[5] Enviro Groups Target Report Language On Upper Snake BiOp

More than a dozen environmental and fishing groups have enlisted the help of Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell to remove language in an appropriations bill they say "could threaten ongoing salmon recovery efforts while delaying real solutions to the Pacific Northwest's salmon crisis."

In a Sept. 5 letter to the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, American Rivers and 17 other groups asked Cantwell to block the Department of Interior's 2008 budget bill--introduced by beleaguered Idaho Sen. Larry Craig--that calls on the DOI to implement "without further delay" the 2005 Upper Snake River BiOp.

That BiOp was ruled illegal last year by James Redden, a federal District Court judge in Oregon, who said it suffers from the same flawed jeopardy analysis as the BiOp governing lower Snake and mainstem Columbia River hydro operations.

Upper Snake irrigation water has been a hot-button issue for Idaho politicians since American Rivers filed the litigation several years ago that led to Redden's ruling. Many Idahoans were afraid an adverse ruling would scuttle their newly minted agreement between stakeholders, agencies and the Nez Perce Tribe over Snake River water usage.

In 2005, after the water litigation heated up [American Rivers v. NOAA Fisheries], most parties to the Snake River Agreement said that calling for more water from the Upper Snake for fish needs would kill the deal. After Redden's ruling, Craig voiced his concern in a statement released by the state's congressional delegation, worrying that the decision could lead to dewatering millions of acres of irrigated land.

"We have said it before and we will say it again; let there be no mistake," Craig said at the time. "We will protect Idaho's water and the Snake River Basin Agreement at all costs. Yesterday's decision has more to do with establishing a personal judicial legacy than saving a species. This court continues to ignore the big picture and all the factors that are in play. We're not makin' biscuits here, so just adding water isn't the answer."

Cantwell sent a letter of her own to subcommittee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Sept. 19, seeking her assistance in removing Craig's language.

"Congressional intervention at this point in the proceedings would not only undermine the ongoing federal administrative and regional collaborative process, but the judicial process as well," Cantwell wrote. "In addition, it could further threaten salmon in the Columbia-Snake River Basin, and the communities that depend on them, by delaying the development of a legally enforceable BiOp to protect salmon and steelhead populations."

But the hand-wringing over Craig's language may be the precursor to more court theatrics, since the next Upper Snake BiOp is expected to call for actions nearly identical to those in the BiOp that Redden had discarded.

This is despite Redden's strong hint that he wouldn't OK a new Upper Snake BiOp that left out more water for ESA-listed fish downstream. The judge ordered that the 2005 Upper Snake BiOp stay in place during the remand, even though he didn't like it.

By storing 2 million acre-feet of water, Redden said the Bureau of Reclamation projects helped kill salmon by reducing the quality of habitat, boosting water temperatures, impacting water quality and "interrupting" juvenile migration in the river below the projects. He said that was why flow augmentation from the Upper Snake had been included in all previous FCRPS BiOps.

But the Action Agencies' new Salmon Plan released Sept. 6 calls for the same 487 kaf for downstream fish needs as did the 2005 BiOp, with one wrinkle. It recommended juggling flows compared to the last BiOp by moving more water out earlier in the season, between May and early July, instead of June to July.

In the 2005 Upper Snake BiOp, NOAA Fisheries analysts estimated that BuRec operations for storage and irrigation would reduce average spring flows in the lower Snake by 8 percent, and flows in the Columbia by 2 percent to 5 percent less than hypothetical dam operations maxed out for fish benefits.

Such conditions were expected to reduce in-river survival rates by only about 1 percent, with less than a 0.1-percent difference if transported fish were considered.

However, since then, older survival studies of fall chinook have become suspect because a large number of the fish have been found to hold over during winter periods and migrate when PIT-tag detection systems are not operating.

But in the 2005 BiOp, the feds expected increased summer flows from the Upper Snake--about 8 percent--would actually increase in-river fall chinook survival about 8 percent and overall system survival by about 4 percent.

According to the new salmon plan, NMFS staff advised the water be released earlier because newer evidence shows that most Snake River fall chinook are migrating before mid-July, with 95 percent of them past Lower Granite Dam by then. The new plan says reducing later water releases, which are warmer, may also boost the benefit to fish of cold water releases from Dworshak Reservoir during the summer period. NMFS staff recommendations are currently undergoing final review by its Northwest Fisheries Science Center. -B. R.

Subscriptions and Feedback
Subscribe to the Fishletter notification e-mail list.
Send e-mail comments to the editor.

THE ARCHIVE :: Previous NW Fishletter issues and supporting documents.

NW Fishletter is produced by Energy NewsData.
Publisher: Cyrus Noë, Editor: Bill Rudolph
Phone: (206) 285-4848 Fax: (206) 281-8035