[1] Agencies Release Assessment Of Future Dam Operations
Regional action agencies have released their biological assessment of future dam operations and other actions they plan on implementing to improve ESA-listed salmon and steelhead stocks throughout the Columbia and Snake River basins.
It's the next step in creating a new FCRPS Biological Opinion. Now the ball is in NMFS' court. The agency is charged with reviewing the actions to determine if proposed dam operations will jeopardize the listed stocks. A draft BiOp is expected by Oct 31, with a final document shortly after the New Year.
Insiders say it's pretty close to the draft released at the end of May, which showed considerable evidence that most populations in the Snake and Upper Columbia are much improved since 1990--and their abundance is still trending upwards--a fact that NMFS will likely use in their jeopardy analysis.
The agencies have gone back to the all-H format of the 2000 BiOp, with more spending on habitat and hydro actions in hopes that it will please federal judge James Redden, who is presiding over the remand process. Redden has sent clear signals from the bench that the feds need to spend more before he might OK their plan.
BPA Administrator Steve Wright said "targeting actions to the specific needs of the fish is what's new about this biological assessment and proposed action we're putting on the table."
He said the assessment is the most comprehensive analysis the agencies have ever done, "to look at where the stocks are today and where they need to be." It included an "extensive collaboration," mainly with states and tribes, to get their views on salmon recovery and includes more actions to aid the fish.
Wright said the actions are designed to meet or exceed the ESA requirements set by the federal court. Unfortunately, that may not be the case for Snake River steelhead, whose populations are expected to decline 12 percent from proposed spill and transport operations designed to help spring chinook.
Witt Anderson, spokesman for the Corps of Engineers, said the agencies are committing about $500 million to improve juvenile and adult fish passage at federal dams, along with $450 million in habitat improvements in tributaries and estuaries over the 10-year period the BiOp is expected to cover.
Anderson said another $34 million would be spent over the next two years to improve hatcheries and another $4 million to pay for operations after modifications are completed.
He said another $7 million would be added to current spending to reduce predation on salmon by birds, sea lions, and pikeminnow.
BPA customers generally applauded the effort, but had some reservations.
"While a vast improvement, unfortunately, the Biological Assessment does not apply its rigorous science across the board," said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, a coalition of farm groups, utilities, municipalities and other river users.
"It fails to identify needed hatchery reforms and completely ignores the harvest of listed fish," Flores said, "which are identified by expert scientists as major factors limiting the ability of salmon and steelhead to recover. Until the region comes to grips with the inherent conflict between recovering wild salmon and producing hatchery fish for harvest, the job is not yet done."
Environmental groups called the plan nothing new, nor enough to recover the salmon.
James Schroeder, senior environmental policy specialist with the National Wildlife Federation, said "the federal agencies can slice the numbers and spin the data any way they want, but the bottom line is clear: Fewer and fewer fish are returning each year, and that decline has real economic consequences in the region and beyond."
He said fewer than 10,000 wild spring chinook made it back to Idaho this year and four times that number are needed for recovery.
But huge jack counts this spring are pointing to a large spring run next year, thanks mainly to improved ocean conditions, so 40,000 wild Snake springers may show up in Idaho before the plan is even in place or in court.
Environmental groups who have successfully challenged past salmon plans seemed ready to take on the next one. Sources said that some BPA customer groups were already filling their war chests, expecting more litigation next year.
"The courts have consistently sent a strong message to the federal government that it cannot ignore the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, or manipulate the Columbia and Snake rivers in ways that fail to protect our region's salmon," said Todd True of Earthjustice, attorney for the coalition of plaintiff groups.
"But it's not happening," True added. "Instead, the federal agencies are digging in their heels, protecting the status quo and the powerful interests of the Bonneville Power Administration by refusing to consider--let alone include--anything beyond minor tweaks to hydrosystem operations. If this is the best they believe they can do, then a God Squad may be the best chance these fish have. A God Squad would have the power to explore all options for conserving the species, up to and including dam removal."
The seven-member "God Squad," headed by the Secretary of the Interior, has the power to override government decisions with respect to ESA enforcement. Other squad members are the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of the Army, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one individual from the affected state.
Officially called the "Endangered Species Committee," the squad was established in 1978 by an amendment to the 1973 Endangered Species Act. It has only been called into action three times to deal with proposed federal-agency actions that have been determined to cause "jeopardy" to any listed species.
Such actions may receive an exemption from the ESA if five members of the committee determine the action is of regional or national significance, that the benefits of the action clearly outweigh the benefits of conserving the species and that there are no reasonable and prudent alternatives to the action. -Bill Rudolph
[2] Do Ocean Conditions Trump Dam Effects?
Regional salmon scientists briefed members of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week on some of their latest findings at a two-day confab in Portland designed to improve the dialog between researchers and policymakers. Members heard reports on various aspects of habitat restoration, mainstem survival, along with estuary and ocean research.
With BPA poised to spend more than a billion dollars on dam improvements and habitat projects in the Columbia Basin that double as jobs programs, some federal scientists were pointing more than ever to the ocean's huge role at determining the numbers of returning salmon.
But our knowledge of ocean processes is pretty skimpy compared to the huge amounts of information gleaned about salmon before they leave their rivers. University of Washington oceangoing scientist Kate Meyers pointed out that 99 percent of the research on salmon deals with its life in fresh water, while 99 percent of its growth occurs in salt water.
NMFS scientists were on hand to repeat what they have found in recent years--that juvenile salmon survival down the Columbia and Snake rivers doesn't correlate very much with their returning adult numbers. NOAA Fisheries researcher John Williams, from the agency's Seattle-based science center, even questioned the value of developing juvenile survival goals for juvenile passage through the hydro system.
Fellow federal scientist Steve Smith pointed out to the freshwater-centric crowd that most of the fish die in the ocean, not the river.
"There's a much larger amount of mortality happening in the ocean," said Smith, who countered an argument raised by US Fish and Wildlife staffer Howard Schaller. Schaller claimed spring chinook stocks from the Snake River die off at higher rates than stocks downriver like the John Day because they pass more dams before they enter the ocean.
Schaller called it "differential mortality," and when pressed about policy implications, he said dam operators needed to get fish through the hydro system faster--which would happen with higher flows.
However, NMFS scientist Bill Muir reported that his agency has estimated that direct survival of this year's inriver spring chinook migration was about 56 percent, nearly as high as last year's 61 percent, when flows were significantly higher, and steelhead survivals were about 37 percent. Last year, they were 42 percent. Muir said that 2007's numbers are considerably higher than the similar low-flow, high temperature year of 2004.
Muir also reported that survival studies with wild PIT-tagged fish showed 60 percent less smolt-to-adult return rates than the run at large and similar trends for PIT-tagged hatchery chinook, which showed 40 percent to 50 percent lower SARs than for hatchery fish at large.
Further, Muir said their research showed no real correlation between SARs and inriver survival of juvenile migrants.
Schaller agreed, and tried to explain his analysis that was recently published in a fisheries journal, that purports to show evidence that mortality of the Snake stocks was higher than downriver runs like the John Day once the fish were beyond Bonneville Dam.
What Schaller didn't mention was that his analysis had been one of seven different hypotheses analyzed last winter by an independent panel of scientists (Independent Scientific Advisory Board) who concluded that Schaller's attempts (along with co-author Charlie Petrosky of IDFW) to quantify the "latent mortality" was basically a waste of time, and scientists should spend their time more wisely by determining the biological benefits of transporting fish downstream in barges.
Schaller said that 71 percent of the variation in Snake spring chinook SARs could be explained by three variables, water travel time, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation index and coastal upwelling.
But NMFS scientist Williams and co-author Mark Scheuerell published a 2005 paper that said 71 percent of the variation in the Snake spring chinook SARs could be explained by coastal upwelling alone, and they generated an even higher correlation (r2 = .96) when they used another form of the dynamic time-series model that used all the available data.
Confused? The ISAB is now reviewing the Fish Passage Center's 10-year retrospective survival study, which supports Schaller's hypothesis. Power Council chair Tom Karier told NW Fishletter he is waiting for its review before he makes up his mind about the matter. He did mention what others had said at the meeting--that higher inriver flows may be related to La Nina years, when there is more precipitation, oceans are cold and upwelling brings up significant nutrients from the deep to kick-start ocean productivity.
Karier said the meeting raised some significant questions about carrying capacity--how much can we add to stocks by improving conditions in upriver habitat, and the estuary, where a recent acoustic tag study has estimated that about a third of all smolts perish between Bonneville Dam and the ocean. Or how much can we expect from the ocean when offshore conditions are poor and flooded with hatchery releases?
He sees a role for the Council to help direct research in the most important areas. "You can't just leave it up to the science people or policymakers," said Karier, who noted that the best way to set priorities would be a process that used both sides for input.
Karier said he was especially concerned about the report that important fall chinook transport studies may have to be postponed again in 2008 because not enough young fish will be available because of other production priorities in the US v. Oregon process. He said the Council could help by getting parties together put those studies back on course, even if it means shifting funding to get the work done.
NOAA Fisheries scientists also reported on their latest modeling results, which showed that each dam and reservoir accounted for about 10 percent of juvenile mortality, with about half occuring at each dam, and the other half in the accompanying river reach -B. R.
[3] Feds Slam Latest Fish Passage Center Fish Study
Federal scientists found plenty to complain about in the latest report by the Fish Passage Center, which reviewed 10 years' worth of data and analyzed PIT-tags from hundreds of thousands of hatchery salmon in the Columbia and Snake basins.
The 10-year retrospective report has been handed over for final review to the panel of independent scientists who work for NOAA Fisheries and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council before the council approves any new funding for the FPC's $1.3-million annual project known as CSS [Comparative Survival Study].
Critics both in and out of the government have complained about different aspects of the study since it began, saying its conclusions have consistently downplayed the benefits of transporting most stocks of Snake River salmon and steelhead past federal dams.
The latest comments from federal scientists and BPA consultants reiterated those earlier complaints, along with newer concerns and more evidence that the PIT-tagged return rates are considerably less than those of the unmarked population.
The feds also took issue with the report's conclusion that by using flows to reduce the travel time of certain stocks, such as steelhead, through the hydro system, mortality would go down by 5.6 percent. The feds said the report's analysis that correlates survival with water particle travel time "is a classic example of a 'spurious correlation.'"
The FPC response said that NMFS had "mischaracterized the work," and that fish travel time is a function of other variables as well as water particle travel time, which include average percent spill and Julian day.
The NMFS scientists said the latest report left out the analysis of fish return rates from the FPC's 2005 report, which the Independent Scientific Advisory Board [ISAB] had recommended they include.
"The absence of these analyses," said the feds, "begs the question as to why, and implies the analyses may have weakened the report's statements about wild fish SARs [smolt-to-adult return rates]."
The latest CSS report says wild chinook and steelhead have not benefited from being barged, but the NMFS reviewers questioned the results, noting that when they analyzed the CSS data, they found unmarked hatchery and wild fish returned at higher rates than the PIT-tagged fish--for both hatchery and wild fish.
In their 2005 comments, NMFS scientists said in five of the 10 years studied, the point estimate of annual SARs for transported wild chinook was higher than for inriver migrants.
Unnamed BPA consultants also weighed in on the latest CSS report. They said it didn't include enough information for them to replicate the findings by using accepted modeling procedures, which made them conclude the report didn't "demonstrate the scientific rigor and support to authoritatively guide hydrosystem management."
The consultants also said the CSS report's analysis of upstream/downstream stocks was invalid. It found that wild chinook SARs from the Snake were only about one-quarter of those from the John Day River in the lower Columbia. However, BPA said the analysis omitted natural mortality factors that should occur between upstream and downstream sites.
The feds also noted that a 2007 ISAB report advised against trying to measure absolute latent mortality, which is a large part of the FPC's analysis of upstream/downstream productivity. The ISAB said the focus should be on the total mortality of inriver migrants and transported fish.
Another point critics cited was the fact that upstream hatchery stocks sometimes had better SARs than the downstream hatchery fish from the Carson facility, one reason why NMFS reviewers felt that the data from hatchery fish really didn't provide information on how to best operate the hydro system for wild chinook.
The CSS Oversight Committee acknowledged that Snake hatchery fish were helped more by transportation and showed relatively lower levels of differential mortality than wild stocks, but annual SARs between wild and hatchery stocks were highly correlated.
"In view of this high correlation," said the committee, "continuing the CSS time series of hatchery SARs will be important to augment wild chinook SAR information following future years of low escapements, in addition to providing valuable management information for the specific hatcheries."
But NMFS said the same information could be gleaned from much smaller numbers of PIT-tagged fish or simply by comparing adult returns of clipped (hatchery) to unclipped fish. Their earlier analysis found that PIT-tagged wild fish returns were only about 60 percent of untagged fish, which made them question the CSS results claiming that Snake River wild chinook returns aren't meeting the 2-percent return-rate goals for the region.
The latest CSS report is now being reviewed by two panels associated with the Power Council, the ISAB, which reports on general issues having to do with salmon recovery science, and the ISRP [Independent Scientific Review Panel], which judges the scientific merit of BPA fish and wildlife proposals. Council staffer Erik Merrill said their reviews should by completed by Oct. 19 and will be used by council members to help determine if the CSS work should be funded in the future. -B. R.
[4] Oregon Judge Dismisses FPC Staffers' Lawsuit
A federal judge in Oregon has dismissed a lawsuit filed by staffers of the Fish Passage Center against BPA and its administrator, Steve Wright.
The plaintiffs claimed their rights under the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution had been violated when BPA didn't renew a contract between the FPC and BPA in retaliation for publishing data and information used by plaintiff environmental and fishing groups in litigation that added more spill to hydro operations.
The FPC staffers also claimed that their reputations had been damaged "as a result of the defendants' reliance on unsupported allegations unfairly criticizing plaintiffs' work."
The suit included BPA Administrator Wright as a defendant, claiming that he prevented plaintiffs from testifying before the court and from associating with persons and associations who were witnesses before the court.
Judge Ancer Haggerty dismissed plaintiffs' claims, siding with BPA and Wright's argument that all claims brought against Bonneville belonged in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the claims against Wright, the judge said, plaintiffs' speech was not entitled to constitutional protection, as the Supreme Court recently ruled. He also found that Wright's statements about scientific neutrality at the FPC did not support plaintiffs' claims, and dismissed their allegations.
Defendants also argued that since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the contract had to be reinstated, no one lost his or her job, hence all claims for relief were moot. The judge agreed with that as well.
"Without the contract's expiration," Haggerty said in his opinion, "no controversy over which this court can exercise its judicial power can be said to presently exist." -B. R.
[5] New Review Suggests Changes At Gorge Hatcheries
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has suggested ending its strategy of releasing smolts in March from its Spring Creek Hatchery that has cost ratepayers millions in extra spill at Bonneville Dam, a move that would cut fall chinook production by nearly a third.
The recommendation came in a draft report that reviewed operations of the agency's Columbia Gorge hatcheries. It calls for reducing fall chinook releases to about 10 million smolts from the current 15-million fish release in order "to reduce on-station risks and the potential need for a March release." Typically, about 7 million young fish have been released at that time.
For years, BPA has spilled water for days in early March to help the young salmon past Bonneville Dam. The practice has cost of millions of dollars in lost power production, and risks potentially damaging chum salmon eggs in redds below the dam from high dissolved gas levels. The chum are listed for ESA protection.
For many years, the hatchery released several million fall chinook fry during the winter. A partially completed USFWS study shows the return rate of unfed fry released in December was about 30 times less than the fish released later in March through April.
The unfed fry releases began in 1901 (every February), but were curtailed in 1974 due to inadequate adult runs. They were restored in the 1990s when surplus returns were again experienced, according to a 2006 USFWS report. But it's not a release strategy that managers use today.
Unpublished data from the 1950s and 1960s pegged the return rate of the early fry releases at only 0.0022 percent.
The latest data showed the survival rate of age-3 adults (brood year 1999) that were released early at 0.0153 percent, while the standard releases that year (March-May) showed a 0.3774 return rate back to the hatchery.
The hatchery has produced tule fall chinook for ocean and river harvest since in the early 1900s, with the original broodstock trapped at the Big White Salmon River. The program has added an average of nearly 20,000 fish to ocean and river fisheries every year (1990-1999 data), and needs about 10,000 fish to return to the hatchery for broodstock.
Currently, the hatchery stock is listed for protection under the ESA as part of the lower Columbia fall chinook ESU.
However, the report says by reducing current tule production, the facility could produce 350,000 tule smolts for restoring the natural population in the Big White Salmon River after the removal of Condit Dam, which is slated for 2008 or 2009.
"The available space could also be used to assist with reintroduction of other species such as spring chinook, coho, chum, bull trout, and steelhead," said the draft report, which also noted that only chum and chinook should be reared to full smolt stage because of limitations of the water supply.
As a long-term goal, the report calls for continuation of tule production and for a reevaluation of management priorities and continuing efforts to reduce tule strays in the pool behind Bonneville Dam.
The report also looked at current operations at the service's other facilities in the Gorge at Carson and Little White Salmon, which raise spring chinook and upriver brights, respectively. These operations are focused on producing fish for harvest in the tributaries where the hatcheries are located.
But the report said current operations pose some risks. Upriver brights from the Little White Salmon river stray into the Big White Salmon and spawn after tules have spawned--to the possible detriment of native tules in the region.
Also, upriver brights raised at the Little White Salmon facility, but released in the Yakima River, may also pose risks to restoration of the fall chinook stock there. The report said it appears that the URBs raised at the hatchery exhibit significant straying throughout Bonneville Pool, and wander above The Dalles Dam as well. The original stock for the hatchery came from natural origin adults trapped at Bonneville Dam in the 1970s, but their origin was unknown.
The hatchery review team recommended transitioning to a broodstock genetically integrated with the Priest Rapids hatchery stock or another one representing a natural population in the Mid-Columbia.
The report also recommended changing its spring chinook broodstock from the Carson-type stock to the stock from the Klickitat Hatchery to create a better genetic fit for reintroducing spring chinook in the Big White Salmon after removal of Condit Dam.
Overall, the report concluded, the Gorge facilities are playing an "effective role" in partly mitigating for effects of habitat destruction by federal dams in this part of the Columbia and are situated to play a role in restoring native stocks to the region. -B. R.
[6] Upriver Columbia Fall Run Gets Severe Downgrade
This year's return of upriver bright fall chinook took a big hit last week as Columbia Basin harvest managers said the final numbers may be only about two-thirds of their preseason estimate of 185,000 (at the river mouth).
The Sept. 12 update said the upriver bright return could range from 121,000 to 151,000, 65 percent to 82 percent of the preseason forecast. On Sept. 17, they dropped it even further, to 105,000.
The latest update said about 77 percent of the brights and 89 percent of the tules have returned.
So far, about 120,000 total fall chinook have made it past Bonneville Dam, only about one-third of the 10-year average. But up the lower Snake, at Lower Granite Dam, the fall count was close to 5,000 fish, about three-fourths the 10-year average.
On Sept. 14, The University of Washington's in-season forecaster was predicting a 131,000-fish return to Bonneville, far below the 231,000-fish preseason prediction based on jack counts. The U.W. model estimated that about 80 percent of the run had passed the dam. By Sept. 19, it estimated that 93 percent of the run had passed Bonneville Dam and lowered the size to 128,600 chinook.
Recreational anglers in the lower river's Buoy 10 fishery caught about 4,000 chinook, only a few hundred shy of preseason expectations, and another 4,300 chinook during the August fishery in the lower river. Managers continued the lower river sport fishery until Sept. 19, when about 12,000 chinook were expected to have been caught by anglers (to Hwy 395 bridge), including 4,460 upriver brights and 3,550 lower river hatchery chinook
Tribal commercial fishers had a three-and-half day opening in Zone 6 above Bonneville Dam last week and were planning on getting another four and a half days this week. Their projected total catch was nearly 30,000 chinook, with about half being upriver brights. They were also expected to harvest 13,480 steelhead, including more than 600 ESA-listed 'B' run steelhead, heading for Idaho.
Commercial non-Indian gillnetters in the lower Columbia have caught about 8,800 chinook, including 701 lower river hatchery fish, 1,898 upriver brights, and another 4,800 chinook caught in select area fisheries outside the mainstem. -B. R.
[7] Council Finds Coal Cutbacks Vital To Lower CO2 Emissions
Retiring some existing coal-fired plants and replacing their output with cleaner resources is the key to maintaining or lowering carbon dioxide emissions from the regional electric sector, according to a new Northwest Power and Conservation Council paper.
State renewables portfolio standards, substantial energy conservation and summer-spill elimination are insufficient to significantly slow or reverse the rising trajectory of regional power-related CO2 emissions, according to "Carbon Dioxide Footprint of the Northwest Power System," released Sept. 13.
"CO2 production from electricity generation is dominated by existing coal-fired generating plants," the paper said. "To stabilize CO2 production at 2005 levels or to reduce CO2 production to 1990 levels would require substituting low CO2-producing resources or additional conservation for some of these existing coal-fired power plants.
"In addition, the scenario analysis shows that policy choices that are made for purposes other than CO2 reduction (in this case fish and wildlife policy) can also have significant effects on CO2 production; enough effect to negate policies such as renewables portfolio standards," it said.
The council analysis estimated that regional CO2 emissions from the Northwest electric system have risen from about 44 million tons in 1990--a popular baseline year for climate-change policies--to 67 million tons in 2005. Economic growth, added fossil-fueled generators, diminished hydro capabilities and closure of the Trojan nuclear plant near Portland all contributed to this trend, the council said.
The study also noted that had 2005 been a normal water year as was 1990, CO2 emissions in 2005 would have been about 59 millions tons, a 34-percent increase over 1990.
Looking ahead, the council projected that if regional resource development follows its 2004 plan emphasizing renewables, conservation and some natural gas, CO2 production by 2024 would amount to 71 million tons, representing a 20-percent gain over 2005, assuming normal water conditions in 2024.
"It's really easy to go up [with CO2 emissions] and it's really difficult to go down . . . is what appears to be happening," said council senior resource analyst Jeff King, at the Aug. 14 meeting of the council's Power Committee.
To return to 1990 CO2 levels or below, "you have to address the existing stock of coal-fired resources to achieve that kind of objective," he said. From 2015-2024, under the council's recommended resource portfolio, coal would account for 81 percent of Northwest power system CO2 production.
The Northwest, whose total capacity is close to two-thirds hydropower, fares well in CO2 emissions, relative to the greater West. Under normal water conditions in 2005, the region's power system would have emitted about 540 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour generated, compared to about 990 pounds/MWh for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council area, the council figured.
However, it noted, all regions possess "essentially the same set of future resource options," and consequently, "it will be difficult for the Northwest to maintain or reduce its CO2 emissions rate."
If state renewables portfolio standards were met in Washington, Oregon and Montana, and all summer spill were eliminated to enable more hydro generation, the growth rate of CO2 emissions would only be lowered an estimated 60 percent, the council found. The effect of their removal on regional CO2 emissions depends on the replacement resources.
"Failure to achieve the conservation targets in the Fifth Power Plan, or removing the lower Snake River dams and replacing the power in a manner consistent with the Fifth Power Plan, could more than offset the potential savings from the scenarios that reduce CO2 production," the paper said.
The four federal dams on the lower Snake River generate about 1020 aMW of energy under current river operations, and provide 2650 MW of sustained-peaking capacity, according to the council.
The effect of their removal on regional CO2 emissions depends on the replacement resources, taken in the study to be 810 aMW from new and existing gas plants, and 170 aMW from existing coal units. This would raise average annual CO2 production 4.6 millions tons over the council plan's resource scenario from 2015-2024.
Making up the loss of the hydro generation from the lower Snake dams with a market-purchase scenario was considered but not reported. The council said this approach "would compromise system adequacy and reliability by reducing the amount of resource available to meet load."
Another potential scenario involves conservation and renewables as the main substitute resources, a notion promoted by the Northwest Energy Coalition, among others, in support of dam breaching as a salmon-recovery measure.
This approach could delay some CO2 increases, but not stop or reverse it, the council paper said.
Tying the increased development of conservation and renewables to dam breaching is "misleading," it said, because this means discarding more than 1000 MW of "emission-free generation" that must eventually be replaced, "unless the supplies of renewables and conservation are considered unlimited."
However, given the difficulty of reducing CO2 emissions, discarding existing CO2-free power sources has to be considered "unproductive," it concluded.
Steve Weiss, policy analyst with NWEC, told the council's Power Committee last week that conservation and renewables as dam resource-replacements would not all be cost-effective, but added that he expected Congress to "make the region whole" and not increase costs specifically to Northwest electric ratepayers if it does authorize dam removal.
Weiss also said keeping the dams, in various spill scenarios, "doesn't change the CO2 problem very much."
The paper estimated that no summer spill at Snake and lower Columbia dams would decrease CO2 emissions by 1.4 million tons a year in the Northwest from 2015-24. Court-ordered spill has added another 700,000 tons of CO2 per year, compared to the base case 2004 BiOp.
The overall effect of court-ordered spill to no spill within the Northwest from 2015-24 was estimated to increase average annual CO2 production in the Northwest by 2.1 million tons. West-wide, the paper estimated the court-ordered spill to increase average annual CO2 production by 5.2 million tons compared to no summer spill operations.
The council asked its staff to forecast CO2 production using an assortment of future resource scenarios. The base case corresponded to the council's latest plan, while other scenarios were based on low conservation gains, high renewables development, or utility integrated resource plans.
Under all these scenarios, regional CO2 emissions rose in 2024 from the 59 million tons emitted in 2005, an average water year. The lowest level was the high-renewables scenario, at 66 million tons in 2024, while the highest was the utility IRPs, at 77 million tons.
"The purpose of these alternative scenarios is to quantify the sensitivity of results to plausible changes in the power system and some related policies that have received attention," said the paper. "No new council position on any of these policies is intended by this analysis, nor should any be inferred."
Comments on the paper are due Oct. 19. -Mark Ohrenschall
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