[2] Salmon Managers Fight Corps Over Spill For March Hatchery Release
Mid-level policy managers have rejected a request to allow five days of spill in early March to help millions of Spring Creek hatchery fall chinook get past Bonneville Dam. They were handed the task by the Corps of Engineers, which had punted on the request by salmon managers. In the end, the salmon managers lost the fight, with the Corps citing recent data that showed more fish would probably die if spill was added.
On Mar. 3, the new corner collector at the dam was opened to pass fish, and will stay in operation until Mar. 8, or when 95 percent of the fish are past the dam.
Spilling water for the fish could have cost BPA $1 million or more. Insiders say it was a shakedown by USFWS staffers to apply financial pressure on Bonneville to force the power-marketing agency to cough up several hundred thousand dollars to help pay for moving Spring Creek hatchery operations to facilities below the dam. Once the fish are produced below the dam, spill in March would be unnecessary.
Moving the fall chinook (tule) production is part of a continuing policy discussion that would also add more hatchery-produced upriver brights above McNary Dam, an option supported by lower Columbia tribes that would benefit economically by catching more of the upriver chinook in their fishing zone. The firmer-fleshed upriver brights are worth considerably more than tules at harvest time.
In past years, spilling water for up to 10 days in early March for the 7.5-million-fish release was standard operating procedure, even though survival benefits from the costly operation were expected to be meager at best. But USFWS managers had always argued that the tules were a mainstay of ocean fisheries off Washington and British Columbia, and that the U.S. was obligated by treaty to maintain that run as best it could. The hatchery releases another 7.5 million fish later in the spring, and critics have long complained that the early release of the unfed fry results in low survivals, with or without spill, and is mostly a housekeeping chore by hatchery personnel to make room for the later releases.
However, with the addition of the corner collector, a new passage route at Bonneville Dam's Powerhouse II, fish survival has improved considerably, and dam operators have hoped that the early spill strategy could end.
The fish managers had agreed with BPA and the Corps of Engineers in February 2004 that they would forgo spill in 2005 and 2006 for the early hatchery release unless they saw significant problems with the new corner collector.
But now, the salmon managers say without spill, operators won't reach the long-established goal of getting at least 85 percent of the juvenile fish past the dam via routes other than turbines.
However, preliminary survival numbers from different passage routes shows that the spillway at Bonneville is the worst way for a fish to pass that dam. Studies from 2004 and 2005 show that spillway survival routes were 91 percent and 93 percent, respectively, while passage even through turbines was higher, 95 percent and 97 percent. Survival through the juvenile bypass system was even better, and fish using the corner collector showed no signs of mortality from passing through it.
A recent analysis by the Corps says that subyearling fall chinook may actually show improved survival via the 50 kcfs spill option, since they are smaller in size. However, if fish survival is more closely linked to time of year, the spring chinook analysis should point to a zero spill decision, the Corps' analysis says.
However, the salmon managers didn't mention anything about the passage survival numbers in their Feb. 16 operations request.
The Corps said that it doesn't make much difference whether spring chinook or fall chinook data was used, the survival difference between spill and no spill would be essentially immeasurable, on the order of a couple of percent. In fact, no spill at all may actually increase survival of the hatchery fish.
But the salmon managers pointed to acoustic studies from March 2004 that showed that fish passage efficiency for spill (54 percent) and the corner collector (45 percent) were well below the long-established goal that calls for 85 percent of the fish passing dams via routes other than turbines.
They are also called for a 14.5-foot minimum tailwater elevation to protect ESA-listed chum redds below the dam from dissolved gas generated by the spill.
The managers pointed to the low jack return in 2005 as evidence that passage through the corner collector at Bonneville may not be as benign as some think.
The old trump cards used by USFWS to justify special treatment for the early Spring Creek release, that they are mandated to produce these fall chinook to comply with obligations to mitigate for dam losses and the Pacific Salmon Treaty, do have some validity. The Spring Creek stock is one of the index stocks used by regional scientists to measure harvest impacts by various fisheries in the two countries. The hang-up is that the ESA-listed wild stock from the lower Columbia is mixed in with the hatchery tules and harvested at rates critics say are too high. About half of them are caught. But no one has any accurate data to determine how much of the catch is made of the early release from Spring Creek Hatchery.
A recent analysis of the Canadian catch using both DNA and code-wire-tag data estimates that about 44 percent of 2004's 166,000 commercial troll harvest off the west coast of Vancouver Island was made up of lower Columbia fall chinook, the vast majority hatchery fish. The rest are caught in U.S. troll and sport fisheries off the Washington coast and in the Columbia River.
NOAA scientist Dell Simmons said the DNA analysis has been reworked because its initial findings, reported at a Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting last July, were flawed. According to Simmons, the coded-wire tag data had been misinterpreted. Simmons said the stock compositions don't change too much in the revision, but another category of chinook, "unknown mass-marked hatchery fish," had to be added to the analysis. He said the new group made up about 12 percent of the catch off Vancouver Island, and they are likely fish from southern U.S. hatcheries, probably lower Columbia tules.
Simmons said the CWT data is up-to-date, as well. At the annual meeting of the Pacific Salmon Commission two weeks ago, Canadians stated they are not storing two years' worth of fish heads in freezers as some other biologists had alleged, which they said was frustrating their efforts at timely analysis of the harvests.
On Feb. 24, at a meeting of tribes, states and federal agencies, salmon managers could not convince the Corps to add five days of spill, and refused to elevate the discussion up a notch to the federal agency executives. So the issue went back to the technical management team for a final review sans spill.
Howard Schaller, USFWS representative, said the salmon managers feel they are not getting the survival performance out of the new collector that was expected to be on a par with spill. He told participants that no spill would be necessary if action agencies coughed up funding to help reprogram hatchery operations below the dam. He said his agency has already committed more than $500,000 to the project. He said if agencies added funds, "it seems to me, that's the issue that would get us out of even having to have these discussions, period."
Fish managers were not ready to accept the Corps' data on passage survival as the new yardstick for measuring effectiveness of dam passage modifications. They said for now, they wanted to maintain the 85 percent fish passage efficiency standard, even if more fish were shown to die via the spillway than even the turbines.
Corps spokesman Rock Peters said his agency felt that no spill was the right decision. BPA representative Rick Pendergrass said his agency agreed with the Corps.
NOAA representatives stayed out of the fight, but CRITFC representative Bob Heinith expressed concern that with two turbines out near the corner collector, it might not pass as many fish as the Corps has found from earlier studies. Corps biologists said they felt the collector would still function as advertised.
WDFW's Bill Twiet said he felt frustrated, but the managers were stuck with the old fish passage efficiency standard, even though it might not be the best measure anymore. -B. R.
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