[1] BiOp Settlement Talks Take Several Tacks
An attempt by Northwest states and federal agencies to reach an agreement on how to operate the federal hydro system for the next 10 years has been going nowhere fast, say some parties to the talks. That's because until last month, environmental groups, tribes and Bonneville Power Administration customer groups weren't even invited to the table.
Optimists like Oregon policy advisor Mike Carrier, say it takes time to "rebuild" relationships, in hopes of getting to a regional agreement on how to run the dams. But after environmental groups, the chief plaintiffs in the BiOp remand litigation, told participants at a recent meeting in Spokane that the draft settlement was too much "status quo," there's little hope that any agreement can be reached by Sept. 14, when they all meet with Federal District Court Judge James Redden to discuss the future of the BiOp remand.
The draft settlement floated by federal agencies is pretty much straight out of the 2004 BiOp, with an addition: Any cost savings from using removable spillway weirs to pass fish at dams with less water would be ploughed back into fish-recovery actions.
Bob Nichols, representing Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, says his state is not on board with the federal agency's draft plan, but is focusing attention on what Judge Redden wants next month.
Nichols said the judge's order calls for an "across-the-board, you-all talk" settlement. "He is sure we can all come up with something," Nichols told NW Fishletter. In his June 10 opinion, that called for summer spill at five dams, Judge Redden denied the plaintiffs' call for added flows, but he directed all parties to collaborate "to resolve issues related to flow," hoping they could also agree on future spill scenarios.
"So . . . I do want you to get together and sit down, and I want another thing from that: Talk, discuss the flow theory," the judge told all sides during the June 10 proceeding. "You got plaintiffs at 10 percent reduction and well, maybe 3 percent. You know, is there enough in that flow business for us to reduce the amount of spill? Can something be worked out even before the summer is over? Certainly it would be on its way to do it during the remand."
In late July, at a meeting in Spokane, environmental groups suggested that future dam operations should be more like the annual plan offered by the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), which calls for more spill and flow augmentation, including large amounts of water from Canadian reservoirs. They also said the draft plan floated by Oregon earlier this year is more to their liking.
That draft drew heavily from the annual CRITFC recommendations for river operations, few of which have ever been implemented. They include the call for another million-acre feet of water from both Canada and Idaho to boost flows. Perhaps the most stunning proposal was the call for deep drawdowns at lower Snake and John Day reservoirs to boost fish survival, but it never cited any documentation that might connect fish survival with the increases in water velocity that might occur.
The proposal called for a 17-foot drawdown behind John Day (mainstem reservoirs currently operate within a five-foot range) in two-thirds of the summers to increase water velocity. That would render both the juvenile and adult passage systems unusable and make it hard for turbines to generate power, critics said. It would also make the navigation locks unnavigable and cause irrigation systems to suck air. The bypass systems at lower Snake dams would not work either if the 13-foot spring (in 34 percent of the spring migration periods) and 9-foot summer drawdowns (82 percent of the summers) were implemented as the proposal recommended.
Oregon policy advisor Carrier said his state spent months discussing the plan with federal agencies to determine the feasibility of those measures. He said some have proven to be undoable within the constraints of current operations. The current discussions grew out of Oregon's discussions with other states after its own draft fizzled.
A hydrographic analysis of the drawdowns and water particle travel time was completed last October for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife policy analyst Ron Boyce by the Fish Passage Center. The analysis cautioned that with drawdowns of more than a few feet below operating minimums and maximums, "problems would be encountered [at] fish ladders, navigation channel depth, and turbine[s]. The severity of each of these problems and the repairs that would be necessary to allow significant drawdown are unknown to the FPC at this time."
Now that BPA customers, environmental groups and tribes, both upriver and downriver, have been invited to take part, Carrier is optimistic, though he doesn't think much more than a framework for the talks will be completed by Sept. 14. He said more meetings were scheduled with tribes and environmental groups. He is also pleased with Idaho's participation and expects Montana to be more of a player as well. With the four governors behind it, he hopes the collaboration will lead to a common vision.
Washington's Nichols says it's just too soon to say whether it will work, while others say that many participants are just plain burned out. Most parties had already spent a year in court-ordered mediation that began in early 2002 before the 2000 BiOp was litigated. Plaintiff groups eventually walked away from that process and continued their suit. During the remand of the 2000 BiOp, before the current BiOp was written, Judge Redden ordered collaboration between state, tribal and federal scientists over scientific issues of flow and fish survival. State and tribal representatives said federal scientists had little use for their input. -Bill Rudolph
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