Saying that rivers already have too little water to meet flow targets
for salmon migration, environmental groups petitioned the Washington
Department of Ecology to renew a moratorium on issuing water rights
permits on the Columbia and Snake rivers and their tributaries.
An interim Corps of Engineers dredging plan intended to remove an
estimated 244,269 cubic yards of sediment from the federal navigation
channel at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers this winter
has drawn fire of conservation groups and tribes concerned about water
quality and impacts on ESA-listed and other fish.
A gathering last week celebrated the just-won congressional
authorization that $30 million be spent to restore habitat in the
Columbia River and Tillamook Bay estuaries.
Shepherding the Northwest estuary legislation through as part of the
Water Resources Development Act was U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.
The governors of Montana and Oregon on Monday aim to trigger discussions
they hope will eventually give the Columbia Basin states and tribes more
clout in fish and wildlife restoration decisions.
Montana Gov. Marc Racicot and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber have called a
public hearing take input on a “discussion draft” of proposed
legislation that would amend the Pacific Northwest Electric Power
Planning and Conservation Act.
A pool of 66 proposals requesting nearly $20 million is the response to
a Northwest Power Planning Council search for projects that test
innovative approaches to restoring Columbia River Basin fish and
wildlife populations.
The Northwest Power Planning Council and Bonneville Power Administration
issued a solicitation this week for “high priority” fish and wildlife
project proposals expected to bring immediate, on-the-ground benefits
for listed salmon and steelhead.
The two major party candidates for president have staked out sharply
differing positions on the environment, including specifically the proposal to tear down four dams on the lower Snake River to save salmon.
But Green Party standard-bearer Ralph Nader has drawn some environmental support away from Gore in the Northwest by taking a harder line against commercial logging and suggesting he would consider dam breaching …
A successful British Columbia watershed restoration project that
improves stream structure and habitat, adds nutrient pellets and
increases smolt survival could provide a lesson in how similar streams
in the Northwest can be restored to help increase runs of salmon now
listed as endangered.
A report produced by Idaho agency officials and researchers says that
federal studies used as justification for Lower Snake River flow
augmentation do not hold water.
Flow augmentation, called for in existing and proposed federal
hydrosystem biological opinions, is drawn from Idaho reservoirs created
for irrigation, recreation and other uses …
A $40 million federal program to improve salmon habitat the Columbia
River estuary and Tillamook Bay has won final congressional approval.
Legislation to authorize $7 billion in Army Corps of Engineers water
projects passed the House today (Friday), 312-2. The Senate gave its
approval on Tuesday by unanimous consent, and President Clinton is
expected to sign the bill …
The Senate has given final approval to an annual spending bill that
would provide some $170 million for West Coast salmon recovery,
primarily in the Northwest.
President Clinton is expected to veto the measure over unrelated
provisions, however. With the Senate having recessed this week, Congress
won’t take up a modified version until after Tuesday’s election. A lame
duck session is scheduled to begin on Nov. 14.
Year-round monitoring, flood control, use of Dworshak Reservoir for
temperature control and power system emergencies were the high points of
the Technical Management Team’s review of this year’s river operations.
It gave its annual review to the policy-making Implementation Team this
week.
At the request of fish and wildlife managers and hydropower customers,
the Northwest Power Planning Council has delayed putting into writing
its desires for a fish and wildlife program budget expansion for the
current fiscal year.
In an attempt to reduce high electricity prices in California, members
of Congress from the state are attacking federal laws and policies that
provide the Northwest with exclusive rights to low-cost power generated
at Columbia and Snake river dams.
A suddenly volatile, and high, energy market has heightened Lower
Columbia River tribes’ fears that basin salmon recovery efforts —
intended at least in part of restore treaty protected resources — will
get short-changed.
The Bonneville Power Administration announced last week that its amended
rate case for Fiscal Year 2002-2006 wholesale power rates will
officially begin in late November.
The amended process was made necessary when unforeseen and drastic
market shifts skewed the agency’s cost-revenue picture.
A spring 2000 strategy to reduce the number of migrating salmon consumed
by Caspian terns in the Columbia River estuary produced some
eye-catching results, though researchers say a few shifts in political
will, and tern nesting locales, could have made an even greater
salmon-saving impact.
Improved ocean and in-river migrating conditions in the past year or two
have added momentum to efforts intended to boost natural production of
Snake River fall chinook above Lower Granite Dam.
A test of hatchery supplementation using the only Snake River basin fall
chinook stock in the Northwest reaped benefits last year and this.
More than 130 redds have been counted two months after 364 mature adult
spring chinook salmon were released in the Walla Walla River, where they
had been absent for most of the last century.
The spawning of those adults, surplus from the Ringold Hatchery near
Priest Rapids, Wash., bolsters what biologists from the Confederated
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have been saying for the last
10 years.
Idaho water users, and the state itself, have challenged proposed
federal salmon recovery plans, saying the strategy has the potential to
bleed the Upper Snake River’s farming economy with no proven benefit to
fish listed under the Endangered Species Act.
More than five times as many fall chinook salmon and more than three
times as many coho salmon have returned to the Umatilla River this year
than in any other previous year by this time.
Furthermore, more steelhead have returned to the river than ever before,
as of a mid-October benchmark.
Research aimed at capturing, “reconditioning” and re-releasing
once-spawned wild steelhead so that they spawn again received a
financial boost from the Northwest Power Planning Council Wednesday
“because the success during the first year has been dramatically better
than anticipated.”
Lower river brights are arriving at spawning areas between Ives and
Pierce islands below Bonneville Dam, but water levels and river fluctuations are not optimum
for spawning, according to fish and wildlife officials.
In response to President Clinton’s veto, the Senate removed an
objectionable provision from the annual energy and water appropriations
bill and passed it on Thursday.
The measure includes $81 million for the Army Corps of Engineers
Columbia River fish mitigation program in FY2001, which began Oct 1.
That is an increase from $67.5 million provided last year.
Oregon and Washington agencies last week turned down a request by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for water quality certification of a
project to deepen the shipping channel through the Columbia River
estuary.
While the denial apparently stops the project for now and sets it back
at least a year, the Corps and state agencies say the project is not
dead.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
