A three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a ruling from a federal District Court in Oregon that added two months of spill to summer operations at five federal dams in order to improve fish survival. The panel, which heard oral arguments in Seattle July 13 filed its opinion July 26, saying that Judge James Redden did not abuse his discretion by granting the injunction, nor did he base his decision on an erroneous legal standard or erroneous findings of fact. Those were the only two reasons upon which it would reverse, the panel said. ...more
Bonneville Power Administration customers marched out of a Seattle courtroom June 10 in glum moods after a three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the government's attempt to overturn a court order to spill $67-million worth of water over lower Snake River dams for the rest of the summer. ...more
p>Earlier this week, federal authorities said the court-ordered spill program at lower Snake and McNary dams would not be curtailed to help BPA deal with a potential power emergency in the next few weeks, unless Judge James Redden OK'd the move. However, a few days later, they seemed to be changing their minds. ...more
Eight Northwest Democratic members of Congress have called for removal of language in a spending bill that would stop funding for the Portland-based Fish Passage Center. The language was added by Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R), who said the FPC's data gathering duplicates work done by other agencies. He said most of FPC's job could be transferred to the University of Washington's Columbia Basin Research group, which already runs the DART data bank that tracks juvenile and adult fish passage. ...more
Poor ocean conditions are getting more blame than dams as more Northwest salmon runs are showing up far short of expectations.
The first case in point--the early sockeye run on B.C.'s famous and undammed Fraser River--was originally estimated from fry abundance to come in around 260,000 fish, but showed so poorly by early July that Canadian biologists downgraded it to a mere 35,000 fish. ...more
A panel of independent scientists told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council last month that it can't really tell if the harvest of ESA-listed stocks is being adequately managed both in the ocean and inriver fisheries. ...more
A proposal by the state of Montana to flatten flows out of two of its large reservoirs has been nixed for the second year in a row by regional policymakers who run the Columbia River. ...more
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