[2] BPA May Shell Out Tens Of Millions More For BiOp Support
BPA has slammed the door on a request by the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority to pony up another $28 million to fund aspects of the region's fish and wildlife program that CBFWA said was seriously underfunded. But that may be chump change compared to the terms being negotiated by the power agency with lower Columbia tribes and the state of Oregon to gain their support for the next hydro BiOp.
Sources tell NW Fishletter that the results of the negotiations could add another $50 million to $60 million a year in habitat and hatchery projects over the next 10 years.
CBFWA, the 18-member agency that includes tribes, states and federal agencies in the Columbia Basin, has been feeling its oats since a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel told BPA it should give more weight to the analyses of fish and wildlife managers. But BPA still stiffed their request.
"I saw no new information in the staff memo that suggests additional factors or justification sufficient for BPA to revisit implementation decisions made in February (and reconfirmed at the start of the current fiscal year), in regards to the identified projects," said BPA Vice President Greg Delwiche in a Dec. 31 written response.
Delwiche said CBFWA's resubmission of earlier funding requests, "without apparent change, perpetuates a pattern in which BPA decisions are not considered to be final unless they are exactly consistent with what it proposed or requested. In the absence of new information, I see no basis to revisit my prior decisions about the merits of these individual projects."
CBFWA requested the additional funding last November, with abstentions by members NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The authority identified more than a hundred F&W projects they judged to be insufficiently funded. However, they said some "critical and unmet needs" could be met with existing funding, adding that an additional $28 million over the next two years might be needed.
CBFWA also said that BPA needed to pay more than $4 million more to satisfy interim agreements hammered out in a $3-million deal between some tribes and BPA to support 2007 hydro operations.
The agreement raised hackles with some parties in the region, including some members of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, because the projects had not passed scientific muster as part of the council's regular budget process.
Some Columbia Basin fish and wildlife managers have felt more empowered by language in a recent decision from the 9th Circuit Court[Golden Northwest Aluminum v. BPA] that reiterated an earlier Niners' decision [NW Resource Information Center v. NWPPC et al.] that called on BPA to "give substantial weight" to fish and wildlife managers' analyses.
In his letter, BPA's Delwiche acknowledged that his agency will incur future F&W costs above the current $143 million in annual expenses and $36 million in capital spending. But until those future costs are estimated--including the long-term settlements with some tribes and states that will trade more habitat and hatchery projects to gain their support for the next BiOp--BPA can't provide a final estimate of those future F&W costs.
Delwiche said a public workshop is planned to ensure those future estimates will be as accurate as possible before they are plugged into the next rate-case proceeding.
The Niners, in the Golden Northwest decision, ruled that BPA disregarded the analysis of F&W managers' claims that Bonneville had underestimated the annual costs of its fish and wildlife program by $300 million a year. BPA contested that analysis and said, in the end, it had gotten the numbers right.
Delwiche said the managers could present any new information on funding at the public workshop.
As for the progress on those long-term settlements, all parties have maintained official radio silence, though sources say that the main sticking point at this late stage (the BiOp is now scheduled for release May 5) is that tribes want the future funding deals to stay alive whether the new BiOp stays in place or not. Sources also say, so far, BPA will not agree to such terms.
And the added cost? It could be as high as another $60 million a year. This would be tacked on to the $45 million in annual habitat projects in tributaries and the estuary already projected by action agencies to be spent over the next 10 years, in numbers they announced last September.
At the time, the agencies also said another $34 million would be spent over the next two years to improve hatcheries and $4 million would go to pay for operations after modifications are completed.
It seems the ante has gone up quite a bit since then, but whether these new projects will be subject to the same scientific scrutiny as the rest of the fish and wildlife program is not yet clear.
Some members of the "regional coalition" have suggested that BPA develop a formal Memorandum of Agreement with the Power Council to ensure that any new project included in the long-term agreements be subject to the same screening process for scientific merit as is the rest of the basin's fish and wildlife program.
BPA may already be laying the groundwork for folding the new projects into the region's fish and wildlife program.
In another Dec. 31 missive to the Power Council offering some suggestions regarding the F&W amendment process--which has been extended through April 4--Delwiche said his agency "intends to fully integrate implementation of additional actions with current mitigation efforts in the program if BPA enters into MOAs "that sharpen and enhance the focus on ESA-related actions (within the scope of the program)."
To placate the state of Oregon, it was reported that one of those possible actions would be to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study John Day Pool drawdown for possible survival benefits to juvenile migrating salmon.
Back in the late 1990s, the Corps took a serious look at the issue and decided any survival benefits to fish didn't outweigh the adverse biological and economic impacts. -B. R.
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