[7] Washington State Sued Over Spill Levels At Dams

Some fishing and conservation groups have filed a suit in Thurston County Superior Court against the Washington State Department of Ecology, aimed at making the state ease water quality standards and allow more spill at federal dams to improve salmon survival.

The Ecology Department had turned down a petition from the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, the Association of Northwest Steelheaders and Idaho Rivers United to allow higher dissolved gas levels at dams where spill is used to help migrating juvenile salmon.

The 2007 petition claimed that such a change would allow dam operators to boost spill in forebays now limited by a 115-percent gas cap to 120 percent, a change that enviros say could add another 4 MAF to spill regimes for migrating salmon.

In January 2009, after more than a year of meetings, a group of water quality managers from Washington announced it would not change its 115-percent total dissolved gas [TDG] water quality criterion for dam forebays in the Columbia and Snake rivers--the level the federal hydro BiOp sets for managing spill during the fish passage season.

Using analyses from the Fish Passage Center, Oregon fish managers had already called for removing forebay gas monitors at mainstem dams in hopes of wringing a little more spill for fish at the dams. It was an approach other plaintiffs endorsed in the current litigation over the 2008 BiOp.

But in the final analysis, most participants said any potential fish benefits were lost in the "decimal dust" of the methodologies.

Back in March 2008, the Corps of Engineers said the FPC methodology left out many of the factors included in its own hydro model and called the FPC result "unreliable."

The groups suing Ecology are still claiming that spill "has played a significant role in increased salmon and steelhead returns in the past several years," says their June 3 press release.

NOAA Fisheries' COMPASS model estimated the 120-percent-only scenario would produce only a 0.922-percent increase for Snake spring chinook and a 1.1-percent decline in survival of Snake steelhead, because the slight increase in spill meant fewer of them would be routed to barges. -B. R.

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