[1] So Much Spill, So Few Fish
The summer spill regime that ended Aug. 31 at Columbia and lower Snake dams may end up costing a lot more than anyone has figured. With the added water cascading into stilling basins below the dams and eroding concrete, some of the dams are wearing out faster than anticipated.
Corps of Engineers' spokesman Rock Peters said his agency is in the midst of a system-wide analysis of the problem, which has affected Bonneville, The Dalles, Ice Harbor and Lower Monumental dams. He said some funding is in the Corps' 2006 budget for monitoring the problem in the stilling basins. In 2003, the Corps spent $3.5 million to repair eroded concrete at Lower Monumental Dam.
The Bonneville Power Administration is penciling out the power costs, which are likely to fall in the upper range of their June estimate of $57 million to $81 million, according to BPA hydraulic engineer and analyst Roger Schiewe. The agency will release a final cost number after analysts factor in the cost of reduced generating flexibility from the court-ordered spill.
Despite the added costs of the summer spill effort, BPA announced last week it would cut wholesale rates 1.5 percent next year. Customer groups say the decrease could have amounted to several percent if the Judge hadn't ordered the spill.
Before the extra spill was pushed by environmental groups and granted by U.S. District Court Judge James Redden, federal agencies had argued that the proposal would kill up to about 50 percent more juvenile salmon than their own BiOp's plan to barge most of the migrating fall chinook past the hydro system.
Enviro lawyers countered that the plan to add more flows and spill could improve survival by up to 50 percent.
However, by the time the extra spill began on June 20, most of the young chinook had already migrated past the first dam on the lower Snake, when barging was still in place. According to information posted on the Fish Passage Center's Web site, nearly 3 million fall smolts had been transported by the end of June out of about 3.5 million fish passing the dam.
Since the added spill started, only about 750,000 smolts had passed Lower Granite, with only 100,000 or so getting collected for the free ride downstream.
Environmental lawyers had argued that the added spill would keep more fish in the river, and truly "spread the risk" to migrating fish by dividing passage routes more equally between inriver and barged fish.
The feds countered by saying they weren't interested in spreading the risk for summer migrating stocks as they did for spring fish because they feared water temperatures could reach near-lethal ranges for young salmon by late July. Though they admitted there was no research to determine which strategy was better for fish, the feds said improving fish numbers was enough for them to stick with the status quo.
But Judge Redden said status quo operations weren't good enough and granted the spill injunction without an evidentiary hearing. His order was upheld by a three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in late July.
By the middle of July, the run was down to a trickle. At the end of the month, so few were being collected by barge (only 252 smolts collected over two days were pumped aboard a barge July 31) that the Corps used trucks to move fish beyond Bonneville Dam to save money. Sources said the fish barging operation cost $70,000 a week in fuel.
Even if enviro lawyers are correct and their court-ordered tactic improves adult returns by 50 percent, the added cost in spill could make each adult fish returning to Lower Granite Dam worth about $60,000. Right now, tribal fishers are getting $1.30 a pound from wholesale fish buyers for upriver bright chinook caught above Bonneville Dam.
If federal biologists are right and more fish actually died from the added spill strategy, the region will be $80 million or so poorer and short a few thousand fall chinook from the number that could have made it back to spawning grounds above Lower Granite Dam.
About 15,000 adult wild and hatchery fall chinook made it past Lower Granite last year, helped by improving ocean conditions and a fish supplementation effort that seemed to work. For many years, returns hovered in the 1,000-fish range after Idaho Power's Hells Canyon Complex blocked forever three-quarters of the stock's spawning grounds.
Regional NMFS administrator Bob Lohn has asked his agency's Science Center in Seattle to conduct a study on the cumulative effects of the summer spill strategy on the chinook fish.
The study may be part of the government's argument when all parties to the BiOp remand meet together Sept. 30 (re-scheduled from Sept. 14) in Judge Redden's court to discuss the future of the remand. The judge had suggested in June that all sides get together to discuss flow issues. Now it seems that all parties will meet the day before the hearing in Portland to talk about river flows. Whether they actually discuss potential survival benefits from the spill regime is another matter.
On Sept. 12, the Fish Passage Center, whose funding is slated to end this year by proposed Congressional fiat, released what may be nearly the last memo from the beleaguered agency, "preliminary" analysis of the summer spill regime. It claims that inriver fish survival between Lower Granite dam and McNary dams was the highest in the past five years when the spill was underway.
The FPC analysis estimated survival from June 17 to July 15 at between 44 percent and 103 percent (95 percent confidence interval). Before the summer spill occurred, inriver survival was estimated at 40 percent to 49 percent.
But critics said it was hard to take a critical look at the analysis because it didn't include such information as sample sizes of the Pit-tagged fish counted between dams. Nor did the analysis mention that most of the fall run had passed through the lower Snake before the summer spill even started.
"This analysis is another example of low-quality science at a high cost to ratepayers," said Pacific Northwest Generating Coop vice president Scott Corwin. "It's no wonder that people are reconsidering their [the FPC] effect on the region."
But the analysis was supported by some state and tribal groups. "We've anticipated this good news, but it's still tremendous to see the data in black and white," said Robert Taylor, chair of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
"I think the memo presents a false argument," said NOAA Fisheries spokesman Brian Gorman. He said the question should not be whether inriver survival had improved this year compared to last year, but whether it's better to transport fish or leave them inriver in a low-water year. Gorman said at this stage, his agency believe it's better to transport the fish.
BPA and the Corps of Engineers are working on their own analysis of fish survival which has been promised soon. That will include an analysis of radio-tagged fall chinook smolts tracked through various passage routes at dams this summer, said Witt Anderson of the Corps of Engineers. The report should be available in a week or two.
A statement issued by Northwest River Partners, a coalition of BPA customers and river users, said the FPC analysis completely ignored fish survival once the smolts reached the Columbia River. "It does not compare in-river salmon survival to survival of transported salmon which is at the heart of the scientific debate," said the group. "It also only covers the first four weeks of the spill program and not the last six weeks which include the late summer timeframe when survival would be far less as a result of high temperatures and predation, suggesting selective use of the data." -Bill Rudolph
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