[1] Corps Admits Big Foul Up In Montana Dam Operations
A combination of ESA fish obligations, optimistic computer models, and just plain bad luck all played roles that led to flooding below Montana's Libby Dam last June, according to a U.S. Army Corp of Engineers' report released Nov. 2.
But the report also concluded that if dam operators had stayed within their normal guidelines for refill and flood control, the flooding at Bonners Ferry, Idaho would never have occurred.
A large thunderstorm rolled through Montana in June, when the reservoir was full. Up to 55 kcfs had to be released all at once, including about 31 kcfs as spill in emergency operations that peaked on June 17, causing high water conditions downstream for weeks.
The report also failed to mention that seepage behind levees caused by high water levels in the Kootenai River caused about $10 million in property and crop damage, according to Boundary County's agricultural Extension Office in Bonners Ferry. The Corps only reported that it incurred about $1.5 million in emergency costs related to the incident, and damages that were prevented assuming the dam wasn't even there ($27 million to $45 million).
Corps spokesperson Nola Leyde said she did not know why the actual loss estimates weren't included, but she noted that nearly every year there is some crop loss from seepage. Other sources reported that some estimates of crop and power losses from the June event were included in an early draft of the report, but later excised.
The report also failed to include the potential cost of repairs to levees, said Sara Howe, University of Idaho Extension educator at Boundary County's Ag office. She said that could add about $50 million to the cost, since the bill for repairing the levees is estimated at about $1 million per mile.
The normal flood control guidelines developed by the Corps are part of a group of interim water management rules called VARQ (variable discharge flood control), that were developed to better balance upstream and downstream fish needs in Montana, and maintain more flexibility than standard flood control operations. VARQ tailored operations more to the estimate of the size of the water year, to make it easier for dam operators to achieve refill elevations mandated for salmon flows, even though the risks of floods slightly increased.
In addition to salmon flows, the Corps was expected to deal with a recent dam-operations BiOp completed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for ESA-listed sturgeon in the river. To help spawning sturgeon, the plan called for a spring pulse from Libby of 10 kcfs above the 24-kcfs capacity of the Libby powerhouse.
But after consulting with other agencies and concerned tribes, the agency adopted a "stacked flow" strategy to reduce adverse impacts downstream, while hoping to help initiate spawning activity among sturgeon near Bonners Ferry, which hasn't happened in over 30 years. Dam operators planned to release full powerhouse capacity on top of the local freshet (peak input from tributaries below the dam) in mid-to-late May to evaluate this operation's effectiveness for providing habitat attributes necessary for sturgeon.
The Corps of Engineers, using its water forecasting tools and updated water supply data, decided there wasn't much risk in keeping more water than VARQ operations called for in the reservoir behind Libby in early spring to help with the sturgeon pulse. Besides, it would also make it easier to get the reservoir to full elevation by June 30 to augment flows in the mainstem Columbia for ESA-listed salmon as called for in the FCRPS BiOp.
VARQ operations alone would have started reservoir outflows around April 20, nearly a month earlier than they actually began, but the Corps kept outflows at only one-quarter of VARQ mandates. When the large thunderstorm and rain event struck in June, it led to high water conditions downstream for weeks. The reservoir was too full, forcing the rapid release of as much as 55 kcfs, including about 31 kcfs as spill in emergency operations that peaked June 17.
Once the levees had been waterlogged, dam operators had to reduce flows slowly over a period of weeks to keep them from failing as they dried out.
On Oct. 25, at a meeting of the technical management team (TMT) that governs in-season hydro operations, Montana state biologist Brian Marotz presented results of fish surveys that showed most bull trout below the dam exhibited symptoms of gas bubble disease from the large amount of spill in June. He later told NW Fishletter that he doesn't think the spill had an extremely negative effect on the fish, but won't know until another survey of fish populations below the dam is conducted next spring.
At the same meeting, the Corp's Cathy Hlebechuk from the agency's Reservoir Control Center in Portland, said that before mid-May, all forecasts had pointed to a normal water year, with the sturgeon recovery team recommending the sturgeon pulses begin no sooner than May 16. But she said after the middle of the month, warm temperatures and rain on snow led to "incredible" runoff, with more heavy precipitation in June. She said it was easy to "second-guess" the operation now, but "we need to keep in mind the conditions we faced at the time."
Marotz said the Corps expected to release 10 kcfs above turbine capacity for the sturgeon pulse, which had worried the Kootenai Tribe enough to ask the Corps restrict the pulse to turbine capacity only. He told TMT members that there were times in May when the Corps couldn't release even that much, because high flows downriver would have flooded Bonners Ferry.
As it was, Marotz said, the spawning pulses in 2006 came too late to be very beneficial for the sturgeon.
The Corps' after-action report said the agency had determined that the risk associated with delaying higher releases "was somewhat low" given the water forecast issued for April. But it also said that using no flexibility with VARQ to shape flows in other years like 2003 to 2005 would have compromised the ability to fill the reservoir later to provide summer flow augmentation for salmon.
As for any benefits to sturgeon, the report said eggs were found near Bonners Ferry after the onset of spill, and spawning "may have occurred" in other places before and after the spill occurred. Five radio-tagged sturgeon were tracked to the highway bridge at Bonners Ferry, three before the spill, and two after it commenced on June 8. But it will take two or three years before any spawning success will be determined, when juveniles can be counted with conventional sampling gear.
After a Nov. 6 public meeting in Bonners Ferry sponsored by the Corps to discuss their report, Marotz said the agency "came clean" and admitted that if they had operated the dam according the VARQ, no flooding would have occurred, since they would have been releasing 18 kcfs at Libby starting April 18.
In the report, the Corps acknowledges that conflicting mandates between releasing water for sturgeon pulses, then later getting to full reservoir by June 30 as per the salmon BiOp, has put them in a bind.
It's got the Corps very concerned about using the VARQ guidelines in the future. Corps spokeswoman Karen Durham-Agularia told participants in the Nov. 6 Bonners Ferry meeting that her agency isn't yet ready to sign off on VARQ. The agency has already spent several million dollars developing an EIS on the water management that isn't yet complete.
The report itself said the Corps is committed to completing a detailed review to find out if the "operations that actually occurred fell within the range of conditions anticipated and considered in the development of the VARQ FC [flood control] Operating Procedures."
The Corps' recent Libby operations were recently criticized from another angle, when retired NOAA Fisheries employee Chris Ross sent a 'whistleblower' letter to the Inspector General's office at the Department of Defense in September calling for an investigation of the Corps' actions. Ross' letter says the Corps' delay in formally adopting VARQ led to the forced spill at Libby that cost the region $20 million or more in lost hydro revenue, in addition to losses from crop damage for which the feds may be liable.
Ross said the "flood" event was not caused by weather conditions outside the range of conditions considered in the development of VARQ.
Ross pointed out that if the Corps was not operating according to VARQ refill procedures, then it also violated the ESA by the unlawful taking of a listed species, namely, resident bull trout that were probably harmed by dissolved gas from the spill.
Ross told NW Fishletter that the DOD Hotline has referred the matter "to the appropriate authorities within the Department of Defense for information and any action they deem appropriate."
Meanwhile, the Corps must decide by December just what operation it plans for Libby next year. In any case, they are likely to be a lot more careful about downstream affects. Their after-action report contains a 41-page section on "Lessons Learned," but no mention of any potential liability for ESA fish losses, crops, or dike repair.
Bruce Measure, Montana member to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, said he went away from the Nov. 6 meeting at Bonners Ferry feeling better. He said the Corps has promised to be more cautious in its assessments from operations in the future.
"We haven't had any problems until they started screwing with Libby," said Bonners Ferry mayor Darryl Kirby. "We support salmon recovery, but without destroying us at the same time."
Kirby said damage to the levees was huge and they will have to spend a lot to get them "up to snuff" to qualify for Corps funding. However, he said he was "truly flabbergasted," at the Nov. 6 meeting, "when they basically said they screwed up." -Bill Rudolph
[2] A Revolution In Fish Tracking Gets Under Way
The Corps of Engineers hosted its annual research review last week in Portland, where scientists reported on the latest results in their fish survival studies in the Columbia Basin and discussed innovations in fish tracking methods that promise a revolution in fish research with the use of ever-smaller acoustic tags.
Now weighing only about six-tenths of a gram, the tags are surgically implanted in fish, and send out acoustic 'pings' that are picked up by receiver arrays placed just about anywhere researchers want. The ability to track fish over wide areas is their major benefit over PIT tags, which require fish to pass through a relatively confined space, such as a fish ladder, to be detected at all.
However, while the acoustic tags use tiny batteries lasting only 30 to 60 days, the PIT tags are 'passive,' and only respond when detected, so they can work indefinitely and identify individual fish through the adult stage and even longer. Other research groups are still finding thousands of PIT tags at bird colonies where terns and cormorants have feasted on the annual migration, especially steelhead.
So far, much of the acoustic tag research has focused on whether the tags themselves have adverse effects on fish, since they are much bigger than PIT tags. They are also a lot more expensive, costing around $250 a pop.
The results seem pretty positive on all counts, though, and Corps researchers think the improved precision will be worth it. They plan to tag 25,000 fish with them next year.
The increase in precision has already impressed researchers, such as Lynn McComas from NOAA Fisheries, who led a group that used the new tags in a pilot study of fish survival in the Columbia estuary. Until now, survival estimates there have been fraught with uncertainty.
With a string of receivers spread on the river bottom across the mouth of the Columbia, the new work has generated enough data for some preliminary survival data for Snake River spring chinook traveling from Idaho all the way to the ocean. Initial findings for the four release groups in the study show that about 80 percent make it from Lower Granite Dam to the mouth of the Snake and, around 40 percent make it all the way downriver to the ocean, while estuary survival from Bonneville to the ocean ranged between about 60 and 85 percent.
For fall chinook moving through the estuary, the researchers found that 85 to 99 percent of earlier release groups made it through the estuary, but survival deteriorated for later groups, ranging from 67 percent to only 17 percent for the last group in the study.
There is still plenty of work going on with PIT-tags, which only cost about two bucks apiece. Other researchers have used them since the early 1990s to estimate inriver survivals of spring chinook from Lower Granite to Bonneville. In 2006, survivals were the highest they have seen since they started keeping track, averaging around 60 percent.
Survival through individual reaches averaged 93 percent. For steelhead, inriver survival averaged 38 percent, with 88 percent survival through individual reaches.
But better inriver survivals don't mean more fish will come back in the future. NOAA Fisheries scientist Bill Muir said the dramatic increase in adult return rates since 1999, is "largely independent" of hydro system survival.
Muir also pointed to an analysis by fellow federal scientist John Williams that suggests the PIT-tagged wild returns actually underestimate the run at large. The same holds for hatchery chinook, though questions were raised about just how robust the estimates of wild untagged smolts really were, since they are not counted. Using data from the Fish Passage Center's own CSS study, the feds said the same results were evident there, too.
Canadian scientist David Welch also reported on his initial findings on near-ocean survival of some Snake and Yakima River spring chinook.
Using acoustic tags that are larger than the Corps' version and longer-lasting, Welch has followed small groups of both barged and inriver migrating fish past the mouth of the Columbia to detection arrays off the Washington coast and the northern tip of Vancouver island. His initial findings showed about 20 percent of both the Snake and Yakima inriver migrating fish made it to the first ocean array off Willapa Bay. About 5 percent of the Snake fish and 2.5 percent of the Yakima fish were detected off Vancouver Island.
Welch said the results show no evidence of any delayed mortality for the Snake fish, which deal with four more dams in their downstream migration.
His research also found that survival of barged Snake River spring chinook (from Dworshak hatchery) was about double that of the inriver-migrating Snake fish, about 38 percent, but their ocean survival to Vancouver Island was half that of the inriver fish.
Welch's 2006 data show that each group of Snake fish, whether inriver or barged, exhibited "substantially less" survival in the 560-km stretch between Willapa Bay (southern Washington coast) and Vancouver Island than in the entire 960-km distance between the Snake and the Willapa receiver array. His study also showed that there was significantly higher survival for Snake River barged fish than for inriver migrating Snake smolts.
Survival of the two Yakima groups (199 fish each) to the north end of Vancouver Island was miniscule--two fish were detected from one group, and none from the other.
That result was similar to the detections for Snake inriver migrants. Of two 198-fish groups released in early May, only one smolt was detected from the first group, and three from the second.
Barged fish from the Snake fared better, with eight detections in one group that was barged downriver June 7, adding up to an 8 percent overall survival rate to Vancouver Island, with a 3 percent survival rate from the second group, barged June 15.
A closer look at barged fish came from NOAA Fisheries scientist Doug Marsh, who announced findings from ongoing survival studies of barged and inriver wild spring chinook from the Snake. Though adult returns to Lower Granite Dam were small--only two dozen in the case of the barged spring chinook--they outperformed inriver migrating (non-detected) chinook by 2.64 to 1.00. Barging from Little Goose showed benefits as well, doing 60 percent better than inriver fish.
For barged steelhead, the results were nothing less than spectacular. They outperformed non-detected inriver migrators by 800 percent.
Other new research that may shed light on the vagaries of barging fish reported that overall, barged fish were in better shape than their inriver brethren, based on lab tests that assessed their ability to ward off marine bacteria.
More evidence of the overall benefits of barging came from an analysis by staffers at the University of Washington's Columbia Basin Research group. By analyzing PIT-tag data from hatchery releases from 1996 to 2004, they found ocean survival of the different groups was the most influential factor in determining smolt-to-adult returns. They said transport-to-inriver return ratios and SARs varied broadly with annual flow levels, and that in most cases, barged fish from Lower Granite and Little Goose did better than inriver fish. -B. R.
[3] CSS Study Gets One More Year Of Funding
A controversial, long-term study of hatchery salmon survival received one more year of funding at last week's meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, despite ongoing complaints from long-time critics like PNGC Power VP Scott Corwin, who said there is already enough reputable scientific review of the study to pull the plug on it altogether.
But Council members cobbled up $125,000 for participants in the Comparative Survival Study [CSS] to finish a promised 10-year review of the project by next fall, which will then be reviewed by the NPCC's independent science panel, who have found fault with some CSS methods for years. If the 10-year report passes muster, then funding will be restored next fall for the 08-09 year.
Council members took away the $704,000 task of PIT-tagging fish from CSS personnel and called for the marking to be supervised by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. In their last review, the science panel recommended tagging more salmon from lower Columbia hatcheries, but the $704,000 will only cover current tagging efforts.
The CSS has looked at PIT-tagged survivals of both transported and inriver migrating stocks from the Snake and Columbia Rivers, and has attracted its share of critics since its early days, when reviewers said the CSS analyses suffered from serious analytical shortcomings, bias, and a lack of statistical significance.
More criticism came after the original study dropped results from two lower Columbia hatcheries because of poor returns. Critics said such action showed the study's innate bias that CSS personnel were trying to prove that upriver stocks suffered higher mortality because they had passed more dams.
The ongoing study, led by Michele DeHart, director of the beleaguered Fish Passage Center, ran up against a brick wall at last month's Council meeting when some members called for ending it altogether.
DeHart and her staff have incurred the wrath of some politicians and other entities for developing metrics on fish survival that have been used by environmental and fishing groups in their litigation against the hydro BiOp. Idaho Sen. Larry Craig inserted report language in one of last year's appropriations bills that jerked BPA funding for the FPC, but an ongoing lawsuit over his action and BPA's decision to obey it is still percolating in the Ninth Circuit. Meanwhile, BPA has provided interim funding to keep the FPC in business.
Last fall, both NOAA Fisheries and BPA had serious complaints about the 2005 CSS analysis. A letter from BPA to the FPC said the upriver-downriver comparison of Chinook salmon had "been misguided from conception," noting that data from the CSS showed related stocks from nearby hatcheries didn't even show similar SARs, and that data from coded-wire tagging showed that different stocks had very different ocean migration patterns and different interception rates in the ocean.
BPA said earlier CSS comparisons confirmed this because, "Initially, the study started with multiple downriver stocks, but these hatcheries have been reduced to only the Carson NFH, when the other hatcheries had SAR values less than upriver hatcheries. If investigators eliminate all the information that does not conform to their conceptual model, as in the case of the upriver-downriver comparison, you are often left with nothing but coincidences or wishful thinking."
NOAA Fisheries scientists, in their own critique, said the CSS results skewed the benefits of barging fish. The feds said available evidence clearly showed that the benefit of transporting fish varied within each season, and was probably the result of fish size and the number transported, differences in predation rates, and changing conditions within the hydro system, estuary and near-ocean.
The feds said the FPC analysis, based on annual survival results, "provides limited information and possibly misinforms managers about how to manipulate the system to provide the greatest benefits to fish." They pointed out that the CSS analysis ignored this altogether.
The feds took issue with statements in the 2005 CSS study's executive summary that implied transportation harmed wild fish because the average SAR of transported fish was lower than that of inriver migrants. They pointed out that in 5 of 10 years, the point estimate of annual SARs for transported wild chinook was higher than inriver migrants.
They also said the CSS summary appeared biased since it concluded that transportation had little or no benefit for wild chinook, yet it neglected to mention the overall 40-percent benefit of transportation for hatchery chinook and wild steelhead. They said that adds up to tens of thousands more hatchery chinook and 5,000 to 10,000 more adult wild steelhead that would not have returned had they not been transported.
The feds said the CSS treatment of upstream and downstream stocks "seems particularly biased," and asked why more downriver hatcheries weren't used in the comparisons. Since returns to upriver hatcheries vary considerably, they wondered if that wasn't true for downriver hatcheries as well. And, the feds pointed out, Idaho's McCall hatchery had much higher SARs for several years than did the downriver facility at Carson, near Bonneville Dam.
The draft 2006 CSS report was released for public comment on Oct. 20. -B. R.
[4] Enviros Say Region Would Save Billions Without Lower Snake Dams
A report released last week by environmental groups took another shot at lower Snake River dams, and concluded that the region would save a lot of fish and billions of dollars by taking them out. But the report, recycling some materials from 10-year old dam analyses, was received by a collective yawn from the popular media.
Called Revenue Stream, it was compiled by staffers of several environmental and fishing groups, and estimated that the Northwest could save between $1.6 billion and $4.6 billion over the next 20 years without the dams in place. The Washington D.C.-based Taxpayers for Common Sense, also supported the study, although most dam costs are shouldered by BPA ratepayers.
Regional NOAA Fisheries head Bob Lohn, speaking at last week's Council meeting in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, said the report was misleading, because removing the dams would only help a few of the 13 salmon and steelhead stocks listed for protection in the Columbia Basin, and would not open most of the Snake fall chinook's original habitat, now blocked by Idaho Power dams.
The report also used some old Corps' analyses from the late 1990s, that was part of their exhaustive EIS on lower Snake operations that concluded ESA-listed fish stocks fish could recover with the dams in place.
It also added information from a discredited 2002 Rand report that said power from the dams could be made up by conservation and renewables, and added $3 billion in potential fish costs that some state agencies and tribes said, nearly two years ago, was needed over the next 10 years to satisfy regional fish and wildlife needs.
The report included conclusions from an economic report on the potential value of Idaho's recreational fishing industry (over $500 million a year) that was thoroughly panned by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's independent economic review panel last year.
By getting rid of the dams, the region could save up to 55 percent of its salmon restoration money, according to the report, which cited a 2000 CH2M Hill study for the Power Council, that was part of an analysis of a now-abandoned initiative called the Framework Process that tried to weigh impacts from different hydro and fish improvement alternatives.
"Electric ratepayers keep paying and paying for measures that can't possibly restore threatened and endangered Columbia Basin fish or help those living, working and doing business in salmon-dependent communities," said Sara Patton, executive director of NW Energy Coalition. "New jobs and economic development will more than compensate for the modest expense of removing these four dams and replacing their limited energy production with energy efficiency and affordable new renewable power."
Other groups that sponsored the report included Save Our Wild Salmon, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Republicans for Environmental Protection, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, the Institute for Fisheries Research, Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, and American Rivers. -B. R.
[5] Scientist Says Dams May Not Be Limiting Fish Recovery
A presentation by a federal fisheries scientist at a conference at Yale University earlier this month has raised questions over the notion, held by many, including the federal judge overseeing the remand process of the Columbia River hydro BiOp, that ESA-listed salmon runs are still declining with the lower Snake dams in place.
NOAA Fisheries' John Williams, from the agency's science center in Seattle, told participants at the "Global Perspectives on Large Dams" section of the Conference on Large-Scale Water Infrastructure that improvements in fish survival at dams have helped the stocks in recent years. By spilling water, barging fish, and modifying dams and their operations, inriver survivals for spring chinook have been pretty steady over the past 10 years, especially when compared to adult returns, which have been heavily influenced by changes in ocean conditions.
Williams presented a graph that tracked "natural" fall Chinook returns back to Lower Granite Dam and showed a huge boost since 2000 over the previous 25 years.
(Courtesy NOAA Fisheries)
His main message was that all fish populations, from anchovies and sardines to salmon show significant natural fluctuations. He noted that in the late 1820s, settlers and Indians in the mid-Columbia region resorted to eating horses after the wholesale failure of salmon runs, pointing to poor ocean conditions as the only explanation.
Williams also explained that overall spring chinook return rates are as high as those observed before most of the lower Snake dams were built. He raised important questions after plotting harvest rates on spring and fall Chinook over the past 30 years which seemed to indicate that return rates improved as harvest rates fell. "Could we harvest adults at higher rates without dams" or "Is recovery limited by dams?" If the answer was clear, he said, 'the debate would not rage." -B. R.
[6] NOAA Says Oceans Are Cooling Temporarily
The average temperature in the upper oceans has cooled significantly since 2003, but one scientist who has studied the phenomenon says it's just a speed bump on the road to more warming, NOAA announced in late September.
"This cooling is probably natural climate variability," said Josh Willis, a coauthor of the study at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. "The oceans today are still warmer than they were during the 1980s, and most scientists expect the oceans will eventually continue to warm in response to human-induced climate change."
A Northwest scientist who contributed to the study, John Lyman of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, estimated the heat content of the upper 2,500 feet of Earth's oceans from 1993 to 2005. This area represents about 20 percent of the global ocean's average depth.
The researchers found that the average temperature of the upper ocean rose by 0.16 degrees Fahrenheit from 1993 to 2003, and then fell 0.055 degrees Fahrenheit from 2003 to 2005. The recent decrease is a dip equal to about one-fifth of the heat gained by the ocean between 1955 and 2003.
Lyman said the recent cooling is not unprecedented, but other studies have shown that a similar rapid cooling took place from 1980 to 1983.
The maximum amount of cooling was seen at a depth of about 1,300 feet, but substantial cooling was still observed at 2,500 feet and the cooling appears to extend deeper.
The scientists also said that the recent cooling should have caused sea levels to decrease, but they have steadily risen, which suggests that melting glaciers and ice sheets are behind most of it.
Lyman said the cause of the recent cooling is not yet clear. Research suggests it may be due to a net loss of heat from the Earth. "Further work will be necessary to solve this cooling mystery," he said. -B. R.
[7] Idaho Senator May Try End Run Around BiOp Judge
Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's Boise office told NW Fishletter that their boss is studying ways to protect the Snake River Adjudication Agreement. By adding a legislative rider to an appropriations bill may be one way to do it.
At this stage, said staffer Sid Smith, Sen. Craig hasn't decided whether it is necessary, but he hasn't ruled it out.
The Idaho politician is worried that BiOp judge James Redden will ask for more water from Upper Snake storage projects to help ESA-listed fish stocks downstream. The projects are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation for irrigated agriculture and are now obligated to release 487 kaf for salmon and steelhead in the lower Snake, according to final terms of the Snake River Agreement signed by the state, feds, water users and the Nez Perce Tribe.
A rider, if successful, would create legislation that called for upholding the current management plan for the Upper Snake.
The federal agency in charge of writing a new BiOp on Upper Snake operations has said it will only look at effects on fish of the 487 kaf, nothing more. That's 60 kaf more than older BiOps have called for.
But Redden has strongly hinted from remarks he has made during litigation over the Upper Snake BiOp that he thinks more water may be needed. He threw out the previous BiOp because feds used the same "flawed" jeopardy analysis to determine whether operations were harmful to fish as in the FCRPS BiOp, which he also tossed. The FCRPS BiOp, which looks at operations in the lower Snake and mainstem Columbia, is in the midst of a complicated remand process.
The possibility of a rider mobilized environmental groups, who issued an action alert to members, hoping to flood Northwest politicians with letters against the move. In their form letter to officials, the groups said a "rider would likely seek to shift the full burden of salmon recovery downstream into Washington and Oregon by exempting Idaho from its responsibilities to be part of a larger regional salmon solution in the Columbia and Snake Rivers."
That's totally false, said Norm Semanko, director of the Idaho Water Users Association. He said the Snake River Agreement calls for the 487 kaf, and the parties to the agreement stand by it.
However, Semanko said, when Judge Redden signaled that more water may be needed for fish, legislation may be required as one alternative to ensure the agreement remains in place. He said similar legislation was passed in New Mexico over water issues related to the silvery minnow in the Rio Grande River to protect water users from an overzealous court ruling. -B. R.
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