[1] NWPCC Approves New, More Expensive F&W Program
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council unanimously approved last month the latest revisions to the Columbia Basin's fish and wildlife program.
Following a bit of final wordsmithing, the eight-member council voted Feb. 10 for the latest amendments to the plan, after a good chunk of it was exempted and voted on later.
The later vote focused on the plan for the mainstem Columbia and Snake rivers, which draws support from the latest Biological Opinion on hydro operations.
Oregon has strongly objected to the new BiOp, and is fighting it in court, alongside fishing and environmental groups and the Nez Perce Tribe.
The state had submitted its own recommendations for running the hydro system--more flow and spill for fish, dumping the so-called Montana proposal for slower reservoir withdrawals, and calling for a drawdown at John Day--actions the state said would improve fish numbers over BiOp operations.
But Oregon's recommendations never got to square one with other council members. When the vote was tallied on the BiOp-centric mainstem part of the plan, the result was a predictable 6-2 in support.
"In the new program, the Council brings together federal, state, and tribal actions to protect and enhance fish and wildlife in the Columbia River Basin," council Chair Bill Booth said.
"The new program strengthens our focus on project implementation and performance," Booth said, "ensuring that the region's significant investment in fish and wildlife is focused, coordinated, and scientifically credible."
The new plan will accommodate some 200 new projects developed through the Fish Accords process that mostly traded more BPA-funded habitat and hatchery projects for some tribes and states in return for their support of the new BiOp. The added projects are expected to boost annual costs of the program by about $90 million to $230 million.
The latest F&W plan includes these main themes:
Before the Council voted on the plan, Montana member Bruce Measure offered a last-minute tweak to language calling for the Fish Passage Center's oversight board to develop a peer-review policy for FPC work that was distributed beyond fish managers.
Measure, who chairs the oversight board, wanted to tighten up the language drafted at last month's meeting in Missoula from: "The Oversight Board shall determine the requirements for peer review of analytical products before dissemination to an audience broader than the manager(s) requesting the analysis" to simply, "The Oversight Board shall determine the requirements for peer review of analytical products."
He assured Oregon's Melinda Eden that the process would not keep fish managers from receiving information in a timely manner.
"On the other hand," Measure said, "there's a problem with information that is put out to the public too early. I think we found that today with NOAA's referral to the sockeye returns, and the articles in several magazines, including Clearing Up, regarding what NOAA came up with--the reasons for the unusually large sockeye returns--and the reason the Fish Passage Center came to, earlier. And I think, at least the policy for independent review would have potentially prevented that kind of problem."
The feds' analysis found that the large returns were due mainly to improved ocean conditions. The FPC study from last summer suggested robust 2008 sockeye runs were the result of better flow and spill conditions through the hydro system.
But Eden objected, saying she supported peer review but objected to changing the language "so that peer review is a condition of the fish manager, which is what the absence of this language would open the door for, receiving the analysis the fish manager asks for.
"I'm fully aware of all the discussion of the difficulties with broader dissemination before peer review. I am simply trying to protect the right of the fish manager to ask for analysis and get analysis and use that analysis as the fish manager sees fit. And then if it's used 'incorrectly,' I'm sure that would come out in any subsequent peer review," Eden said.
Oregon's other representative, Joan Dukes, said she always supported peer review, "but peer review doesn't necessarily resolve anything. Peer review often gives you two or three different scientific opinions on an issue, as opposed to thinking that all scientists who peer-review are going to come up with the same conclusion."
She said if they were concerned about the political ramifications of distributing something early, it will not be solved with this language change.
But the council voted 5-3 (Idaho's Jim Yost also dissented) for the change. Some salmon-recovery wonks said it was likely that Oregon was trying to protect the use of FPC analyses in their litigation without fear of it being contradicted by a third-party review.
The FPC has since completed its own analysis of the feds' latest sockeye memo. And it sticks with its earlier results--that inriver conditions played the key role in improved fish numbers. -Bill Rudolph
[2] Judge Sends Mixed Message Over New BiOp
BiOp judge James Redden sent a mixed message to attorneys in a letter that contained a list of questions he wants answered at the March 6 hearing, when oral arguments will be heard on the legality of the government's newest 10-year salmon recovery plan.
In his Feb. 18 missive, Redden said he had "no desire" to go through another remand and another round of consultation. He tossed out the last two salmon plans since 2000, and has spent years presiding over the federal government's efforts at creating a defensible product.
But he has had enough, he says.
"The revolving door of consultation and litigation does little to help endangered salmon and steelhead," he wrote.
He acknowledged the hard work on the latest plan put in by sovereign states, tribes and agencies, and said "we have come a long way from the 2004 BiOp."
However, he still has questions about the legality of the feds' "trending towards recovery" jeopardy standard--a departure from past BiOps.
He also wants to discuss other things, such as the reduction in spill from his court-ordered hydro operations since 2005, and the optimistic benefits to ESA-listed fish the BiOp analysis assumes will be gained from proposed habitat restoration measures in the estuary and tributaries.
Tributary improvement is a preliminary focus of the recent billion-dollar Accords process that traded recovery action funding to some states and tribes for BiOp support.
Redden did send out a positive vibe, advising attorneys to be prepared to discuss ways to "bolster" the biological opinion, if necessary.
He also said he wants to talk more about spill and that he would ask federal agencies to implement the science panel's recent recommendation to continue the court-ordered spill program for spring 2009.
The feds had already agreed to implement the program this year, backpedaling from their proposed BiOp action that would have ended spill for two weeks in May to barge more fish from the lower Snake dam.
Their own analysis had found that ESA-listed steelhead would benefit from the action, but they changed course after the science panel suggested that barging may have adverse effects on listed sockeye, though the panel admitted it had no evidence.
River users involved in the lawsuit said the letter was pretty much what they had expected.
"We're not surprised by the judge's letter," said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners. "It's the same mix of kudos and criticisms we have seen in the past."
Flores was fairly optimistic about the hearing. She was sure the feds could successfully defend their new jeopardy standard because it used the "best available science," and satisfied his other concerns. She also noted that Redden indicated he was inclined to deny plaintiffs' claims related to the Clean Water Act and killer whale issues.
Redden does think the BiOp is short-changing actions to improve the habitat in the Columbia estuary since it has only committed federal agencies to spend $50 million over the next 10 years in that area, while the feds have estimated spending $500 million over the next 25 years.
But Flores admitted her group was puzzled by the judge's reference to a 2003 report by the region's independent science panel, which Redden said had concluded that "increased quantities and better coordination of flow augmentation is beneficial to steelhead and sockeye."
In 2003 the panel did release a report, but it said the region must develop a "new paradigm" for the flow/survival relationship because it didn't seem that fish survival was boosted by incremental increases in flow. The panel looked at a proposal by the state of Montana to slightly reduce mainstem flows in the summer to flatten outflows from the state's largest reservoirs to help resident fish populations.
The state had argued the change in flows from its proposal couldn't even be measured hundreds of miles downstream at McNary Dam, nor could any benefit to juvenile fish survival be measured, either. The panel agreed the Montana plan was defensible, and it has been included in the new BiOp.
In his letter, Redden asked if plaintiff groups (environmental and fishing organizations, the state of Oregon, and the Nez Perce Tribe) would support the BiOp if the feds added some measures in the plaintiffs' proposed preliminary injunction. He also wanted to know if the feds were willing to amend the BiOp to include some of those measures as part of a settlement agreement.
The groups want more spill than the current court order calls for. They are asking for 24-hour spill at all dams, to be curtailed only by dissolved gas limits, and have called for emptying Montana reservoirs faster than specified in the new BiOp. They want to draw down John Day Reservoir to Minimum Operating Pool, which would have most mainstem irrigation pumping stations sucking air during the fish migration season. Currently, the pool is operated at Minimum Irrigation Pool, about five feet above MOP.
In addition, their proposed motion wants mainstem flow targets to be met on a weekly basis. Since the BiOp already admits the flow targets can't be met even seasonally in all years, trying to comply with that obligation would lead to draining reservoirs so much in some years, they would be impossible to fill the next.
BPA had earlier estimated flow and spill measures asked for by plaintiffs in previous litigation would cost an extra $347 million a year to implement.
Since those measures were less than plaintiffs were now asking, the bill would be even higher if the injunction measures were rolled over into the new BiOp.
However, that's what plaintiffs are aiming for, say some individuals who are involved in the litigation--to make dam operations so expensive that taking our the lower Snake projects would be a less expensive option.
But they also say that recent filings by defendants may have convinced the judge that plaintiffs' estimated benefits to ESA-listed fish from their own proposals are overblown, and that they will settle for nothing short of breaching the dams.
Redden also wondered whether it made sense to seek a firm commitment for Upper Snake flow augmentation before seeking authority to breach lower Snake dams, as supported by the Nez Perce Tribe.
"On the other hand," he said, "given the Snake River Irrigators' and the state of Idaho's strident objection to dam breaching, can those parties commit to providing the SRBA-authorized [Snake River Board of Adjudication] 427 kaf of flow augmentation to help avoid the possibility of dam breaching?"
Last fall, the feds had argued that since the plaintiffs hadn't brought up the breaching argument in their complaint, the Nez Perce brief should not be allowed. But Redden said the breaching issue had been part of the remand process since the 2000 BiOp included breaching issues in its jeopardy analyses.
At that time, Redden noted he had previously warned defendants after tossing the last two BiOps that they should be "aware of the possibility of breaching the four dams on the lower Snake River, if all else fails." -B. R.
[3] BiOp Judge To BPA: Can You Tap Stimulus Money For Salmon?
BiOp Judge James Redden added two more questions to the recent list of queries he wants answered during oral arguments set for March in Portland about the latest plan for saving salmon and operating dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
He wants to know if NMFS disregarded its own scientists' criticisms of the Columbia estuary restoration plan used by the feds to help reach a no-jeopardy decision for dam operations in the 2008 hydro BiOp.
Redden pointed to a review of the plan from NMFS' own director of science and research, who concluded that the expected benefits were "overestimated," and that nearly three times as many projects were needed to achieve the stated survival improvements during the life of the 10-year plan.
Redden also wanted to know if BPA could commit more funding for hydro, estuary and/or tributary habitat mitigation, in light of the $3.25-billion boost in borrowing authority granted to the power-marketing agency in the new stimulus bill.
His query brought an immediate response from the Columbia-Snake Irrigators Association, who said that if more court-ordered BiOp costs are incurred, BPA Administrator Steve Wright should begin a review to withdraw from the nearly billion dollars' worth of funding commitments contained in MOAs with states and tribes developed to gain support for the new hydro BiOp and guarantee funding for habitat restoration.
The irrigators said they would fully protect their rights as ratepayers to "compel" BPA to withdraw from the Accords, if the agency does not do it on its own.
"In full honesty," said the irrigators' Feb. 26 letter, "we are astounded by Judge Redden's callous disregard for the fundamental economics (and science) surrounding the existing hydro system fish mitigation recovery measures, and a near total lack of awareness for the severe economic recession confronting our region."
The Accords contain a provision that would allow BPA to renegotiate or withdraw from the Accords if an amended BiOp requires actions "that are financially material to an Action Agency."
The irrigators pointed out that continuing court-ordered spill operations in the future "could be viewed themselves as financially material to BPA operations."
Other federal agencies may actually use some of the recent stimulus funding to pay for fish recovery actions, but Corps of Engineers' spokesman Patrick Swan said it's too soon to tell how much of his agency's $4.6 billion might go to pay for more BiOp actions. He said those decisions will come from the headquarters office, but it was likely some funding for salmon would be available.
NOAA Fisheries has $160 million or so in a habitat restoration fund developed by the stimulus bill, said Jennifer Steger, from NOAA Fisheries' Restoration Center office in Seattle.
She said the agency will solicit projects through open competition, and salmon recovery efforts are likely to rate high for getting a solid "ecological bang for the buck."
As for the possibility of funding some estuary work on the Columbia, she couldn't promise anything, and noted that estuary work typically costs two or three times as much as other habitat restoration work due to high land costs near the water. -B. R.
[4] Robust Forecasts For Columbia Coho, Fall Chinook
Preliminary forecasts released last month have boosted the likelihood that more than 2 million salmon may return to the Columbia River this year. But rather than celebrating the expected bounty, fishers are fighting among themselves over which group gets the lion's share.
Harvest managers said they expect slightly more than a million coho salmon to return--almost twice last year's return. If it comes true, it will be only the third time since 1985 that the coho run has topped a million fish.
On top of that, the managers have just released their fall chinook prediction of 510,900--also up from last year's return of 431,700.
Add those figures to the 300,000 springers expected to return to the river and nearly 200,000 sockeye aiming for the upper Columbia, and the 2-million-fish return seems easily possible.
The actual returns could even be quite a bit higher. The managers lowballed their 2008 sockeye, fall chinook and coho predictions. Their sockeye estimate was off by nearly 300 percent, fall chinook by 18 percent, and coho by more than 260 percent.
Oregon coastal natural coho returns are expected to do well this year, too, with an expected return above 200,000 fish. Last year, managers expected 60,000, but 171,000 actually showed up. Chalk that up to good ocean conditions.
Their fall chinook estimate is similar to the 10-year average, with the total of 510,900 breaking down as: lower river hatchery, 88,800; lower river wild (ESA-listed), 8,500; Bonneville Pool hatchery, 59,300; upriver brights, 259,900; Bonneville upriver brights, 50,000; and Pool upriver brights, 44,400.
In the meantime, Washington and Oregon have set recreational and commercial fishers' spring chinook seasons on the Columbia for March and April, but they still haven't come to an ultimate agreement on allocating the non-Indian share of the catch between the two gear groups.
"This is shaping up to be a very good year for spring chinook fishing in the Columbia River," said Cindy LeFleur, Columbia River policy coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. "The first fish have just begun to arrive, and we hope to see a lot more of them in the months ahead."
Below Hayden Island, the new season provides 30 days of spring chinook fishing in March and April, compared to just 12 days last year. During those two months, anglers also will have 39 days--up from 36 days last year--to catch and retain spring chinook from Hayden Island upriver to Bonneville Dam.
LeFleur said that the fishery could extend beyond April, but that late-season regulations have not been set because of differences between the fish and wildlife commissions of Washington and Oregon over how to allocate the catch. Sportfishers have less impact on ESA fish, so they feel they deserve a larger share of the catch than in previous years.
The two states had formed a commission to solve the allocation dispute, but it hasn't worked. The group recommended a catch-sharing model for spring chinook that would allocate 65 percent of the limited impacts on the ESA-listed wild fish to the sport fishery and 35 percent to the commercial fishery.
But the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to adopt an allocation of 55 percent sport/45 percent commercial for runs of this size. Washington supports a 60/40 split.
The non-Indian harvesters are allowed a 2.2-percent impact on the ESA-listed springers, while tribal fishers above Bonneville Dam are allowed to catch 10.8 percent.
Meanwhile, sporties and commercials are still fighting over fish on other fronts.
A bill pushed by the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association with sponsors in both houses of the Oregon State Legislature has been introduced to get commercial non-Indian gillnetters out of the mainstem fishery altogether. It's the culmination of a plan pushed by sporties last fall that found little traction at ODFW.
Commercial fishermen say the plan is unworkable because there is not enough room in the select areas outside the mainstem to allow for their entire fleet to fish. A report by WDFW tended to back up their claim that expanding the select areas for future net pens was not very feasible. -B. R.
[5] Colvilles Call For More Selective Fishing To Save Summer Run
The Colville Tribes say their wild summer chinook runs will disappear without a more coordinated effort between states and other tribes to manage harvest in the Columbia River.
That was the message to Washington and Oregon fish managers from Joe Peone, head of the tribes' fish and wildlife department, at a Jan. 29 meeting of the Columbia River Compact, the management entity for non-tribal harvest management on the river.
"With the planned escalating levels of non-selective summer chinook fishing, and the Colville Tribes' plans to enhance everyone's harvest with new production from Chief Joseph Hatchery, plus the Yakama Tribes' plans for summer chinook enhancement, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's enhancement plans in the Chelan River, our uncoordinated management will, in the absence of selective fishing, only spell the demise of the wild runs," Peone said. "We need more selective fishing to avoid a serious conservation problem."
Peone also called for increased monitoring on the steelhead and spring chinook fisheries to better understand the impacts of the lower river mixed-stock fisheries on the ESA-listed upper Columbia steelhead and spring chinook.
Lower Columbia gillnetters are already under attack from sportfishing groups who want them to fish only in select areas outside the mainstem where salmon are raised in net pens specifically for their harvest. A proposed bill in the Oregon Legislature would mandate just that.
However, Peone called on Washington and Oregon to initiate research on selective fishing methods for the non-treaty commercial fishery on summer chinook. Selective methods like purse seines or fish wheels allow for the live release of wild fish while marked hatchery fish are harvested.
Since the Colvilles are not signatories to the lower Columbia tribal fishing agreement maintained under the ongoing U.S. v. Oregon process, their share of the summer chinook catch comes out of the non-tribal portion. A 2007 agreement with WDFW spelled out how much they would get each year of that 50-percent share.
Peone said the agreement promotes cooperative management of the summer chinook, whose numbers have climbed the past several years, despite "the high exploitation these fish encounter in ocean and river fisheries and the mortalities these chinook encounter traversing seven to nine dams as juveniles and again as adults."
Most of the returning summer chinook are hatchery fish--and most are clipped, so selective fishing can allow for returning the wild component of the run back to the river.
Though the wild summers in the upper Columbia are not listed for protection, the Colvilles are worried that increasing harvest will keep from restoring the wild run, which is also expected to produce broodstock for its new Chief Joseph Hatchery.
Peone said modeling assessments have shown that selective fishing by the Colvilles alone will not ensure sufficient escapement in the future.
With BPA funding, the tribe tested beach seines and purse seines in 2008, and used tangle nets like lower Columbia gillnetters sometimes do in the spring.
When released, the survival of wild fish was over 99 percent from the seines, Peone said. Out of 802 summer chinook caught, 479 hatchery fish were kept, and 297 wild ones were released. He said only 26 wild chinook died, but 25 had been caught in tangle nets.
Peone recommended that managers begin research in the use of these selective methods for the lower river commercial fisheries, since it could eventually mean many more wild fish getting to spawning grounds in the upper Columbia and Okanogan rivers.
With marking rates of hatchery fish nearly 70 percent in both the tribal and non-tribal fisheries downriver last year, Peone said that was good enough to justify selective fishing.
With a preseason prediction of about 71,000 summer chinook, this year's plan calls for a harvestable surplus of more than 36,000 fish, to be split evenly between the tribal and non-tribal parties.
The Colvilles' agreement with WDFW calls for about two-thirds of the non-tribal harvest to be taken above Priest Rapids Dam, with the tribe getting half. That works out to 6,602 summer chinook in 2009.
In recent years, the tribe has allocated some of their share back to the state, which had increased the non-tribal share. In the past two years, 1,000 chinook were re-allocated this way. Peone expected that it would happen again this year.
"These pre-season adjustments allowed for much greater non-tribal sport and commercial fisheries," said Peone. "That said, what is clear now is that granting harvest allocation from the Colville Tribal selective fishery to non-tribal non-selective fisheries only increases the mortality to wild fish, which is unacceptable to the Colville Tribes."
With current ocean and inriver fisheries taking about 70 percent of the wild summers and an added 15-percent loss from dam passage, Peone said the Colvilles don't want to monitor the eventual destruction of the run, but to keep track of its increase in viability.
He called on the managers to better monitor all lower-river fisheries to make more accurate estimates of impacts to each population, since it is a requirement of their headwater fisheries and part of the federal salmon-recovery initiative now under way.
The Colvilles have already planned more monitoring to be funded by BPA as part of the Accords process. They want to assess current assumptions about upper Columbia spring chinook and steelhead survival between Bonneville and McNary dams where lower Columbia tribes gillnet and sport fishers ply.
The Colvilles say the assumptions are used to assess extinction risk and recovery potential and more study has the potential to increase steelhead survival through the lower river by 22 percent and spring chinook by 6 percent.
"In particular," Peone told the managers, "the inter-dam passage conversion appears substantially greater than the sum of dam-passage losses and reported harvest. Lower-river fisheries taking endangered upper Columbia River spring chinook also need greater monitoring to assess harvest impacts at the population level.
"The assumption that all populations are similarly harvested at an average harvest rate in mixed-stock fisheries has potential impacts that can be disastrous to weak populations." -B. R.
[6] Niners Deny Appeal: Sea Lion Trapping To Begin
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a last-ditch motion by the Humane Society to stop the lethal removal of California sea lions preying on ESA-listed salmon at Bonneville Dam.
Citing a recent decision from its own court (Lands Council v. McNair, 2008), the Niners' panel did not buy the Humane Society's argument that a stay should be granted on the basis that it would likely win the case on appeal. Last year, the appeals court upheld a motion by the society to stop the lethal removal of the marine mammals, but it did allow for trapping them.
In 2008, some sea lions had already been trapped and hauled away when six of them were found dead in cages below the dam. First reports indicated they had been shot, but NOAA Fisheries found no evidence of gunshot wounds when the animals were examined. The trap and haul program was suspended at that point.
Last November, an Oregon District Court judge ruled that state agencies could use lethal means to reduce predation by sea lions at the dam. He later denied an appeal to stop the action.
In his ruling, Judge Michael Mosman agreed with NOAA Fisheries that the actual predation rate may be much higher than the observed 4-percent rate. NMFS estimated the actual predation rate at the dam could be as high as 13 percent on spring chinook and 22 percent on steelhead.
According to the latest hazing report from the Corps of Engineers, up to 27 sea lions in a single day have been observed at Bonneville Dam so far this spring. Most have been Stellers, who are listed for protection under the ESA, and their favorite food seems to be green sturgeon. California sea lions have been observed also, taking mostly steelhead.
Of the nine California sea lions that have shown up already, seven have been seen in previous years. Hazing from boats to reduce predation occurs daily, but with limited success.
Two traps have been deployed, but the Corps is running out of aquariums around the country to send them to. Last year there were a dozen requests, this year only two. NMFS spokesman Brian Gorman told the Seattle Times that it seems likely some will have to be lethally removed.
Biologists expect a huge spring run this year, around 300,000 chinook, which means that more sea lions than ever are expected to show up at the dam by April. -B. R.
[7] West Coast Salmon Numbers Expected To Improve
This year's fall chinook run on the Sacramento River is expected to double last year's worst-ever return of 66,000, but that would still put it near the bottom--the third lowest return since 1992. Last year, sport and commercial salmon fisheries in northern California and southern Oregon were shut down for the first time in history.
A task force is still investigating the causes of the crash. Ocean conditions are a prime suspect, along with increased water withdrawals, and 43 other possibilities. Their draft findings are expected in April.
But the Klamath wild fall run is expected to better than double its spawner floor of 35,000 this coming year. Managers target harvest to allow for about 41,000 returning spawners while the stock is still classified as overfished.
But most eyes were on the Sacramento, home to huge hatchery returns just a few years ago.
"This is grim news for the state of California, said Don Hansen, chair of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, in a Feb. 25 press release. We won't be able to talk about this without using the word 'disaster.'"
Hansen said Fort Bragg fishermen had made a tremendous appeal for some sort of season to target the healthy Klamath run in 2009, and central Oregon folks have asked for a season on hatchery coho, "But that was before this forecast was released," he said. "The Council process will consider the pros and cons of this issue thoroughly at our meetings in March and April."
More than 20,000 jacks were counted in the Klamath in 2008--one of the top two jack counts since 1986. And the Council estimated that the age-3 component of the Klamath fall chinook stock is huge. It was estimated at 474,000 last September.
Further north, the overall picture is much better. More than a million hatchery coho are expected to return to the Columbia River, with the Oregon coastal coho run expected to be the second highest since 1991.
Chinook stocks are a mixed bag, with lower Columbia tules expected to come in about the same as last year, though higher numbers are expected from tule stocks below Bonneville Dam than above. Managers say the different mix may not be beneficial to ocean fisheries.
The Council expects fishing communities north of Cape Falcon to benefit from increased harvest levels this year, but the story will be much bleaker further south. Staffers figured that the average economic impact to fishing communities from 2003-20007 was $66 million ($38 million commercial, $28 million recreational), but only about $7 million last year. Congress approved a $170-million disaster relief package for fishers and dependent businesses last July.
The PFMC will develop fishing options at its March meeting, put them out for public comment and recommend a season to NMFS at its April season. -B. R.
[8] Oregon Senate OKs Bill To Fund Klamath Dam Removals
The Oregon Senate passed a measure Feb. 17 to underwrite removal of four Klamath River hydroelectric dams with a 2-percent surcharge on PacifiCorp's customers in the state.
Senate Bill 76, which came from Gov. Ted. Kulongoski's office, was approved 18-12 on mostly party lines, with most Democrats supporting it.
The bill stems from an agreement reached in November among Oregon, California, the federal government, and PacifiCorp. Prior to this, PacifiCorp resisted the call for the removal, citing impacts to customer rates and company revenues.
The dam removals would also require laws passed by Congress and the California Legislature.
The agreement hinges on the bottom line--it was judged cheaper to remove the dams than to relicense them and have to build expensive measures such as fish ladders.
The bill does not guarantee dam removal. Rather, it would authorize the collection of a surcharge from 500,000 Oregon ratepayers--up to $180 million over 20 years--to fund the removals, which could begin in 2020. Ratepayers would pay an average of $1.50 per month, to be saved in a trust fund managed by the state's PUC.
Another $20 million for the task would come from the utility's customers in California, and California voters would be asked to approve up to $250 million in general obligation bonds to pay additional costs.
PacifiCorp would be allowed to recover the balance of its investment in the dams over the next 10 years, and replacement power would be paid for, as usual, by spreading the costs across the utility's six-state jurisdiction, with about 25 percent coming from the utility's Oregon customers. However, dam-removal costs will be borne by Oregon and California alone.
In addition, if some of the dams aren't removed, the corresponding surcharges will be stopped, and the outstanding balances applied, first, to relicensing requirements, and then to ratepayer refunds.
Republican Jason Atkinson backed the measure, while Democrat Rick Metsger opposed it.
In a floor speech leading up to the vote, Atkinson declared a "potential" conflict of interest because his company had consulted for PacifiCorp, but he nevertheless voted.
"I will lose friends over this bill," said Atkinson, adding that as a "fourth-generation landowner on the Klamath River," he was doing what he thought was best for the watercourse.
Metsger, the Legislature's Senate president pro tempore, said the measure did not adequately protect Oregon ratepayers or the state from liability stemming from dam removal, a theme most of the chamber's 12 Republicans echoed.
"This is not about fish," Metsger said. "It is not about agriculture, or irrigation, or the environment. Senate Bill 76 is about utility law. It's about ratepayers."
Those ratepayers, he said, were almost, but not quite, protected by the bill. Although it included caps on funds that could be gathered for dam removal, it had no language limiting liability, he noted, despite intense discussion of that issue, which was why he refused to vote for it.
"I am very disappointed that I have to vote 'no' today, because this is so easy to vote yes with a few extra words to protect the ratepayers of Oregon," Metsger said.
The bill now moves to the House. -Rick Adair
[9] Last-Minute Sparring Over Salmon Plan
With a final face off in court between environmental groups and federal agencies over the Columbia Basin's newest salmon plan just a couple of days off, e-mailed rhetoric from coalitions like Save Our Wild Salmon has flooded congressional offices.
Greg Delwiche, BPA's VP for Environment, Fish and Wildlife, e-mailed March 3 those same offices with a quick response. He told politicos that the SOWS message expressed opinions not supported by facts.
"First," wrote Delwiche, "it's important to note that the likely restrictions on the 2009 ocean salmon fishing season off the Oregon coast are entirely due to the very poor returns of chinook salmon to the Sacramento River in California. They have nothing to do with the state of salmon runs to the mouth of the Columbia River. The Columbia River runs, of course, have been generally increasing over the last decade and are currently forecast to increase further over the next two to three years at least. In fact, the PFMC forecast for Columbia River bound spring chinook in 2009 projects the third highest run in the past 40 years."
He pointed out that writers of the latest hydro BiOp expect runs to increase over the next decade, "at least. Snake River fall chinook are doing so well that they have approached or exceeded their delisting goals for a number of years."
Delwiche said the feds are happy to take some credit for improved salmon numbers, but gave ocean conditions a good share of the credit--a state of affairs that recent scientific effort has increasingly supported.
Delwiche said the message from SOWS staffer Gilly Lyons to politicians characterized the PFMC's 2009 Columbia River fall chinook forecast this way: "Right now these numbers are still just projections, but if accurate, these kinds of returns are still dangerously low and unfortunately get us nowhere near NMFS' recovery goals for wild fish. In fact, based on these projections, the 5-year average for Columbia-Snake chinook is hovering right around the same levels that triggered their Endangered Species Act listing in the early 1990s."
In his response, Delwiche said, "This is clearly not the case. The average number of wild adult Snake River fall chinook returning each year between 1990 and 1994 was 419 (the fish were listed in 1991). The most recent five-year average (through 2008) is 5,691 wild adult returns each year--well above the minimum recovery abundance threshold of 3,000 wild adult returns. So we are not only near NMFS' recovery goals for this species of salmon (one of the first to be listed); we are considerably above the minimum recovery abundance target."
Delwiche also took issue with Lyons' other comments, especially her characterization that, "Independent scientists agree that the reason we're seeing slightly improved runs in the Columbia is because of court-ordered in-river protections, such as additional spill, that help young salmon make it downriver to the ocean."
In her remarks, Lyons said the court-ordered protections "have been rolled back in the 2008 BiOp and are not guaranteed to continue under the current federal salmon plan. Without continued spill and flow, the Columbia Basin's slightly improved runs could easily become a thing of the past.
"Because of Judge Redden's orders, we've provided salmon with something approaching a river and they have responded. This means there's reason to hope that by following the best science and making the Columbia-Snake even more hospitable to fish, these improved runs can be more than just a flicker."
But Delwiche said scientists do not agree on this point. "In fact, the very respected and independent scientists at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center recently released a study on the causes of the huge increase in the numbers of sockeye salmon returning to the Snake River and the Upper Columbia Rivers in 2008. The 2008 sockeye returns to the Snake River were the highest since 1968."
He said the scientists concluded that most of the improvement was due to factors outside the hydro system--namely, improved ocean conditions.
"We do agree that inriver survival is important and the improvements we are seeing in salmon numbers are certainly due in part to the measures we are implementing at the dams, as well as the improvements we are making in habitat and hatchery management. Since the mid-1990s, the federal government has invested over $1 billion in development, testing and installation of fish passage facilities at the eight federal dams on the Columbia and Snake River."
"One thing the science is indicating, said Delwiche, "is that while spill is good from a salmon survival standpoint, more spill is not necessarily better. Juvenile salmon are now closely monitored as they move through the hydrosystem. The amounts and timing of spill operations are adjusted on an annual basis--and even within the migration season--to optimize survival. And as we learn more, the results of this hugely expensive recovery effort are being seen in improved status of these listed species."
Meanwhile, Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Tom Petri (R-Wis.) are circulating a letter for signatures around the Capitol that calls for President Obama's "serious engagement" in the salmon recovery issue, "by inviting sound science and common-sense economics to guide successful salmon policies."
The politicians said that should include the consideration of "partial removal" of the four lower Snake dams, adding that a salmon recovery effort that follows the best science and economics "has the potential to create tens of thousands of jobs and generate billions of dollars for communities throughout the West and across the nation." -B. R.
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