[1] West Coast Salmon Recovery Fund Fully Restored . . . For Now

Western Washington politicians got together last month to praise the efforts of Sen. Patty Murray for restoring millions of dollars to the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund in the latest appropriations fight in Congress. It's part of a large effort to improve salmon numbers that was developed during negotiations over the renewal of the U.S.-Canada salmon treaty in 1999, and given every year to West Coast states, Idaho, some tribes, and Alaska for restoring salmon runs.

But the fund was pared back in this year's White House Budget to $67 million from its $90-million request in previous years, and the House version of the spending bill contained only $20 million for the fund. Last year, Congress approved only $67 million, compared to $88 million in 2005. However, the $80 million designated for FY 2007 could still be cut by conference committee.

Through FY 2005, Congress has appropriated $377 million for the fund, with states contributing nearly $200 million on their own.

What has the region received for those millions?

In a 2005 report to Congress, the National Marine Fisheries Service said more than 3,000 stream miles in the Northwest have been restored and over 3,500 fish blockages have been removed.

Last year, Washington and Alaska received the lion's share of the funds, $24.6 million, and $23.2 million, respectively. Oregon and California each got $12.8 million, while Columbia River tribes received $2.8 million, and other coastal tribes got $1.3 million.

But the White House Office of Management and Budget has generally given the PCSRF a poor performance rating, noting that the program has only recently developed performance metrics. Up to now, the fund has also not been able "to allocate funds to address the recovery needs of specific salmon while regions with no threatened or endangered salmon species have received significant portions of funding."

However, an independent review of the fund commissioned by NOAA Fisheries, and released last April, found the program hasn't been around long enough for its effects on salmon populations to be judged.

The review, by Ross and Associates, said that many of the PCSRF investments are "producing the intended programmatic outputs and therefore contributing to the program's long-term goal of ensuring the sustainability of Pacific salmon." It also said that significant work was needed "to refocus some current activities and pursue future activities."

The state of Oregon got into hot water last year when NOAA Fisheries accused it of backfilling its fish and wildlife budget, including salaries, with money from the fund.

Meanwhile, Alaska has used millions in PCSRF dollars to pay for salmon marketing efforts, and to pump fish sales from Southeast Alaska stocks to Yukon River chinook, which sells in Seattle for $25/lb.

Mike Carrier, natural resource policy director for Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, told NW Fishletter that the recovery funding issue has been "all straightened out" with federal funds now dedicated to monitoring Oregon's listed runs and developing recovery plans.

The Ross and Associates report said Alaska, "especially," needed to prioritize its funding to focus on the goal of sustainable salmon. It noted a list of projects that ranged from designing a $3-million-plus hatchery for the city of Fairbanks, more than $1 million to begin building a new small boat harbor at Adak in the Aleutian Islands, and using $144,000 to develop a program to buy back boats in the over-capitalized southeast Alaska purse seine fishery.

The report found that Alaska paid for three marketing projects and three product quality projects in 2004, seven fishing industry projects and 12 others that focused on salmon enhancement and harvest management.

Marketing projects included a $5 million campaign to boost salmon sales, and another $2 million to fund a wild salmon "consumer education campaign."

The report recommended, particularly for Alaska, the development of a transparent and consistent approach for prioritizing types of salmon enhancement and harvest management efforts.

Idaho has tapped into the program late. In 2004, it used more than 90 percent of its $4.7 million share on habitat restoration

In Washington, the PCSRF funding provides the backbone for statewide recovery efforts led by the state's Salmon Recovery Funding Board, which adds some state money derived from general obligation bonds.

About $11 million of the board's $26 million was doled out among the six counties in the Puget Sound region this year. There, the Shared Strategy participants are in the midst of an exercise to develop more realistic funding parameters after announcing in late June that the cost of implementing the three-year work plans for the Sound's 14 watersheds would add up to $432 million.

No funding decisions have yet been made, said Shared Strategy associate director Jagoda Perich-Anderson, who added that a regional watershed council is working to come up with a plan that will cost about half of that $432-million estimate over the next three years.

The recurring theme of salmon recovery groups is one of chronic underfunding. American Rivers estimated last February that the PCSRF should be funded at no less than $200 million per year. In the past, the group said Senators Wyden (D-Ore.), Smith (R-Ore.), Crapo (R-Idaho), Craig (R-Idaho), Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Boxer (D-Calif.) have supported legislation authorizing the fund at $350 million per year.

Now, another new process has developed in Western Washington called the Puget Sound Partnership, which has just delivered an interim report to Gov. Gregoire on the health of Puget Sound. The report found that current restoration efforts aren't even maintaining the present quality of its waters.

Puget Sound Partnership is calling for a new ecosystem-based approach to protect and restore the region, and for new flexibility in the next state budget to accomplish it, because the $570 million now dedicated each biennium to conserving the Sound, its species, and to reducing pollution isn't enough.

The partnership said 70 percent of that $570 million is in the form of loans and grants to local governments, and is allocated for upgrades or construction of wastewater treatment plants. The second largest category is mitigation for transportation projects. "A much smaller remainder" is for direct protection and restoration actions in Puget Sound.

The PSP report says the state will need to spend more to ensure ecosystem results. They say implementing the regional salmon plan will "significantly contribute" to the overall health of the region, but funding for the plan is "largely absent" from the state budget. Without a "significant infusion of funding, they warned that salmon recovery expectations and timelines "will need to be adjusted."

But the Puget Sound group may have a whale of a job trying to sell the plan to the public, regardless of the fact that local killer whales are now listed under the ESA and Puget Sound chinook have some of the highest PCB levels of salmon anywhere on the planet.

An opinion poll commissioned by the group last spring found that three out of four people rated the environmental health of Puget Sound "pretty good" (66 percent) to "excellent" (7 percent). The polltakers said after respondents heard messages about the Sound's environmental health, 58 percent still rated it in the "pretty-good" and "excellent" categories.

The report said most "opinion leaders" polled in the region considered the Sound's condition to be "average" or "good," and that other issues like transportation, education, population growth and housing were more important concerns. The PSP has given the green light for Seattle public affairs firm Cocker-Fennessy to develop an "ambitious" public education plan, according to the May 25 opinion survey that can be viewed on the PSP's Web site ( pugetsoundpartnership.org).

But with state fish managers announcing an extension of the Lake Washington sockeye fishery because of a 466,000-fish return (more than double the preseason estimate), it may be tougher than ever to convince the public that the Sound and nearby waters are in a state of crisis. -Bill Rudolph

[2] Feds Tell BiOp Judge Breaching Not In The Cards

U.S. attorneys have told a federal judge that they aren't going to include a dam breaching alternative in their quest for a court-approved solution to salmon operations at Columbia and Snake River dams.

Plaintiff environmental and fishing groups have been pushing for the lower Snake breaching alternative to be studied in the so-called "collaborative" process between federal agencies, states and tribes that is trying to forge an agreement over the salmon science behind the next BiOp. Lower Columbia tribes also wanted an "aggressive, non-breach" strategy to be studied as well.

But Justice Department attorney Robert Gulley brought six boxes of documents into U.S. District Judge James Redden's court at the July 21 status conference containing the Corps' years-long feasibility study of lower Snake dam breaching.

"We're not going to go there," Gulley told Redden. He said the Corps of Engineers had been studying that option since 1992 and spent $20 million on it, also noting that drawdowns and dam breaching are not consistent with the scope of the present action. Nor does the Corps even have the authority to implement these types of operations.

Gulley also dismissed other potential alternatives, such as the spillway-crest drawdown option pushed by lower Columbia tribes. He said the consequences of that option for salmon passage would be severe, because removable spillway weirs wouldn't operate, juvenile bypass systems and adult fish ladders wouldn't work, and barge navigation--including the juvenile fish transportation program--would have to end.

The U.S. attorney also assured Judge Redden that the Bonneville Power Administration's latest rate case wouldn't restrict funding future ESA obligations, and agreed to supply a brief to the judge on the topic.

The feds also promised to send another memo the judge's' way, one that describes the agencies' latest thinking on how it will conduct its jeopardy analyses of dam effects on ESA-listed stocks, with another copy going to plaintiffs.

Sources said the draft jeopardy memo already circulating among some parties is very non-specific in nature--but outlines the basic direction the feds will be headed--that the dams do jeopardize the listed stocks, a conclusion that last BiOp (2004) did not reach because it separated the dams' existence from their operation.

In their response to the feds' latest status update, plaintiffs want the government to "clearly articulate" the jeopardy standard and analysis to be used.

Redden, who seemed to take his cues from a litany of treaty tribe complaints, also asked the feds about the state of the northeast Oregon hatchery funding designed to add more spring chinook to the Snake River population. The Bonneville Power Administration is awaiting approval from NOAA Fisheries before it will fund a $16-million hatchery upgrade.

Gulley told the judge that, on the one hand, hatcheries could play valuable recovery and harvest roles, but, on the other, poorly managed facilities could hurt wild fish stocks. He said hatcheries will be looked at during the remand, but the feds haven't developed management goals for the different ESUs [Evolutionarily Significant Units]. Gulley told the judge that BPA needs more information before it funds the facility to make sure the northeast Oregon upgrade falls "on the right side of the ledger."

Redden observed that more time may be needed to complete the remand than allowed by the February deadline now scheduled, especially since the feds have to look at Upper Snake operations as well, thanks to a recent Redden ruling.

After the hearing, plaintiff environmental and fish groups issued a press release that accused federal agencies of heading down "an all too familiar path that involves only minor changes in dam operations." Earthjustice attorney Todd True said they were "simply asking" the feds to evaluate the biological benefits of "several significant alternatives" to current operations.

The groups said, despite the court's previous admonition that the federal agencies cannot ignore dam removal, the government still refuses to look at breaching the four lower Snake dams.

But at the status hearing, Redden didn't order the feds to look at more draconian alternatives, despite the enviros' continued message that removing the dams is the only action shown so far that can restore the fish populations.

That's a different conclusion from the Corps' $20 million study on the lower Snake, which led to the 2000 BiOp. Ocean conditions were so poor in the late 1990s that federal scientists said then that even by removing the dams, adult return rates would be too poor to achieve recovery unless juvenile fish numbers could be substantially boosted before the fish even entered the hydro system.

This line of thinking led to the 2000 BiOp's 199 actions designed to improve fish numbers, many of them focused on improving habitat throughout the Columbia Basin. Policy makers estimated another $200 million to $300 million in added annual costs would be needed that would also pay for an offsite mitigation plan designed to save the hydro system's bacon. However, that came with a caveat--if the dams met performance standards for juvenile and adult fish survival, but off-site improvement goals weren't met, the four lower Snake dams could still be in jeopardy.

But in 2003 Judge Redden threw out the 2000 BiOp, mainly because there wasn't any guarantee that most of the offsite mitigation was "reasonably certain" to occur. Since then, return rates of most ESA-listed stocks have vastly improved with better ocean conditions, despite a dip in survival for the past couple years. Cooling ocean waters may have improved fish survival once again this past spring.

The feds promised Judge Redden to put the fish on the road to recovery and said they were committed to filling the gaps between current fish numbers and ultimate goals through improvements in habitat, harvest, hatcheries and hydro. According to their latest status report, they have generated an estimate of that portion of fish mortality that can be attributed to the hydro system, but it's still under wraps. The gaps, however, quietly went public in the middle of May (NW Fishletter 215), and some of these are close to what appeared in the BiOp over five years ago.

In the 2000 BiOp, the survival gap for Snake River spring chinook that needed to be filled by habitat improvements was estimated from 53 percent to 98 percent. The latest analysis hasn't changed the goal all that much--29 percent to 88 percent improvement is needed, depending on ocean conditions, including hydro.

For some other listed stocks in the interior Columbia, the latest gap analysis by the interior Columbia Technical Recovery Team shows smaller differences, and with ESUs like the Middle Columbia and Snake River steelhead, there may be no gaps at all.

In the 2000 BiOp, the mid-C steelhead gap was estimated from 122 percent to 268 percent. For the Snake River steelhead, it was 72 percent to nearly 300 percent.

For upper Columbia spring chinook, the 2000 BiOp said the ESU needed a 55 percent to 86 percent improvement. The latest assessment says the spring chinook suffer from a 53 percent gap at best.

Listed steelhead from that part of the basin need more than a 300-percent improvement in survival to reach the 5-percent risk level under the most optimistic analysis. In 2000, the needed steelhead improvement was estimated from 47 percent to 243 percent.

But two weeks ago at the July Power Council meeting, NMFS scientists said that the region could only expect to wring about 5 percent better survival from the hydro system in the lower Snake, even after removable spillway weirs are installed.

That means the next BiOp will be faced with filling most of the gaps with improvements outside the hydro corridor, similar to the 2000 BiOp. But sources said that during the remand process, little progress is being made on harvest and hatchery fronts, so it's likely that prospective habitat improvements will play the largest role in reducing the gaps between current fish numbers and fish goals of healthy runs and sustainable harvests. -B. R.

[3] Compromise Operation Developed For Montana Reservoirs

Regional policymakers have developed a compromise for August operations at Montana's Libby and Hungry Horse reservoirs. The one-year agreement calls for drawing them both down about 10 feet by the end of August, instead of the 20 feet the hydro BiOp calls for to augment flows in the mainstem Columbia River for the outmigration of ESA-listed fish.

The state has been pushing change for the past ten years, which includes a call for steady outflows through the summer to lessen adverse effects on resident fish downstream of the projects. A double spike in flows from BiOp operations was detrimental to resident fish, the state said. Keeping the reservoirs at higher elevations helps boost basic biological productivity along shorelines.

But the latest proposal, officially requested in late May, was a dead duck just a few weeks ago, nixed by the state of Oregon and three of four lower Columbia tribes because it wasn't "flow-neutral." Oregon had actually supported the plan years earlier, when it was added to the region's fish and wildlife program and approved by all four Northwest states.

Last year, an independent science panel that reports to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council thought it was a good idea, too. They said any benefits to downstream migrants were likely too small to be measured.

Montana still offered more water in poor-flow years, and proposed drawing down its reservoirs the full 20 feet in the lowest 20 percent of water years. In other years, it wanted outflows stretched through September to minimize adverse effects to the biological productivity of the reservoirs.

A last-minute compromise over the one-year deal was offered by NOAA Fisheries, whose representative John Palensky said last month his agency would only back Montana if the state could gain "a large measure" of regional agreement for the operation.

Representatives of Oregon and the tribes didn't object to the proposal at a July 18 meeting in Portland. On July 27, the Corps of Engineers began reducing outflows at Libby from 17 kcfs to 14.4 kcfs, and from 5.4 kcfs to 3.0 kcfs at Hungry Horse, expecting to keep them steady through the end of August.

The "flow-neutral" issue was countered by news that there was water in Canada available for flow augmentation right now. The Bonneville Power Administration had made a deal with BC Hydro earlier in the year to hold back a large volume of water to reduce dissolved gas levels in the spring at mainstem Columbia dams. The water is now being released, and is estimated to be boosting flows at McNary by about 14.5 kcfs.

That change will help fish in Montana, said Brian Marotz, fisheries program manager with his state's Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Parks.

He said optimal flows for Montana fish would be in the 6 kcfs to 9 kcfs range, and the state would look at the situation around Aug. 15, probably to recommend stepping down flows at that time and continuing them into September.

Last year, flows out of Libby averaged about 18 kcfs for the first half August, and stepped down to 12 kcfs by the end of the month, with the elevation down 17 feet.

In 2004, outflows were flatter, averaging about 13 kcfs in August. But that year, the reservoir was filling through July, and only ended August about two feet below its July elevation of 2,450 feet, about 10 feet below full.

But to get the reservoirs down the full 20 feet, as the BiOp calls for, would mean outflows of 20 kcfs at Libby, and 6 kcfs at Hungry Horse, which Montana says would be detrimental to its resident fish.

Marotz said his state is trying to keep the big picture--salmon recovery--in mind, but it questions the ultimate value of its contribution to summer flow augmentation. He said the state had estimated a 20 kcfs flow out of Libby would increase water velocity at McNary Dam on the mainstem Columbia by about 0.6 cm/sec, far below any detectable levels.

High outflows earlier this spring caused widespread gas bubble trauma in fish below Libby Dam. Along with the high spill at Libby, flows were up to 31 kcfs, said Marotz. He said between 80 and 100 percent of the trout below the dam showed signs of gas bubble disease. After fish surveys are completed this fall, managers will have a better idea of how the fish fared, though Marotz told NW Fishletter that it looks like "the bulk of them recovered." Dissolved gas levels ranged up to 131 percent during that period. -B. R.

[4] PacifiCorp Says Klamath Dam Removal May Be OK With Them

PacifiCorp Energy president Bill Fehrman said last week that his utility wasn't opposed to removal of its projects on the Klamath River if a future settlement safeguarded the economic interests of its customers. The dam removal issue has heated up lately, with the project in the middle of a re-licensing process that has focused on improving fish runs above the dams as a probable major condition for re-licensing the project.

But after poor chinook returns the past few years, along with drastic cuts in commercial ocean fishing and reduced opportunities for tribes in the river, the clamor for dam removal has increased. Last week, Northern California tribes demonstrated in favor of removing the dams in Portland during a national hydropower conference.

"We have heard the tribes' concerns," Fehrman said on Aug. 2. "We are not opposed to dam removal or other settlement opportunities as long as our customers are not harmed and our property rights are respected."

PacifiCorp spokesman Dave Kvamme said he had no dollar-estimate for the cost of replacement power, but he said the expense of building a new, high-efficiency combustion turbine and running it for 30 to 40 years to replace the 735,000 MW-hours the project now produces every year for 70,000 residential customers would be "considerable."

The utility has proposed a $50-million trap and haul program at its project, but NOAA Fisheries and the USFWS recommended installation of fish ladders, though they said dam removal would be the best way to re-colonize blocked portions of the river.

PacifiCorp estimated fish ladders would cost $200 million to install, more than the expense of removing the dams. But dam removal proponents argue that fish ladders won't fix the problems associated with toxic algae and temperature. In 2002, 30,000 or more chinook died from high water temperatures that critics said could have been prevented by higher flows.

A five-day hearing is scheduled to begin Aug. 21 in Sacramento, allowed under new rules in last year's energy bill that gives licensees and others the chance to challenge and file alternatives to the conditions imposed by divisions of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Interior.

PacifiCorp's Kvamme said the hearing will give the utility a chance to question many points of material fact in the filings filed by fish agencies and others. One major issue is whether more flows will help the fish. The utility says the water quality is already degraded before it enters the project.

The utility says there are still many issues that need to be sorted out, including uncertainties over reintroduction of anadromous fish to areas within and above the project. Neither NMFS nor USFWS has estimated the potential benefits in fish numbers from adding ladders to the projects.

PacifiCorp's 50 hydropower facilities are located in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Montana and generate about 1,073 megawatts of electricity, about 11 percent of the total capacity of the utility's sources of power. -B. R.

[5] Nearly Half Million Fall Chinook Expected In The Columbia River

Regional harvest managers produced their latest expectations for the coming fall run in the Columbia and it's pretty much in line with recent years. They are predicting about 474,000 fall chinook to return over the next couple of months, down from the 561,000-fish return last year. About 250,000 chinook are expected to return to the Hanford Reach area, close to the 10-year average.

Over 300,000 steelhead are expected as well, almost identical to last year's return, with over 62,000 wild A-run steelhead and more than 10,000 B-run steelhead.

Coho returns are likely to be down about 90,000 fish from last year's return of 347, 000, with a poor return of 67,000 expected of the late-run coho.

Managers also expect a strong return of chinook to the net-pen fisheries in the lower Columbia. The net-pen program was created for commercial gillnetters to reduce impacts on ESA-listed stocks like the Snake River fall chinook, where overall harvest rates (ocean and inriver) are estimated in the 50-percent range. Sports and commercial inriver fishermen are allowed a 4.125-percent impact each, while Lower Columbia tribal fishermen are allotted about 23 percent.

The technical advisory committee also downsized the summer chinook run in the Columbia to about 78,600 (to river mouth) from a late June estimate of 93,000. Managers originally forecasted a return of 49,000 fish. The summer run count officially ended July 31.

Meanwhile, more than 400,000 sockeye have been counted in Seattle, passing the Ballard locks on their way to spawning grounds in the Cedar River. WDFW opened fishing for them again in Lake Washington for another six days, beginning today. The run has returned at better than twice the preseason prediction.

Further north, the Pacific Salmon Commission announced that test fishing has shown a strong run of Fraser-bound sockeye in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with DNA sampling indicating that the early-summer and summer run are showing less than expected numbers. But the fish have been returning later than normal, similar to many other runs from Alaska to the Columbia River.

Sockeye managers expect about one million fish for the early run, seven million in the summer run, and nine million socks in the late run. Water temperatures cooled to 19 degrees C. in the Fraser, but were expected to climb later this week, which managers say can stress fish and slow their migration. River flows at Hope were 32 percent below normal for this time of year. -B. R.

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