[3] States Split Over New Salmon Plan
Environmental groups, lower Columbia tribes, and the state of Oregon are thoroughly unimpressed with the latest attempt by action agencies to draft a salmon plan for recovering anadromous stocks in the Columbia Basin. But Washington, Montana and Idaho lined up behind the feds in their first step towards writing a new hydro BiOp. The Colville and Kootenai Tribes sided with the three states and the BPA customer group as well.
In comments sent to BiOp Judge James Redden, the environmental groups said hydro actions appear to have changed little from those outlined in the 2004 BiOp, and some of them actually "appear to retreat from recent Court-ordered operations."
They said the months of collaboration that sovereigns spent with agencies appears to have used up everybody's time, but has addressed only a few of the problems that need to be solved before a proposed action can be written that avoids jeopardy to the listed stocks.
The plaintiff groups in the years-long BiOp litigation said they realized "...the draft plan is not the final word. Still, it is not a promising start given the limited time remaining in this remand." The plaintiff environmental and fishing groups were not involved in the nitty-gritty of the remand grind, but were allowed to observe the technical workshops.
Earthjustice attorneys Todd True and Steve Mashuda said the agencies' call for continuing negotiations for more flows doesn't mean the feds are actually requiring more flows for fish passage, and that proposed passage survival targets (95 percent per dam for spring migrants, 93 percent for summer migrants) have largely been met already.
They also noted that the draft proposed action may reduce both spring and summer spill levels from Court-ordered levels during the past few years.
Nor were they impressed with the higher levels of habitat funding that BPA has committed to spending, several hundred million dollars more through 2017. The groups said the "alleged increase" comes from a baseline for fish and wildlife spending that the 9th Circuit Court recently found illegal, and arbitrarily low.
The adverse effects of global warming on salmon habitat was another factor the agencies left out of their plan, enviro attorneys said. And they hammered the proposed plan for not including plans for hydro mitigation "up to and including" steps to breach lower Snake dams.
Lastly, they took a shot at the direction federal agencies are headed in their jeopardy analysis. NOAA Fisheries has already hinted strongly that it may judge proposed actions as avoiding jeopardy to listed stocks if those stocks are simply trending towards recovery. But attorney True said such a course doesn't gibe with the survival gaps that need to be filled for some stocks, like upper Columbia chinook.
However, Washington, Montana, the two upriver tribes and the BPA customer group which filed comments together as a regional coalition, told Judge Redden that the draft proposed action is a "positive step forward."
They pointed that the PA returns to the "core concepts" of the 2000 BiOp and its All-H approach, while "substantially" boosting regional fish recovery efforts and making a serious spending commitment to ensure efforts "are reasonably certain to occur." One of the principal reasons why Redden had ruled the 2000 BiOp illegal was because he judged many of the proposed habitat actions weren't likely to happen.
The states' and tribes' comments also noted that the remand process had implemented the Court-ordered collaborative process, where 155 representatives from 26 separate entities attended 272 different meetings and created a database of nearly 3,000 documents. They said the process relied heavily on the scientific expertise of federal agencies, and the independent panel of scientists who weighed in on issues like latent mortality and the passage model developed during the remand process.
They also stressed the development of performance standards to assess the value of the PA and the ability of the regional parties to change it as needed.
But they said the draft PA "suffers in some areas from a lack of clarity and structure," and could use more monitoring of adult returns to make sure performance targets are met. They also said any savings from changes in spill operations, passage or fish barging should go to pay for habitat and hatchery improvements to help the neediest populations.
They urged that NOAA Fisheries keeps on meeting with remand policy folks as the federal agency crafts its hydro BiOp. "Too much progress has been made through the collaborative remand effort," said the regional coalition, "to risk any back-tracking that might otherwise occur if the federal government is left to its own devices to prepare a BiOp behind the traditional veil of 'federal closed doors.'"
Idaho filed its own comments, and said the collaboration had achieved its objective of bringing all the parties together in an attempt to reconcile hydro operations with ESA obligations, and that the proposed action has dealt extensively with hydro, habitat and hatchery actions, but still needs to look at harvest, since it is a key limiting factor for several ESUs.
The state pointed out that hydro operations will be part of the environmental baseline in future harvest consultations for Basin fisheries, "...it is thus plain that the ESA-related fates of the FCRPS and the future basin harvest are inextricably connected," but action agencies will have to rely on continuing negotiations in the U.S. v. Oregon process "...to explore methods for ameliorating the impact of tribal and state fisheries on listed stocks."
The Colville Tribes filed their own comments as well, agreeing with most of the draft PA, including the direction of the jeopardy analysis. But they said the PA provides too much flexibility for operations at Grand Coulee to help already recovering stocks like Snake fall chinook, or lower Columbia chum, which aren't affected much by the hydro system at all, all to the detriment of upper Columbia listed stocks which face greater survival gaps than most other ESUs.
The comments from lower Columbia tribes, principals in the U.S. v. Oregon process, said little about the harvest issue--only that proposed harvest actions provide "no biological benefit." But they had plenty to say about proposed hydro operations, calling them "a step backwards" from the last two BiOps.
The treaty tribes weren't impressed with habitat actions either--saying there were few new starts for the short-term and proposed actions were too unclear for the long-term. "Moreover," said the tribes, "Bonneville's assertion that the PA represents significant 'new' habitat money hardly makes up for the $300 million shortfall in resources that the fishery managers identified years ago."
The lower Columbia tribes also said the agencies needed to be much more "aggressive" in the use of hatcheries "to minimize current jeopardy risk, advance recovery, and meet other legal obligations to the Tribes."
The state of Oregon used its comments to stump for a John Day drawdown strategy to minimum operating pool, a proposal that was discussed earlier this year for spring migrants. Now the state supports the drawdown strategy for both spring and summer migrating fish, a tactic that the remand's policy working group didn't support either, following the lead of an intense Corps' study on the issue that was completed years ago
Oregon policymakers complained directly to the judge about not getting the recognition they think that they think they deserve. "The court consistently admonished the federal defendants that their present course--essentially as apologists for the status quo--causes jeopardy to protected Columbia and Snake River fish. Oregon has sought in the remand collaboration to be a firm voice for appropriately aggressive fish-protection measures. But Oregon's contributions are largely ignored by the present federal submission" (see NW Fishletter 227 and NW Fishletter229).
The state also called for contingency planning if proposed operations are inadequate--that would include the operation of all lower Columbia reservoirs at minimum operating pool during fish migrations.
Oregon also roundly criticized the draft PA proposal to barge more fish when flows are low, or later in the spring season when ocean survival improves.
The state also took issue with the "trending towards recovery" metric that the feds will likely use in their jeopardy analysis, arguing that it is not correct to assume that a stock is trending towards recovery just because its numbers go up slightly. They say populations should be increasing faster at lower densities because of less competition for food and space, with growth rates closer to 3:1 rather than slightly above 1:1 as many are now showing. "The metric crediting a ratio slightly over one as support for an improving prospect for recovery is spurious."
The Spokane Tribe also filed comments with the court that echoed comments tribal representatives had expressed before--namely, that federal defendants aren't following their own 10-step process. They called for more effort to secure water from Canada for flow augmentation, and said the draft PA does not consider impacts from shifting flood control burdens to Lake Roosevelt from Idaho reservoirs.
The Spokane Tribe also said the current management processes used in BiOp implementation are not effective, and a more accessible forum is needed which includes all sovereigns operating in a transparent and coherent structure.
The Inland Ports and Navigation Group also commented, judging that the new PA represents a "significant strengthening" of the agencies commitment to restoring endangered fish from installation of new spillway weirs to aid juvenile migration to greater spending on habitat improvement, especially in the tributaries and estuary, which will benefit all listed species. -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
NW Fishletter 231, May, 24, 2007
NW Fishletter 227, March 8, 2007
NW Fishletter 229, April 16, 2007
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