[1] Draft Hydro BiOp Nearly Ready For Prime Time
The draft hydro BiOp being written by NOAA Fisheries was expected to be circulating among federal action agency staffers by last Friday, according to sources familiar with the situation. Details were sketchy, but BPA was reportedly still in talks with some states and tribes over possibly adding more items to its latest plan for recovering ESA-listed salmon and steelhead throughout the Columbia Basin.
The BiOp is not scheduled to go public until Oct. 31, the latest product of a lengthy remand process that began when U.S. District Judge James Redden threw out the 2000 BiOp in May 2003.
This time around, the action agencies--BPA, Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers--probably won't have to worry whether NOAA Fisheries decides if Columbia and Snake dam operations jeopardize the ESA-listed stocks. They have already acknowledged it even though they also concede they can't separate fish mortality caused by the dams from natural mortality factors.
To impress the judge, they have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to improve hydro passage, hatcheries and habitat for the benefit of the fish--hoping to fill estimated survival gaps needed to recover the fish.
It's a far cry from a few years ago, when fish runs had rebounded and the feds were telling the judge they could probably cut fish conservation measures in their next BiOp.
The latest salmon plan harks back to the 2000 BiOp, with its 199 separate actions designed to help fish. But the new one tries to show Redden most of these measures are "reasonably certain to occur," one of the main reasons he tossed out the old BiOp, and the 2004 BiOp as well.
However, NOAA Fisheries may do some serious tweaking before the new BiOp is released. And that may involve changing hydro operations OK'd by the judge. The feds said their latest analyses show the judge's spill order may benefit wild Snake River spring chinook, but harm wild steelhead.
By reducing spill at lower Snake dams in May and early June, more steelhead will be routed into barges for a free ride past the hydro system. After collecting years of survival data, NMFS has found that barged steelhead survive to adulthood at about twice the rate of the in-river migrators.
The salmon plan put together by action agencies admittedly shortchanges overall steelhead life-cycle survival by about 12 percent, because it basically follows a spill regime ordered by Redden two years ago. Another question has arisen about steelhead harvest rates used in the analysis possibly being too low.
In December 2005, Redden ruled the feds must keep boosted spill levels throughout June, instead of following their plan to switch over to a maxed-out barging policy later in April, when the overall survival of transported fish usually eclipses that of in-river migrators.
The feds had estimated a 16-percent boost in returns of wild chinook, and nearly 25 percent more wild steelhead from their proposed change in dam operations compared to the 2004 BiOp mandates, which mirrored the 2000 BiOp. The feds had estimated the spring spill proposal by plaintiff environmental and fishing groups would actually reduce wild chinook and steelhead returns by a couple of percentage points, compared to the 2004 BiOp.
But Redden was swayed by arguments from the plaintiffs. He said the differences reflected continuing uncertainty about the relative benefits of barging and in-river passage. He called the feds' late spring max-barging proposal a "radical departure" from their "spread-the-risk" philosophy and "not justified in light of the best available science."
The newest survival estimations, using the NMFS COMPASS model, have produced results that predict the judge's spill regime (along with the later barging) will produce an overall loss for adult steelhead numbers compared to previous operations. The model is still criticized by some state and tribal agency folks, but it has been reviewed positively by the independent science board used to weigh in on controversial questions of salmon science.
The new draft BiOp is also expected to embrace many other aspects of the action agencies' salmon plan finalized in early September, which called for many actions besides hydro improvements to better the lot of ESA-listed stocks.
The draft includes a long list of hatchery supplementation projects, as part of a $34-million effort over the next two years to improve hatcheries, along with another $4 million to pay for operations after modifications are done.
The plan also includes an ambitious program of improvements to tributary and estuary habitat that is expected to cost more than $450 million by 2017. However, the bill may add up to a lot more, with memoranda of agreement still under development with individual tribes in the basin, and other talks with some states continuing.
Oregon reportedly is still holding out for the possibility of more study for a John Day drawdown, and some tribes want some sort of "dam breaching" language concerning lower Snake dams added to the BiOp, in case fish populations don't respond to the hundreds of millions that will be spent on recovery efforts over the next 10 years.
Some utility folks are clearly worried about the situation. At this point, said one, "We really have no idea how much it is going to cost."
"It's all marketing from here on out," said another. -Bill Rudolph
The following links were mentioned in this story:
NW Fishletter #236, September 20, 2007
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