[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
[2] Lawsuit Planned Over Canadian Harvest Of ESA-Listed Stocks
A small coalition of utilities and sportsfishing groups has threatened to sue federal agencies if they don't re-open consultation over the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Citing new DNA catch data, they say nearly 90 percent of the fish landed by Canadian fishers off the west coast of Vancouver Island come from US waters and most are listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
In their intend-to-sue letter to NOAA Fisheries and the departments of State and Commerce, the Salmon Spawning and Recovery Alliance says the biological opinion written in 1999 to analyze impacts from the Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada is outdated. They point out that recent information like the DNA analysis "now show that the Canadian fisheries have a much greater impact on our ESA-listed salmon than was understood (or admitted) in 1999. This is a fishery that actively targets salmon, the vast majority of which are now known to be ESA-listed fish from US rivers."
Seattle attorney Sven Brandt-Erichsen says renewed listing decisions that include hatchery-origin fish means that they are also subject to ESA protection, a situation not contemplated in the 1999 BiOp.
The BiOp is also out of date, says the letter, because NOAA Fisheries has a better understanding of what it must do to achieve recovery of listed stocks since then, "...and it is now clear that the Canadian harvest levels on several runs are too high for those populations to recover."
The potential plaintiffs also claim that that the old BiOp on the treaty was flawed from the beginning because it didn't look at impacts of fishing on recovery prospects of the listed stocks and analyzed the impacts of Canadian harvest by comparing the proposed action to a baseline (fishing absent a treaty) "rather than aggregating impacts of harvest on the ESA-listed salmon and comparing those impacts to a recovery standard."
The letter points out that ESA-listed Snake River fall chinook make up less than 2 percent of the Vancouver Island catch, but that is more than 50 percent of the ocean catch of the listed stock. "Moreover," says the letter, "the number of Snake River Fall Chinook caught and kept in the WCVI troll fisheries alone equals the portion of the Snake River Fall run reportedly caught in all of the in-river Columbia fisheries during that same period."
The Canadians also catch many chinook bound for Puget Sound streams, where chinook are listed under the ESA for protection. According to the letter, between 1985 and 2002, BC fishers landed more than 55 percent of the Skagit River chinook caught in all fisheries, and just last year, caught 70 percent of the natural-origin chinook bound for the Nooksack.
With salmon recovery plans finally beginning to take shape, the letter notes that Canadian harvest rates will make it impossible to achieve recovery objectives. "Fisheries can sometimes take large chunks, but not now," said Brandt-Erichsen.
The letter cites information from Snohomish County's new salmon conservation plan, expected to cost $134 million over the next 10 years, that calls for limiting harvest to 24 percent while stocks are rebuilding. But actual harvest is more like 30 percent, which the letter says will likely lead to fish declines, "regardless of habitat improvements (italics theirs.)"
By implementing stock-selective harvest regimes like the recreational coho fishery off BC, which keeps only marked hatchery fish, the coalition says catches could refocus on hatchery fish "deemed unnecessary for the recovery of the ESA-listed populations."
The letter also claims that the BiOp on Canadian harvest is flawed because of its failure to satisfy at least two criteria based on the recent Oregon District Court opinion (NWF v. NMFS) on the hydro BiOp. First, because it fails to give adequate consideration to the impact of Canadian harvest on the recovery of ESA stocks. Secondly, it improperly compares harvest under the salmon treaty to a hypothetical fishery that might have occurred without a treaty, "instead of measuring the cumulative impact of all harvest on the listed stocks against a recovery standard."
According to Judge James Redden's recent ruling, the coalition says both are "fatal flaws." At present, the coalition includes the sport groups Fish First and Friends of the East Fork, and Snohomish PUD, one of BPA's largest customers. Several other groups supported the letter, including the Native Fish Society and the Clark-Skamania Fly Fishers. -B. R.
[3] New BiOp Talks Shaping Up To Satisfy Judge
What's next for the hydro BiOp? That depends on who you talk to. With U.S. District Judge James Redden calling for collaboration between all parties on issues like flow augmentation, and scheduling a status conference for Sept. 30, regional participants have different ideas on what should be done next.
One thing, however, is perfectly clear. Environmental lawyers say that status quo operations are not adequate for ESA-listed fishes' needs. They like a plan that could add $300 million to annual hydro costs.
It also looks like the four-state talks with federal agencies over the next 10 years' worth of hydro operations are pretty much dead for the time being, since Washington has basically said any discussion should focus on what the judge wants.
Meanwhile, sources said that Justice Department attorneys will ask Redden to issue a final order in the BiOp case (NWF v. NMFS) at the hearing so they can begin an appeal process in the Ninth Circuit.
A recent decision in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals may have buoyed spirits in the Justice Department. In a case where environmental groups sued the Corps of Engineers over its Missouri River operations, the court found the Corps was due deference for its expertise on all points of the suit. In a footnote to its ruling, it said, "If future circumstances arise in which Endangered Species Act compliance would force the Corps to abandon the dominant FCA purposes of flood control or downstream navigation, the Endangered Species Act [ESA] would not apply."
Judge Redden and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Panel that upheld his ruling on court-ordered spill have not given federal agencies deference for their expertise on river issues like the value of spill. In fact, the Niners' July ruling even remarked that the government didn't deserve deference because it had changed its methodology for determining jeopardy to listed stocks from the earlier BiOp.
NMFS spokesman Brian Gorman told NW Fishletter that it's up to the Justice Department and the Solicitor General to decide whether to appeal, not his own agency. "I've been told, that on no uncertain terms, that's the case." Gorman said. He expected that government attorneys would have more to say on the topic at the Sept. 30 hearing.
Since Redden granted the court-ordered spill on June 10, one Justice Department attorney who had worked for years on hydro BiOp litigation, has been replaced. Fred Disheroon will no longer be involved in the BiOp case, but he said he will still work on U.S. v. Oregon issues, the ongoing Columbia River harvest and hatchery polices being developed between lower Columbia Tribes, the feds and Washington and Oregon. Justice Department attorney Robert Gulley has been assigned to the BiOp litigation as lead attorney.
While the feds seem ready to charge forward and appeal the BiOp on mainly procedural grounds, reportedly ready to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if need be, they are also committed to collaborating with plaintiffs in the case over hydro operations in the short term. While the BiOp goes through another remand, Redden had told all sides to get together and discuss flow issues, which they plan to do at a meeting now scheduled for Sept. 29.
Jan Hasselman, attorney for lead plaintiff National Wildlife Federation, said his side would prefer to work out a new plan while the remand is going on. "We'll work with the states and tribes to see if we can do that," Hasselman said. But if the feds are unwilling to implement more protective measures for listed fish, the plaintiffs will go back to the judge and ask for them, as they did with summer spill, he said.
Hasselman told NW Fishletter that his group would likely support dam operations more in line with the 2004 river operations plan developed by the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) or last January's plan from the state of Oregon.
Oregon Plan, not
But the so-called "Oregon Plan," was never really a plan at all, said Mike Carrier, natural resource advisor to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski. He said it was more of a collection of ideas to begin a regional discussion on future dam operations. After conversations with the Corps of Engineers about the more draconian measures like deep drawdowns of Columbia and lower Snake reservoirs, Oregon officials found some of the proposals would have seriously impaired salmon passage without expensive dam modifications, and would have had adverse impacts on irrigators and the barge industry.
"We learned a lot of interesting things about it [the plan]," Karrier said. He welcomed a chance to share Oregon's new knowledge of hydro reality with plaintiffs at a forum later this month.
The original Oregon proposals also borrowed heavily from the annual CRITFC river operations plan, which calls for 24-hour spill at most dams from early April until the end of August to aid juvenile fish passage, along with more water from Canada and Idaho. Its scope is similar to the theoretical "reference" operation described in the 2004 BiOp which has been used as a yardstick to estimate fish survival from dam operations maxed out for the benefit of listed stocks--an operation that the Bonneville Power Administration has estimated would add $280 million a year to the current cost of running the hydro system according to current BiOp mandates.
There has been some discussion over using a third party, like the independent science panel used by NMFS and the Power Council, to make judgements about the flow issues and other areas of debate that will undoubtedly be brought up during the next remand.
"We are concerned about what injunctive relief might be enjoined," said Scott Corwin, vice-president of the Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative. He questioned the biological value of this summer's court-ordered spill, asking where in the record is there any evidence that shows benefits to the fall chinook. BPA still hasn't computed the cost of the added spill, but says it's likely in the upper range of its $57 million to $81 million estimate.
Corwin said BPA customers value some certainty about hydro operations over the next few years and hope an agreement can be reached as long-term recovery plans begin to take hold.
Other customers are more pessimistic. One, who did not wish to be identified, said he couldn't see much to be gained from further discussions with plaintiffs over flow and spill, noting that mediation efforts had already failed before the latest round of BiOp litigation. But he was also critical of the feds' preoccupation with its prospective appeal. "The feds are playing chicken with the ESA," he said. -Bill Rudolph
[4] Montana, Kootenai Join Biop Fray
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has announced that his state will join the ongoing litigation over the 2004 hydro BiOp (NWF vs. NMFS). Other Northwest states have been intervenors in the latest courtroom battle over future operations of the federal hydro system that began after a 2002 mediation effort failed. The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho has also intervened on the side of the federal government.
U.S. District Judge James Redden tossed out the 2004 BiOp last May, and he has scheduled a status hearing for Sept. 14 to discuss the future of the remand process. The 2004 BiOp was the product of an earlier remand, when Redden invalidated the 2000 hydro BiOp.
"Montana is always hesitant to jump head first into a lawsuit," Gov. Schweitzer said. "However, the time has come to make sure that the interests of the people of Montana are heard. Montana intends to present a moderate voice in this otherwise contentious arena."
Montana's latest move came after another futile attempt to change reservoir operations in its own state. "Our latest experience at the TMT and IT [river forums] prompted us to join in," said Bruce Measure, one of the state's two representatives to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Measure was referring to recent meetings of the technical management and implementation teams that govern hydro operations, where Montana argued hard this summer to modify BiOp-mandated water releases from two large federal reservoirs. The past few BiOps have called for the extra water to improve flows in the Columbia for the benefit of ESA-listed migrating salmon and steelhead, though it has been hard for researchers to develop a flow/survival relationship for juvenile salmon.
The state's position has been backed up by an amendment in the Power Council's latest fish and wildlife program that calls for an evaluation of flattened flows from Libby and Hungry Horse to benefit resident fish populations like listed bull trout and sturgeon.
A Council-sponsored flow symposium last fall found an independent science panel endorsing the amendment. The panel said the change in flows from the added Montana water was too small to measure any survival difference in juvenile fish.
But USFWS representatives said last July that still wasn't a good enough reason to approve the change. They argued at the monthly IT meeting that every little bit of water improved flows, even the 5 to 7 kcfs that Montana provided, because the system was nowhere near reaching the summer flow targets at McNary Dam of 200 kcfs. In fact, the Corps of Engineers has pegged the average summer flows this year at only 160 kcfs. Without consensus, the Montana proposal was nixed for the second year in a row.
NOAA Fisheries said it couldn't support the Montana proposal without consensus among forum members. Besides that, they said plaintiffs in the BiOp case, environmental and fishing groups, probably wouldn't OK the changes, because the modification went outside the base operations in the biological opinion.
The Montana press release said its interests weren't just focused on reservoir operations though. The state also has concerns about the costs of dam spill for salmon migration, especially the $70 million added to this year's costs from Judge Redden's court order. The states' wheat and grain farmers rely heavily on the Columbia/Snake barge industry as a shipping alternative to the railroads for exporting their products, and that route would be jeopardized if reservoirs were drawn down below navigable levels.
The Kootenai Tribe said it wanted to intervene in the proceedings to ensure that its interests were adequately protected. Since flows out of Libby Dam in the Kootenai River will be determined by the next BiOp remand, the results will have "lasting consequences" for fish stocks managed by the tribe, including ESA white sturgeon and bull trout, could damage or uncover cultural resources, and might cause flooding of tribal lands and property.-B. R.
[5] Business Coalition Weighs In On Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Effort
The Puget Sound ESA Business Coalition has filed initial comments about the region's draft salmon recovery plan developed by a huge collaboration of local governments, state, tribal federal agencies, and watershed groups.
The filing says the plan should focus on delisting stocks, rather than recovering them to levels of sustainable harvest. "We have to recognize that we do have limited resources," said coalition chair Allison Butcher.
The habitat improvement plan is called the Shared Salmon Strategy, and when it's completed, federal fish authorities hope to use it for the basis of their own plan to recover ESA-listed chinook and chum stocks in the Sound. The plan is scheduled for release by the end of the year.
The business coalition says actions should be prioritized before recovery strategies are placed into programs to meet city and county Growth Management Act planning deadlines, as the Shared Strategy advocates.
The coalition also says the recovery goals in the draft plan should be subject to future modification through the application of adaptive management principles and practices.
Butcher told NW Fishletter that the plan is unclear about transferring mitigation funding to salmon projects in program budgets where mitigation is already earmarked for other purposes.
She said the planners should recognize that federal salmon dollars may be shrinking next year, especially from the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund that has paid for millions in projects from Alaska to Oregon.
"Some of these watershed proposals are awfully expensive," Butcher said, adding that Congress wants performance measures put in before it votes for more recovery funding. She also said hatchery operations and harvest practices should be integrated into any final plan. With so many Puget Sound fish caught in Canada, she said, there needs to be more focus on renegotiating the international salmon treaty, although talks on the subject aren't scheduled until 2008.
Butcher said these comments are just preliminary, but when the draft recovery plan is available in the Federal Register, the coalition will provide detailed responses on many of the issues. The Puget Sound Business Coalition includes the Boeing Co., Weyerhaeuser and the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish counties. -B. R.
[6] Terry Flores Named Director Of Northwest River Partners
Terry Flores, director of hydro relicensing for PacifiCorp, has been chosen to lead a new coalition of Bonneville Power Administration customer groups, river users and irrigators called Northwest River Partners.
The new group is largely made up of members of the old Coalition for Smart Salmon Recovery and includes members of another Columbia Basin user group, the River Forum, mainly made up of ports and navigation interests.
Flores says she is excited about her new position, which will focus on fish recovery issues and the hydro system. She said her previous relicensing experience included much to do with fish passage issues and concerns over endangered species. On her watch at PacifiCorp, seven of the company's nine hydro projects have been settled or relicensed. Flores spent 18 years at PacifiCorp, with the last six years in the relicensing arena. -B. R.
[7] Big Fish Days At Bonneville Dam
The fall chinook run in the Columbia River has finally picked up, abating concern that the run might be more than just late this year. Nearly 124,000 fish were counted going past Bonneville Dam in the past week alone, along with several recent 23,000-plus days, adding up about 276,000 fish so far. Last year, about 350,000 chinook had passed the dam by Sept. 12.
Harvest managers originally expected 677,000 chinook to enter the mouth of the river, about 477,000 of them brights headed for spawning beds and hatcheries above Bonneville Dam. On Sept. 12, they revised their estimate of upriver brights headed for the Hanford Reach to 312,000 fish from 354,600 pre-season.
Warm inshore ocean temperatures have played havoc with the timing of this year's salmon runs. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife even reported a sports fisherman hooked a marlin 40 miles off Westport two weeks ago, only the third time one had been reportedly caught in the region. The state stopped chinook retention on Sept. 9, but offshore waters are still open for coho.
The average water temperature in the Columbia during August was the warmest since 1998, but has begun to cool, while sport catches in the river have picked up.
By the end of the month, sporties had caught nearly 27,000 chinook in the lower river, with commercial gillnetters landing 11,430.
Tribal fishermen have begun fishing above Bonneville Dam and announced they were selling fish to the public from several sites along the river.
North of the border, Canadian harvest analysts said their summer sockeye run was still showing signs of life, coming in much later than usual. Pre-season estimates of 11 million fish had been downgraded to 3 million at one point, but the late-returning bluebacks made managers boost their estimate to five, six and now seven million fish.
However, concerns over another late-running weak stock has kept British Columbian commercial fishers tied up all summer. The political fallout is continuing from that decision, and a small group of commercial gillnetters protested by setting their nets in defiance of the season-long closure -B. R.
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