[1] Oregon Meets With Critics Over Drawdown Issue

After being hit with a public records request last month for documents dealing with its proposal to draw down John Day Pool, the state of Oregon released its analysis and held a briefing April 3 in Salem to explain it to critics.

The records request was filed by the Umatilla Electric Cooperative. The utility cited a recent story as the basis for the request. The article in Clearing Up and NW Fishletter described how the state was quietly working with BPA to come to an agreement over adding the drawdown strategy in the next hydro BiOp.

Oregon is convinced that the drawdown would boost water-particle travel time enough to improve juvenile salmon survival by speeding up their migration through the reservoir. The Corps of Engineers once figured it would reduce the 15-day average smolt's journey from Lower Granite to Bonneville Dam by about half a day.

At the meeting, Mike Carrier, natural resource policy director for Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, defended the secretive process before a group that included representatives of the barge industry, the agricultural sector and BPA customer groups. He said the process was part of a previous agreement with other states in the BiOp process.

Carrier said his state had supported open discussion of the drawdown proposal but other states, especially Montana and Idaho, had requested that the talks remain secret.

One source familiar with the issues said Carrier had misconstrued the confidentiality agreement among members of the BiOp's policy working group.

The source said the two states did support discussions at that level, but among sovereigns only, without plaintiff environmental and fishing groups. Plaintiffs and other parties were allowed to observe technical workshop sessions, but not take part in discussions. He said the BPA/Oregon discussions were totally outside of the BiOp context.

In fact, several sources indicated that a proposal developed by Oregon and The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission that included drawdown had already been discussed at the hydro workshop level, but failed to gain much traction. Sources say it was also introduced to the Policy Working Group at a retreat several months ago, but was "batted away by the Corps."

But that hasn't kept Oregon from trying to keep its proposal alive. Carrier told other participants at last week's briefing that, "The one issue we've never got a full answer from the federal agencies on is the question we've been asking for some time, we and others, including the lower river tribes, about this issue of minimum operating pool levels for the Columbia pools during the smolt migration."

He said "old science," as well as some more recent science, has been produced that talks about significant changes in survival and smolt-to-adult ratios.

"We want a clear answer from the federal government," Carrier said. "How do you do that science, and if you do it the way we review it--what are the costs of getting to a MOP [Minimum Operating Pool] operation, say, at John Day and/or the other pools? Is that cost bearable, and are the other actions we'd have to mitigate for tenable? And does it produce results that would get us to a biological opinion and a proposed action?"

Ed Bowles, ODFW fish division administrator, said the drawdown was "biologically" one of the most compelling of the options being considered in the BiOp collaborations. Drawing down John Day Pool alone would account for about half of any potential benefits if all four lower Columbia pools were taken down to MOP, he said.

But all mitigation for shippers and irrigators would be funded before the drawdown strategy was implemented.

As for the biological analysis that purports to show any benefits, Bowles explained that it was made up of three different parts. It borrows from a 2006 analysis by two NMFS scientists who found that spring chinook return at better rates the earlier they reach the estuary. It also uses a report by IDFG biologist Charlie Petrosky and others that says a faster migration reduces latent mortality. The third part is an estimate of direct hydro mortality by USFWS staffer Steve Haeseker.

None of these reports have been published in any peer-reviewed fisheries journal, or are available to the public.

According to the draft analysis with data from 1998-2002 that uses the NMFS estuary hypothesis, a John Day MOP operation would boost smolt-to-adult spring chinook returns (from Bon to LGR) between 0.3 percent and 2.8 percent.

The Petrosky model estimated SARs would be improved from 3.6 percent to 9 percent, and up to 20 percent for a four-pool drawdown.

The Haeseker model predicted an improvement in SARs from 0.6 percent to 1.7 percent.

Bowles said they were still "setting the table," with information about biological benefits, impacts to other river users, power interests, and irrigation. He said all those impacts need to be analyzed and decided if they are worth it.

Carrier said Oregon was advocating the drawdown strategy until the feds could evaluate it and demonstrate that is was not viable.

Most of the audience had already determined it was not viable. Attorney James Buchal, representing the Columbia/Snake Irrigators Association, said his clients were "hopping mad" about the issue because they feel the scientific basis for the biological benefits is "essentially non-existent."

"We are very distressed that ODFW is straight-facedly defending the proposition that an eight-hour change in the travel time of the fish could be associated with a 20-percent change in adult returns," Buchal said. "To us, that demonstrates, I guess, that you perceive your audience to have no critical faculties, whatsoever. It's hard for us to distill down how crazy we think this is."

Buchal said most data shows that there is essentially no relationship at all between water-particle travel time and survival, as well as no relationship between hydro system survival and adult returns.

Buchal mentioned recent research by Canadian scientist David Welch, who has been developing a fish tracking system along the continental shelf.

Welch's preliminary results released last fall suggested that there was no evidence of delayed mortality for juvenile fish that had a longer journey through the hydro system, or had been transported by barge through the hydro system. An independent science panel was expected to release a report on that very issue by the end of last week (see story 2).

Attorney John DiLorenzo, representing the Umatilla Electric Co-op, said he wanted to see more data, and called on Oregon to release it as it was assembled, "so the rest of the scientific community could participate in this debate and determine whether or not this is worth pursuing . . . I think that's a starting point."

According to a recent letter he received from NOAA Fisheries' regional administrator Bob Lohn, attorney Buchal said the agency told him it has done no specific modeling on this drawdown proposal.

That seemed to be news to the Oregon contingent, who had assumed the feds were analyzing the proposal. "There is clearly some disconnect between us and the remand and NOAA over this issue," said Oregon policymaker Carrier.

Bowles said, in late November, when the proposal was sent to the Corps of Engineers for review, they were officially requesting federal science review.

"We have been asking them weekly ... for that review, and they have told us that it is forthcoming. So, it's a surprise to us to learn to learn that nobody's looking at this," Bowles said.

Buchal promised an all-out war if the drawdown proposal showed up in the new BiOp. He said the irrigators' association would sue over the BiOp, and bring action against the inriver commercial BiOp for harvest.

The meeting also touched on other effects the MOP operations would have. Umatilla Co-op lawyer DiLorenzo wanted to know why Oregon would still advocate for drawdown "in light of the virtual parade of horribles" outlined in another document released by the state--one that listed adverse affects on hatchery operations and habitat from a MOP operation at John Day.

He said adverse effects to the Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge alone seemed to be too great a price, even if the MOP strategy improved fish numbers

Steve Eldrige, director of the Umatilla utility, said there were so many habitat issues, "in addition to high flows, that it's hard for me to say that it's wholly related to flows--the majority of it, anyway." He also noted that many fall chinook overwinter in the John Day Reservoir, and wondered what would be the effect on those fish if it were drawn down.

Oregon's Carrier related remarks that BPA Administrator Steve Wright made last fall to him. "'I've spent tens of millions of dollars to get one and two percent survival improvement of fish. If you can show me something that approaches double-digits in survival improvements and convince me that it does, that's worth many millions of dollars in mitigation to offset any impacts that would have,'" Carrier quoted Wright as saying.

The Oregon policymakers said they would only begin drawdowns after all mitigation had been completed, and hoped it could happen within the next 10 years.

No dollar amount was mentioned, but the Corps has estimated total mitigation in the $180-million range.

Umatilla attorney DiLorenzo said his client needed more information, and he requested all the "source" documents, as well as the analysis.

"We'd like to see everything you've relied upon that led you to conclude this, so we can make the same decision independently ourselves," DiLorenzo said.

Washington congressman Doc Hastings has already weighed in against the drawdown proposal in a letter dated March 27 to BPA, NOAA Fisheries and the Corps of Engineers. It pointed out that a decade ago, the Clinton administration had "properly concluded" that getting the fish to the estuary 12 to 36 hours faster was not worth the cost or the risk.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire also backs the irrigators from her state. In a letter dated March 13 to the Columbia-Snake Irrigators Association, she said she could not support a John Day drawdown because she had not seen "a compelling biological assessment of its benefits."

If another party in the remand process wanted to promote such a proposal, she said the state would listen, but added, "any such proposal would require a rigorous analysis."

Gregoire also noted that any increase in fish survival from such a proposal would have to be compared to benefits that could be gained by other means.

NOAA Fisheries looked at the water-particle travel-time issue in its February 2005 technical memo on the effects of dams on listed fish. They found that, except for the extremely low flow year 2001, fish travel time through the hydro system in recent times has varied by only a few days. But before the lower Snake dams were constructed, the fish took 40 percent to 50 percent less time to migrate downriver through the system.

Looking at each year, NOAA said, median travel time for groups of PIT-tagged yearling chinook salmon generally decreased as the migration season progressed, "as flows have generally increased and as WTT has decreased."

But they noted that water velocity "is clearly not the only driver of travel time in all years: in 1998, and especially in 2002 and 2003, the early part of the migration season featured relatively long periods of nearly constant flow. In these years, nonetheless, median travel times for yearling chinook salmon decreased throughout the period, even without change in flow. This result suggests that physiological characteristics of juvenile fish (possibly the degree of smoltification) or physiological responses to day length or moon phase might have influenced migration rates more than flow."

When all was said and done, translating flow into a water particle time index gave them a similar relationship with fish survival as did flow, one they termed "weak and inconsistent."

When water temperatures reach 13 degrees C, fish survival for spring chinook drops, regardless of flows, and survival data from 2001 fits temperatures much better than any other variable, the feds said. -Bill Rudolph

The following links were mentioned in this story:

NW Fishletter 227, Mar. 8, 2007

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