge any potential buyout of a portion of the commercial harvest, but said Hardy's message was "adding insult to injury" to "impoverished fishing communities" and "nearly bankrupt processors" on the West Coast.
"Fleet closures to avoid accidentally catching endangered Columbia salmon now cost coastal communities nearly $500 million each year in lost fishery benefits," he said.
Harvest Buyout A Tough Sell
Hardy made it clear that the utilities didn't support a potential strategy that would pick up the tab for all non-listed salmon losses if summer spill was cut during the time that fall chinook are migrating to sea, including huge numbers of Hanford Reach juveniles, about half of whom are barged from McNary Dam.
"For every thousand chinook you prevent Alaska from catching, you'll get 250 adults back," Hardy said. In 2003, Southeast Alaska trollers, whose harvest is made up of about 16 percent Hanford Reach chinook, averaged a bit over a dollar a pound for their catch. With net catches added, the 400,000 chinook caught this year were worth about $7 million to Southeast fishermen. since most fall stocks are not listed. In fact, between ocean and inriver fisheries they are currently harvested at about a 50 percent rate.
"We're not suggesting total offset of the non-listed impacts simply because those stocks are healthy," Hardy told the Council. He said his representative utilities think the most appropriate balance of BPA's and the Council's responsibility for both fish mitigation and reliable power "would be better served by the kind of program we're suggesting than something that would fully offset the impact to non-listed stocks."
The cost to buy out the Alaska share, about half of the estimated 10,000 less adults that might be produced from a reduced spill regime (harvest is split about 50-50 between ocean and inriver harvest), would cost less than $100,000, figuring ex-vessel values.
Economically, the harvest buyout issue is a no-brainer perhaps. However, since Hardy's Dec. 10 appearance before the Council, it's suddenly erupted into controversy. Some insiders say it's likely a non-starter in the offset discussions.
In a Dec. 12 letter to NOAA Fisheries' regional director Bob Lohn, Alaska Department of Fish and Game commissioner Kevin Duffy said any request to reduce summer spill by cutting harvest exploitation rates appeared "premature."
Duffy said reducing spill was an "apparent inconsistency " with the Pacific Salmon Treaty. He also expressed concern that Alaska might have to shoulder more burden for conserving the stock if summer spill ended in the Columbia Basin.
Duffy was also piqued that his state had not been informed directly of the proposal, which "has made it difficult to present comments, but the general topic is too important to stand silent," he told Lohn, adding that his state could not support the summer spill request at this time, but called for an evaluation of the impacts of reduced spills, including harvest and proposed mitigation.
However, critics may have been premature in their remarks, and simply staking out bargaining positions for future negotiations, much as the utilities have done with Hardy's proposal, because discussion about the spill evaluation has been going on for weeks, and getting increasingly urgent because the players are hoping to get a survival study underway at Bonneville Dam next year.
Three separate stakeholder committees are looking into study alternatives, offsets, and the scientific basis for picking one alternative over another.
Another meeting is scheduled this week to estimate numbers of fish losses from reduced spill scenarios, using an updated SIMPAS model developed by federal policymakers and used in the 2000 BiOp.
It's not clear what recent research will do to change the SIMPAS modeling effort, but one thing is sure, when individual spillways are examined closely to determine survival from BiOp mandated operations, the results have usually shown less survival than previously estimated.
Corps of Engineers' spokesman Jim Athearn said that's been the case at Ice Harbor, John Day, The Dalles and now at Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake, where 2003 research shows spill survival that averaged 90 percent instead of the 97-98 percent estimated for SIMPAS modeling. Spill regimes at Ice Harbor, The Dalles, and John Day have all changed to reflect lower survivals than originally anticipated.
The new survival estimates, expected to be completed by mid-week, will be used to build a credit-debit analysis that spells out potential fish losses and gains from a reduced spill regime.
BiOp Needs Major Overhaul
Hardy also recommended the federal agencies re-write the BiOp and shift to a regime of performance standards, "rather than 200 RPAs and very prescriptive individual measures that characterize the current B.O." The utilities point to the fish recovery program developed with the Mid-Columbia PUDs, where results are more performance-based.
Hardy said the current BiOp allows little flexibility to achieve fish recovery. "It is basic Management 101, whether it's fish or how you manage your own staff, that you set clear goals, and you allow the staff, or in this case, action agencies, a lot of flexibility on how to reach those goals and then you hold them absolutely accountable for results.
"It's kind of elementary and yet, we've got it back-asswards in this fish program.," Hardy said. "Where we try to dictate the means and the ends and the result is you end up with one of these with everybody blaming everybody else and when you heap that on top of the tremendous conflicts and data that exist, you don't have any accountability."
He said more flexibility through performance standards would allow better biological results and save BPA "well beyond" the $100 million a year from eliminating summer spill and operating outside of peak efficiency.
If performance standards were developed to manage the hydro system, Hardy said "everything is going to be on the table," both listed and non-listed stocks. "... When you have even trading stock to balance this system, the result could even achieve steadier funding for BPA's fish and wildlife program, regardless of BPA's financial condition."
Hardy said later he represents about half of BPA's customers (his clients include public utilities Snohomish and Grant PUDs, Tacoma Power, the Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative, Northwest Requirements Utilities and private utility Puget Sound Energy), but added that he thought all of BPA's customers agreed with his proposal to end summer spill.
He said the utilities are actively soliciting support for this scenario, both in Washington DC and among Northwest governors and others. Hardy said if it was implemented, he guaranteed it would be better for both fish and finances.
In response to a question from Washington Council member Larry Cassidy, Hardy said he was quite certain that BPA would lower rates if summer spill ended. "The odds are about 99 to 1."
But the following day, NOAA regional administrator Bob Lohn told the Council that he didn't foresee a future of no spill, but supported an evaluation that looked at the "... margins, are there places where spill could be reduced, and you could, in effect, use the regional resources that are freed up because of that to produce other alternatives that are equally effective."
Whether the federal judge in charge of the BiOp remand will allow for some changes remains a big unknown.
Environmental attorney Todd True, who represented plaintiffs in the BiOp lawsuit, said in a Dec. 16 press release that the government's plan to eliminate summer spill adds injury to insult.
"First the government insulted the law and the salmon," True said, "by relying on speculation where the law requires certainty. Now it plans to add further injury to these species by eliminating one of the few things in its illegal plan that actually helps fish."
But utilities point to the recent years of high fish abundance as another reason for curtailing the spill regime. The 900,000-fish return of fall chinook to the Columbia River in 2003 was the largest since 1948. Managers recently announced that next year's Hanford run will be more in line with the 10-year average of 190,000 fish, rather than the 380,000-fish run counted this year, with a total return of fall chinook in the 500,000-fish range. -B. R.
[3] SKEPTICAL SCIENTISTS SAY EXTINCTION ESTIMATES A RISKY BUSINESS
Extinction risk estimators held a recent workshop in a Seattle venue that brought out some of the salmon recovery world's most arcane theorists, as well as an elite crew of critics.
"We are quantifying uncertainty," NOAA scientist Eli Holmes explained at the Dec. 5 gathering of technical types that included half a dozen who had participated in the well-known, but ultimately ill-fated, PATH (Plan for Analyzing and Testing Hypotheses) process of the late 1990s.
Holmes said the workshop was convened at the behest of NOAA Fisheries' Northwest regional office to review methods for estimating growth rates of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead stocks, part of the process of revising the agency's 2000 hydro BiOp that is under remand.
The meeting described new approaches federal scientists have employed for quantifying the extinction risk of listed salmon stocks beyond the work completed for the 2000 BiOp. The approaches are drawn from the "population viability analysis" (PVA) of the listed stocks, a controversial but standard tool that conservation biologists use when they're confronted with major deficits of information--like the spotty data sets on many West Coast salmon runs, years of declining populations, and unknown effects of hatchery spawners on wild populations.
Holmes explained her latest research into various techniques used to validate her method of estimating population trends and risks. One technique consolidated a great deal of long-term data on salmon, steelhead, and bull trout population.
"What you can see is that across the West Coast, stocks were on average declining more in 1959-1973 versus in 1974-1993, while the opposite was true for 1964-1978 versus 1979-1998," Holmes said in a white paper discussed at the workshop.
Though it was "tempting" to attribute the strings of good and bad years to an environmental driver like ocean conditions, Holmes said the data did not necessarily support this conclusion. She said this type of cycling could occur simply by chance.
Her analysis proved problematic to others, since it did not consider the effects of changes in ocean regimes, harvest levels, and freshwater habitat.
Rich Hinrichsen, consultant with the Bonneville Power Administration, said population trends were very sensitive to the time frames used in the analyses, depending on whether stock numbers were going up or down at the end of the time frame.
Holmes' latest analysis of the listed stocks, unveiled last September, indicated many populations are still in decline. But it did not include fish numbers from the past two years, which have been very productive for most stocks.
Charlie Paulsen, who also consults for BPA, said he could see no benefit from the kind of modeling NOAA was conducting. "I'm not confident about the ability to predict long-term salmon runs," he told workshop participants. Paulsen said natural variability in salmon returns made it hard, "even if the numbers were perfect."
He also questioned NOAA's extensive use of "population viability analysis" of salmon stocks, noting that surveys of ESA recovery plans show that only about a quarter of the plans use the PVA technique.
And finally, Paulsen said, if the extinctioneers looked at the latest data, they would see that ESA-listed spring chinook stocks in the middle Snake are growing at about 10 percent a year.
University of Washington professor and BPA consultant Jim Anderson said the NOAA model's assumption of random process ignores any ocean effects, "and that's just wrong."
Another NOAA scientist, Tom Cooney, said he suspected the answer lay in a modeling effort that was "somewhere in between."
Holmes also discussed the difficulties of using the model to estimate the probability of a certain salmon stock's decline by 90 percent in 25, 50 or 100 years. She said 20 years of data is not sufficient for accurate error estimates. But a Bayesian analysis, which can provide useful estimates from uncertain data, shows that in stocks with a low rate of growth, this fuzzy estimate of the probability of a 90 percent decline in 50 or 100 years "is fairly informative."
Paulsen pointed out that two scientists had argued in the journal Ecology (Fieberg and Ellner, 2000) that long-term extinction probabilities simply cannot be calculated because of the huge data needs. The authors say that useful extinction probabilities can only be calculated for the short term--about 10 to 20 percent of the timeline that a given population has been monitored--so it would take 100 years of salmon data to generate the probabilities that extinction would occur within the next 10 to 20 years.
This kind of data simply does not exist in the salmon world. But the 2000 BiOp attempted to answer whether dam operations, when combined with projected improvements in habitat, would result in a 5 percent or lower probability of "absolute extinction" of wild spawners in both 24-year and 100-year periods. Whether that analysis will be part of the new BiOp remains to be seen.
Holmes herself said a soon-to-be published paper (Fagan et al.) indicates that salmon times series are "substantially" more variable than other animals studied, and that her diffusion approximation model's "most striking failure was its inability to predict actual extinction events." -B. R.
[4] JUDGE REDDEN DENIES MOTION TO EXPAND HYDRO BIOP'S ACTION AREA
Oregon District Court Judge James Redden has denied a supplemental motion by environmental and fishing groups [NWF. v. NMFS] to expand the federal action area of the hydro BiOp that's been in remand.
The groups wanted to add upper Snake BiOp issues into the remand process, citing the need to use water from the upper Snake to meet flow targets in the lower part of the river for migrating salmon listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The use of upper Snake water for ESA salmon has been examined in another BiOp written by the Bureau of Reclamation and OK'd by NOAA Fisheries. The upper Snake BiOp governs federal irrigation storage projects that hold water for farmers who hold state water rights.
Redden said he disagreed with the plaintiffs, who alleged that the scope of federal agency actions has ever been an issue in this case. He pointed out that until now, the plaintiffs had never alleged that the feds had "improperly segregated" the two hydro operations for consultation.
Furthermore, the judge said plaintiffs used "their understanding of the science" relating to timing and flows to protect salmon to justify their contention that defendant's segregation of the federal agency actions is improper."
Redden said that contravened his admonition that his court "does not intend to delve into the science during the remand period."
Lastly, Redden said it was inappropriate at this stage of the case, "to interject" issues raised by the upper Snake BiOp. He noted that operations examined by the upper Snake BiOp have been the subject of intense discussions, including an unsuccessful attempt at mediation by Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo (R), and are now the subject of a potential lawsuit by one of the plaintiffs, and others who are not parties to the remand process.
Redden said the federal defendant submitted that it was expanding its action area from the original BiOp, so "it appears at this stage of the remand period, defendant agrees with the court's conclusion regarding the action area to be considered on remand."
Utility interests were buoyed by the court's ruling. "These are separate issues, with a whole separate opinion," said Scott Corwin, spokesman for Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative. -B. R.
[5] ZERO-FLOW SCENARIO DEBATED FOR LOWER SNAKE RIVER DAMS
Columbia Basin salmon managers were uncomfortable enough with the Bonneville Power Administration's proposed winter operations for lower Snake dams that they tried to keep them from being implemented.
The proposal is nothing new, said Scott Bettin, who represents BPA at the Technical Management Team, a weekly forum of hydro and fish managers. He said it's a typical December-through-February operation that has been in effect for many years.
BPA wanted to generate more power at the four dams on the lower Snake during daylight hours, when prices are better for selling power than during the evening hours. BPA would rather shut the powerhouses down altogether at night and go to "zero flow" in the river.
Bettin said the operation could increase revenues by about $25,000 a day because it would allow the sale of about 310 additional megawatts during the heavier load daytime hours.
The zero-flow operation has been in effect since 1987, when the Corps of Engineers reached an agreement with fish managers to allow such operations at night and on weekends during winter months.
But when Bettin brought the issue up Dec. 1, after the Corps suggested more "regional coordination," some fish managers wondered about possible adverse effects from the zero-flow option. Flows in the lower Snake are already extremely low, running below 20 kcfs, less than the 10-year average for this time of year.
The fish managers said small numbers of steelhead are still migrating upriver. They were also concerned that redds dug by fall chinook in tailraces below the dams might be de-watered by the zero-flow operation, although no redd counts were available during the discussion.
Partial surveys conducted from 1993 to 1997, after some salmon eggs were found during dredging operations, turned up few redds. Researchers found 14 redds below Lower Granite Dam in 1993 and five redds the following year, but no redds were observed there the last two years of the study.
Four redds were found behind Little Goose Dam in three of the four years, but only one was counted in 1997. In the last two years of the study, the redd counts (up to five) accounted for less than 5 percent of all the fall chinook redds in the Snake River.
Most falls spawn in the mainstem far above Lower Granite Dam. In 1997, about 200 redds were counted above the dam in the Snake and tributary rivers.
Since then, the Corps of Engineers has required no additional surveys of the lower Snake spawning areas, Battelle researcher Dennis Dauble told NW Fishletter. He said it would be interesting to see if the large numbers of fall chinook returning in the past several years have contributed to more redds in the lower Snake corridor. According to a recent BPA-funded report, 1,854 fall chinook redds were counted above the dam in 2002.
WDFW biologist Glen Mendel said he didn't see how the zero-flow operation would adversely affect redds, since river elevations barely change from day to night.
"There are still a few steelhead going by," he said, "but they're in no big hurry."
Mendel's greatest concern, rather, was coordinating fish ladder maintenance with the zero-flow operations. He pointed out that when a fish ladder is closed for maintenance, it's de-watered anyway, hence unavailable for migrating fish.
The zero-operations issue came up at the Dec. 4 Implementation Team meeting, but it was not officially raised to a decision-making level by policy managers. It was kicked back to the TMT for more jawboning, but the operation began that night. At the Dec. 17 TMT meeting, fish managers still had not presented any updated information. -B. R.
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