[1] Puget Sound Cleanup May Cost Billions More Than Expected
The Washington Legislature has used part of its latest tax windfall to fund the beginnings of an ambitious program to clean up Puget Sound by 2020.
The program is one of Gov. Chris Gregoire's pet policy initiatives, designed to fold future salmon recovery efforts into a broader policy including major improvements to sewer plants, stormwater treatment and cleanup of toxic sediments.
But it won't come cheap. A report released in December that developed major priorities for the ecosystem overhaul says it will take a lot more money than the $700 million now spent by local, state and federal agencies every year to improve fish, habitat and water quality in the Puget Sound region--maybe three times as much money.
By 2020 that could add up to $27 billion, far surpassing estimated costs of other huge ecosystem restorations like Chesapeake Bay ($15 billion) or the Great Lakes ($20.5 billion).
The report, authored by Puget Sound Partnership, has pegged current annual state funding at $286 million, and more than half of that is for sewage treatment. About 10 percent goes toward cleaning up contaminated sediments, 9 percent to control stormwater runoff, and another 9 percent to restore habitat.
The federal government spends about $116 million on the Sound, according to the report, with about $63 million for recovering ESA-listed fish.
Spending among local governments that helped the Sound varied widely: King County spent $143 million in 2006; Snohomish County paid $23 million; Seattle's expenditure was $42 million for stormwater management; and Olympia accounted $1.6 million for its storm water budget.
However, the new state legislation doesn't focus on costs. Rather, it maps out the framework for a whole new process.
It starts by abolishing the governor-appointed Puget Sound Action Team, which until now has been the nucleus of efforts to improve Puget Sound water quality and habitat.
Its powers will be transferred to a new governance entity called the Puget Sound Partnership, which, in turn, will be led by a seven-member Leadership Council and executive director appointed by the governor.
The council's charge is the adoption and implementation of a plan that will restore the Sound by 2020, using advice from a nine-member science panel and other groups developing Sound-wide and regional plans. The final product is expected to include goals, measurable outcomes and benchmarks for measuring progress.
Beginning in 2008, the new council will serve as the organization responsible for Puget Sound salmon-recovery efforts, and fish should become major beneficiaries of the new initiative. But they could end up being some of the priciest fish in the world.
PSP's report estimated that current spending by local, county, state and federal agencies, and some private spending, would add up to nearly $9 billion by 2020. However, "based on current unmet needs," the report said "achieving a healthy Puget Sound will require a doubling or tripling of current spending."
Those unmet needs are a source of significant concern to regional scientists who reviewed the report, and whose remarks were included in an appendix.
This group, led by NOAA Fisheries scientist Mary Ruckelshaus--daughter of famous father Bill, who has spearheaded the salmon-recovery effort in Puget Sound for years--said the new restoration effort needs a lot more beef to overcome the ill effects of more people and a warmer climate.
The review said that while the strategies described in the report would likely improve the local ecosystem, "thus moving it towards the recovered state envisioned by the governor. However, based on our collective scientific judgment and input from many other scientists, the strategies listed are not likely to be sufficient to achieve ecosystem goals, given the increasing intensity from such factors as increasing human population pressure, global climate change, and a freer exchange of global biota [read invasive species]."
One of the group's key recommendations is to ensure protection of the remaining high-quality habitat, along with significant reduction of pollution from toxics and human and animal wastes, and better management of stormwater runoff.
They said the benefits of cleaning up known toxic sites are uncertain, since it's not known how much they add to the environment and food webs. But they still recommended cleaning up the highest-priority sites first, then analyzing levels from other inputs to build priorities for further cleanup.
Even though they don't understand all the ways toxins like PCBs get into local salmon and killer whales (which are both listed for protection under the ESA), the scientists said strategies designed to improve water and sediment quality are top priorities for meeting other ecosystem goals like healthy food webs for all species, including humans.
Puget Sound salmon have been found to carry toxic loads higher than any other wild salmon on the West Coast.
A recent report by the state's Department of Public Health found that PCB levels in Puget Sound chinook are high enough so that they should be eaten only once a week, while resident chinook (blackmouth) should only be consumed twice a month. Flat fish from heavily contaminated areas like the Duwamish waterway should not be eaten at all. Yelloweye rockfish should not be eaten because of high levels of mercury, while other species of rockfish could be eaten once a week or so.
To add insult to injury, salmon may be transporting toxins from urban areas to more rural parts of the Sound when they spawn. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife scientist Sandie O'Neill told NW Fishletter it would take decades for PCB levels in local fish to diminish by much. Though levels in urban areas would slowly go down, various biological transport mechanisms would raise levels in more pristine areas of the coast.
Chinook likely picked up the chemicals from foraging on herring already contaminated with PCBs from other prey lower in the food chain. Herring themselves ingest PCBs from zooplankton; the populations with the highest levels were found in central and south Puget Sound.
Other salmon species such as sockeye, chum and pinks feed at lower trophic levels than chinook and coho, and therefore take in fewer PCBs and other toxics.
Another group of researchers from Battelle Northwest's marine research lab at Sequim, Wash., announced last week that the serious fish kills in Hood Canal in recent years may be part of a natural cycle, rather than the result of human causes--nitrogen overloads from runoff and failing septic systems.
Studying sediment cores that go back several hundred years, the scientists said extremely low oxygen levels that have proved lethal to fish in some years were even worse before white settlers appeared. Oxygen levels in Hood Canal seem to rise and fall in cycles related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that governs fish productivity in nearby ocean waters.
Gregoire and other local politicians have used the fish kills in Hood Canal as a sign of how sick the Sound is, to gain support for the cleanup initiative. Also, Bill Ruckelshaus has been an important part of the push to get the Legislature to act.
As co-chair of the PSP, Ruckelshaus' remarks are included in the recent report. In the funding section, a sidebar contains this remark of his:
"As we humans have built the physical infrastructure such as roads, buildings and sewers to support us, we have consumed our natural capital--air, land, and water. As we continue to build and repair roads, bridges, and other structures to support us in the future, we need to begin to restore our natural capital. This will add some costs, but the benefits will be huge."
But no one has publicly countered media reports from last week that said this restoration effort would only cost $8 billion or so.-Bill Rudolph
[2] Mixed Review For Lower Columbia Netpen Project
Mixed reviews were returned by independent scientists and economists who took close looks at a controversial project in the lower Columbia that supplements commercial harvest opportunities in areas with less impact on ESA-listed stocks.
Each review was based on evaluation reports by project sponsors.
The scientists said the project, called SAFE [Select Area Fishery Evaluation] appears "highly successful" because it provides high harvest rates with minimal impacts of listed stocks. However, the economists said costs appeared higher than estimated benefits, "with or without BPA funding."
Bonneville funds most of the netpen project, which raises chinook and coho mainly for commercial catches, although recreational fishers, especially those on the nearby ocean, also benefit.
Future BPA funding for the project--$1.8 million annually--largely depends on the evaluations by these two groups.
Bob Austin, BPA's deputy director for fish and wildlife, said his agency is fairly satisfied that the project has passed muster, though he noted that the latest evaluation questioned whether expanding the project from its current size would be either biologically beneficial or cost-effective.
The Independent Scientific Review Panel, which examines F&W proposals for scientific merit, said that fish from the SAFE project, which are hatched at lower Columbia facilities, and then raised at various sites along the lower river, match or surpass the survival rates of regular hatchery-raised salmon.
However, the panel said, the report it relied on totally lacked a statistical analyses of coded-wire tag data that is generally used to track harvests.
The panel also said it was concerned about the validity of the income generated from the fishery because the report did not verify estimates of harvested fish. Nor did the report present any convincing evidence that the current production of about 5 million smolts could be more than doubled, the panel said.
Other critical unknowns are the potential impacts of the project's large release of future fish on other fish populations during long periods of poor ocean conditions.
The members of the Independent Economic Analysis Board also had questions about methodology. They took issue with their reference report's determination of recreational harvest costs, noting that adding up recreational expenditures is an incorrect way to measure benefits.
The board said it looks like BPA is spending $1.8 million a year of the project's total $2.4 million budget to produce $49,000 in negative net economic value.
"From a regional perspective, this return doesn't make economic sense," said the IEAB, "and the report should say so. There well may be reasons in addition to the estimated NEV [Net Economic Value] for BPA to fund the SAFE project."
The economists said the report's "statement that the $2.4-million project creates $12 million in local income ignores the fact that the $2.4-million expense reduces local income somewhere else, because electricity rates are higher. And diverting some recreational fishing expenditure to the SAFE project area will cause negative income impacts elsewhere in the region."
The project sponsor report used by the IEAB estimated that the SAFE project produced nearly 14,000 chinook for recreational fishers in the estuary and ocean in 2006. But the board said catches in these areas involved higher incidental catches of ESA-listed stocks, "and this should be weighed against recreational benefits."
The report estimated that without continued BPA funding, coho releases would decrease by 15 percent and the value of the commercial coho fishery would go down by more than 90 percent, since most of the fish would have much less value as surplus hatchery spawners.
With the increase in ex-vessel fish prices in recent years, the report said the SAFE project generates about $3 million in value from all regional fisheries, two to four times the value to SAFE-area fishermen.
However, the IEAB said the economic report couldn't really produce an estimate of cost effectiveness because there aren't any "realistic and feasible" alternatives for achieving the project's objectives.
The SAFE project was nearly axed in last fall's battles over BPA's 2007-09 fish and wildlife budget. It was saved when Oregon and Washington agreed to an increased cost share, with the caveat that Washington commercial gillnetters would get more access to the Oregon side of the river.
Tod Jones, who heads the net-pen project for Clatsop County, said the Washington commercials only catch about 3 percent of the fish produced by the SAFE project. He said it would take a change by the Oregon Legislature to allow them across the state line to fish, which would take at least two years to accomplish. -B. R.
[3] New Look For FPC Oversight Board OK'd By Power Council
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council approved membership category changes to the board that oversees actions of the Fish Passage Center. The council voted 6-2, with only Oregon members on the nay side at last month's Council meeting.
Now, one member will come from the NPCC who will also serve as chair. The new board will also have two tribal members representing upper and lower Basin interests, two representatives from state fish and wildlife agencies, and two members from the scientific community, one of which represents NOAA Fisheries.
The board will conduct an annual performance review of the FPC and make sure that the fish passage database conforms to standards of data management.
NPCC chair Tom Karier said the recent court decision that kept the Bonneville Power Administration from defunding the FPC has sent a clear signal that the council's program needs to be enforced.
"We intend to ensure that the Fish Passage Center's operations are consistent with the highest standards of scientific integrity, including transparency and parity for all Basin interests," Karier said.
The Council is now soliciting nominations to fill the FPC board's slots.
Oregon had supported a proposal to move the FPC under the direct supervision of the Columbia Fish and Wildlife Authority. CBFWA didn't agree with the council's proposed representation on the board, and wanted it to include the public and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. CBFWA also wanted to pick a technical advisory committee to advise the oversight board on technical issues.
The Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission also had reservations about the new board. It said the council had overstepped the bounds of the Northwest Power Act by monitoring performance standards.
It also wasn't sure the council could play a neutral oversight role "that would not hinder our ability to seek and provide safe passage at dams." -B. R.
[4] Chinook Run Picks Up Speed In Columbia
Harvest managers were scratching their heads again over this year's spring chinook run in the Columbia River. With only 15,000 counted at Bonneville Dam by April 24, they believed the run was tracking late, but showing a pattern that was more normal than last year's. And they stuck to their guns with their preseason forecast of 78,500 fish (at river mouth) at their last meeting on May 2.
Another 20,000 fish have passed the dam since the 24th, with the peak day on April 25, when about 3,400 chinook were counted.
The sleeper statistic in this year's run is the jack count, which is much higher than the past three years at the same time, and could be signaling improved ocean conditions once again. Jacks were running to the tune of 300 or more a day, nearly triple the daily 10-year average.
The overall count is similar to 2005's when over 74,000 chinook had passed the dam by the end of May, but it's still too early to tell if the run is just a little late. State and tribal harvest managers say that according to the recent 10-year average, 37 percent had passed by April 24, while only 15 percent of late runs had passed by then.
On the Willamette, the managers said the chinook run was on track to meet its pre-season forecast of 52,000 chinook. By April 26, 1,695 chinook had been counted at the Falls. Last year at this time, only 695 chinook had been counted there.
To get an idea of just how late last year's run was, this year's 35,000-chinook count is miles ahead of last year's count by now--a measly 12,000 fish. But by the end of the spring counting season, last year's run still turned in respectable numbers with over 96,000 counted at the dam by the end of May and nearly 40 percent above the managers' pre-season estimate. In 2005, the spring run came in about 60 percent below expectations.
Commercial fishing in the lower river has been limited to select areas because impacts on ESA-listed upriver stocks had already been reached. Gillnetters choked about 1,100 chinook in an April 23-24 opening at three sites.
Lower river sportfishing closed April 16, but managers added two days additional fishing time to sporties between Bonneville and McNary dams. It was scheduled to close on May 4. -B. R.
[5] Elwha Dam Removal Timeline Slides Three Years
The EPA announced April 17 it has issued a Clean Water Act permit which signals the go-ahead for building water treatment plants for the city of Port Angeles and its industrial customers. The new plants will ensure a clean water supply while two dams on the nearby Elwha River are removed and the river restored. It's the most ambitious project of its kind yet undertaken in this country, approved by Congress 14 years ago.
But the construction of the plants may take up to five years, and could push the schedule for beginning dam removal out to 2012 from its tentative 2009 date.
The treatment plants will keep the water supply clean while 18 million cubic yards of sediment is sluiced downriver, a bit at a time. About half the sediment is expected to plaster the sides of Lake Mills between the two dams, but the rest is likely to go clear to the estuary and raise the river bed by several feet.
Dikes near the river mouth will have to be raised over three feet and extended nearly half a mile to protect lowland areas from future flooding, and nearby well systems must be modified to avoid damage from potential flooding in the future.
With the water table expected to rise from the change, all houses in the Lower Elwha Klallam Reservation with septic systems will have to be hooked up to a new sewer system.
At one point, engineers thought that the best way to tear the dams out would be to tackle the downstream project first and study the results for years before taking out the 210-foot barrier in Glines Canyon. But later, a different plan of attack was developed. A bypass channel will be constructed next to the Lower Elwha Dam while it's torn down, to allow the river to pass. A large area behind the dam will have to be cleared out as well, a giant plug made of woven fire boughs and gunnite was used to plug a huge leak in 1912, a few weeks after the dam was completed.
The upper dam will be notched and taken apart in steps to reduce sediment loads and adverse affects on fish in the river below. The tribal hatchery will be relocated, but the state's chinook rearing channel will stay open while the sediment is released and a rearing pond will be built on nearby Morse Creek.
Questions still remain about how much chinook numbers will improve from the restored Elwha and the addition of 70 miles of unblocked habitat. An old EIS estimated the numbers could grow to 30,000 from the 2,000 or so chinook that return now with help from the hatchery. Depending on productivity levels, the co-managers' targets in the latest recovery plan range from 7,000 to 17,000 spawners in 25 years, but only 2,000 in 10 years.
But scientists who reviewed the Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan, approved by NOAA Fisheries last December, have raised questions about the high harvest levels of Elwha chinook by Canadian and Alaskan fishermen that could put a big damper on recovery efforts, expected to cost in the $180-million range. The stock has been listed for protection under the ESA since 1999.
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210-foot high Glines Canyon Dam |
These harvest issues aren't new, they were raised back in 1993, when Natural Resource Consultants, a Seattle firm, reviewed the potential fisheries which could accrue from the restored river system and estimated its economic value at $14 million over the next 50 years. But their report also noted the high degree of uncertainty about restoring the stock to full theoretical productivity, and it concluded that removing the dams wasn't necessarily "a positive contribution in the even narrow sense of fishery conservation," especially since most of the benefits would go to fisheries outside the region.
The technical review team that recently reviewed the Puget Sound chinook recovery plan said the Elwha chinook population is a significant contribution to the overall "viability" of the Sound's evolutionarily significant unit because of its location at the edge of the ESU and its historical structure, and with Elwha's reputation of once being home to the largest chinook in the region--some weighed over 100 pounds.
However, the TRT also said the historic and potentially future harvest levels developed through the Pacific Salmon Treaty are "inconsistent" with assumptions about the potential productivity of the Elwha chinook and the ability of the habitat to support the recovery of the stock. They said potential harvest levels may exceed the stock's productivity, "given current and near-term habitat conditions." The scientists recommended that upcoming treaty negotiations should include measures to reduce harvest impacts on the listed stock.
These uncertainties are never mentioned in media accounts of the Elwha recovery effort, but the drumbeat of impending crisis is steady and shrill. Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound told The Seattle Times last week that the region doesn't have any more time to lose because the Puget Sound's ecosystem is at "a tipping point."
But wild chinook numbers in the Strait of Juan de Fuca area are higher now than in the mid-1980s and have remained in the 2,000 to 4,000 fish range since 2000. Other wild chinook stocks in the Sound have remained steady as well, or improved, with special cases like the Skagit, where the wild numbers have more than quadrupled from a 5,000-fish return in 1999. -B. R.
[6] State Study Clears Way For Further Condit Removal Permitting
A five-year state environmental review of PacifiCorp's plan for the removal of the 14.7 MW Condit project has been completed, opening the way for state and local permitting, including a section 401 water quality certificate. FERC has been waiting for the 401 to inform its decision on the utility's application to surrender the license for Condit, which is on the White Salmon River a few miles north of its confluence with the Columbia River in south central Washington.
The supplemental final environmental impact statement (SFEIS), prepared under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) and published in March by the Washington Department of Ecology, did not select a preferred alternative but merely evaluated the proposal put forward by PacifiCorp. Derek Sandison, the department's central region director, said the SFEIS is aimed at providing information to officials who will make permitting decisions. "It provides more specific information upon which the permitting decisions can be made," which in turn will drive the conditions FERC includes in the surrender application. Other DOE staff are already working on the 401 application, which has been filed and withdrawn three times. Construction and storm water permits will also be needed.
The SFEIS was prepared because the state did not feel FERC's reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act adequately addressed all the issues. Sandison said the SFEIS has "added more to the conversation about what species will be impacted over what period of time, and has shed more light on the upstream effects of opening up the stream for fish migration."
He said it also provides a great deal more detail about the broad areas of known impacts, such as the possibility of sedimentation and turbidity in the White Salmon and Columbia Rivers, loss of wetlands, impacts to surrounding land use, noise, air quality, aesthetic effects and provisions for public safety, services and utilities.
PacifiCorp filed a $20 million, 23-party settlement in 1999 that called for removal to begin after the cessation of generating operations in 2006. FERC issued a "final supplemental final environmental impact statement" under the NEPA in 2002. Last year, FERC approved the utility's request, based on a supplement to the settlement, to postpone the cessation of operations to October 2008 so the utility could raise an extra $2 million from power sales to cover rising permitting costs. Among other things, the plan calls for draining the 1.8 mile-long reservoir through a tunnel that would be built through the dam; removing the dam and other appurtenances; and filling in the tailrace at the powerhouse. It is hoped the work will provide access to 33 miles of river and tributary habitat for anadromous steelhead and salmon and restore habitat for bull trout.
"It's been a long process," Sandison acknowledged. "And there are thorny issues because we don't remove many dams." He said it would not have been prudent to begin the state review before FERC completed the NEPA process, and that the length of the state review was due in part to its being a "third party" EIS. A lot of time was spent negotiating with PacifiCorp over the cost reimbursement, which he said came to about $300,000. Additional time was spent waiting for information from the utility. "We could have moved faster ourselves," he allowed. DOE published a draft of the document in 2005. "It was a situation where one side or the other was waiting for analyses that needed to be conducted to fully evaluate the impacts."
Sandison said it was not possible to say whether the SFEIS' additional information on the impacts of the removal plan will increase or decrease the scope of the work or its costs. "That will be dictated by the permitting conditions." -Ben Tansey
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