[2] Science Panel To Examine Barging Question
NOAA Fisheries has decided to take a gamble with its proposal to stop spill and boost fish barging in this low-flow year by letting the region's independent science panel weigh in on the topic. The feds say fish would gain a significant survival benefit from the change in operations.
That could be risky, because the panel decided in 2008 that the feds' hydro BiOp should keep both spill and barging strategies to spread the risk.
The feds' Feb. 25 proposal is also contrary to U.S. District Judge James Redden's court-ordered spill regime.
However, that hasn't stopped federal fish managers, who are facing the fourth lowest water supply in the past 50 years. They want spill ended in late April to capture as many spring chinook and steelhead as possible and barge them through May. They claim to have data backing up the proposal.
But two recent memos from the Fish Passage Center have taken issue with both the feds' December barging review and its recent proposal, and argue for continuing the judge's spill regime.
Both sides faced off in front of the Independent Scientific Advisory Board on March 12 in Portland. Representatives from USFWS and ODFW focused on potential adverse impacts to sockeye and lamprey from the feds' proposal, and Ed Bowles, ODFW's fish division director, pushed for continuing to "spread the risk," by keeping spill at collector projects. Bowles never argued the feds' point that more barging would boost overall survival of chinook and steelhead, but said there was "intriguing" data from 2007 survival studies that suggested spill could boost survival of inriver migrants in such a low-flow year.
However, NMFS statistician Steve Smith presented some numbers that suggested a maxed-out barging policy could easily double adult returns of ESA-listed steelhead if their proposal was adopted this spring, compared to operations in 2007 when spill was in place and only 30 percent were transported. Smith said that without spill, about 85 percent would have been barged.
The feds are blunt in their analysis. "Based on consideration of the available information," said their proposal, "we conclude that continuing the court-ordered spill/ transport operations in low-flow years like 2007 would result in substantial losses (in terms of adult returns) of wild SR [Snake River] steelhead and spring/summer chinook salmon relative to maximum transport operations under these environmental conditions."
The feds said 2007 spring flows in the lower Snake were about 61 kcfs, which is similar to what is expected this spring. The added spill meant only about 25 percent of the wild spring/summer chinook were barged that year, according to NMFS. The FPC pegged it even lower, at only 17 percent.
NMFS estimated about 41 percent of the wild and hatchery steelhead were barged in 2007. Steelhead travel higher in the water column and are more easily corralled by dam bypass systems for routing to barges.
But critics of the feds' proposal, such as the Fish Passage Center, say increased barging might hurt sockeye and lamprey, even though they could cite no real evidence for the claim.
In its proposal, NOAA Fisheries said there was no "credible" data to support that notion, nor should critics be concerned over the slightly increased straying rate of barged steelhead (3 percent) when they return as adults. NOAA Fisheries managers have essentially called the science panel's bluff.
Impacts to wild Snake chinook and steelhead "exceed the likely or potential impacts of maximum transport operations to the other species considered above," the feds said.
The feds noted that an earlier FPC memo critiquing last December's NMFS transport review had focused on making the case that improvements in inriver conditions had boosted inriver survival, but didn't consider the conditions juvenile fish will face this year.
The feds pointed out that the FPC's own analysis found that wild chinook and steelhead did better by being barged in 2007; annual smolt-to-adult return rates were 15 percent higher for the barged springers and nearly 300 percent better for wild steelhead.
However, the feds also said that average seasonal SAR estimates don't tell them much, since weekly estimates of both groups vary considerably over the year. But they said "it is clear that in low-flow conditions such as 2007, SARs of wild, transported fish, especially in May, are significantly and substantially higher than SARs of wild inriver migrants (either undetected fish, those released upstream of LGR, or those released at LGR or LGS).
They said that repeating the 2007 spill/transport operation in the future was too risky, since it would "likely result in substantially fewer adults returning to the Snake River basin in subsequent years."
NOAA Fisheries managers have essentially called the science panel's bluff, since the ISAB recommended in its 2008 report that "whenever river conditions allow during the late April-May period, a strategy allowing for concurrent transportation and spill is prudent."
NMFS said it looked at the data from 2007 and concluded it would not be prudent to spill at the three dams where fish are collected for barging this year.
The feds specifically asked the ISAB if they had correctly interpreted the ISAB's earlier recommendation, and if not, to explain the panel's reasoning behind it.
The September 2008 ISAB review recognized that the steelhead would benefit from barging, but it noted that more spill would likely improve inriver survival of migrating salmonids--especially sockeye, and maybe even lamprey--even though it noted that "definitive data are lacking."
The science panel's review pointed out that the major portion of the sockeye run would pass lower Snake dams during the new BiOp's no-spill period. That means the fish would have to negotiate either turbines or bypass systems, where the sockeye seem to exhibit relatively high levels of descaling--a condition that could easily lead to future mortality.
The panel's report didn't help the feds argue their case for their new BiOp's barging strategy in litigation over the salmon plan. Judge Redden wasn't impressed with the feds' argument for maxed-out barging for two weeks in May, after the panel's recommendations came out, even though the federal strategy was derived from results from their ISAB-endorsed survival model, COMPASS.
After the report came out in 2008, others in the region were dismayed that the ISAB had strayed into the policy arena, beyond specific questions related to salmon recovery science that it had generally dealt with in the past.
However, no matter how the science panel comes down on the barging question, it still won't be the final arbiter.
As reported in this year's draft river operations plan, the Corps of Engineers said if seasonal average flows on the Snake are below 65 kcfs, it expects to begin transporting fish between April 20 and May 1, with a decision on the specifics of the spill/transport question coming after talks with regional sovereigns and NOAA, along with the ISAB input, to consider the best available science. -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
ISAB Meeting Agenda, Spill - Transport in Low Flow Years, March 12, 2010
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