The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will start dredging operations in the lower Columbia River in July.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on May 13 alerted boaters and other users of west central Oregon’s Foster Reservoir near Sweet Home, that the reservoir has been filled to an elevation of 635 feet above sea level for the summer of 2014; about two feet lower than usual.

Overall water runoff volumes from the mountains that ring the Columbia and Snake river basins are expected to beat averages, in some cases by a large margin.

Modified fish ladders at central Washington’s damaged Wanapum Dam on the mid-Columbia River appear to be doing the trick for adult spring chinook salmon headed upstream on their spawning journey.

Discharge flows from west-central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam is being decreased today from approximately 20,000 cubic feet per second to about 11 kcfs as a means of balancing flood control operations – carving out storage space in advance of mountain snowmelt -- and flows to support spring smolt outmigration, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers water-management officials.

Central Washington’s Grant County Public Utility District announced Wednesday that the foundation below Wanapum Dam was not a factor in creating the fracture discovered Feb. 27 on the dam’s spillway pier monolith No. 4.

Could a controversial proposal to boost springtime spill at mainstem Columbia and Snake river dams add to knowledge regarding spill, juvenile dam passage survival, and adult fish returns?

Fish protections, irrigator access and hydro power generation are chief among the concerns at the mid-Columbia River’s Wanapum Dam, where on Feb. 27 a 65-foot long horizontal crack was discovered at one of the facility’s 12 spillways.

Fear of a blowout has been reduced, but Grant County Public Utility District officials are still puzzling over what to do about a worrisome 2-inch, 65-foot long horizontal crack discovered late last month along one of the 12 spillways at central Washington’s Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River.

Even though the official comment period has long since passed, passion is still sizzling about a recommendation that the Northwest Power and Conservation Council throw its support behind a proposal to boost springtime spill for fish passage at Columbia and Snake river dams.

After a long dry spell, Pacific Northwest weather over the past two weeks or so has returned to something more like an average winter profile, and as a result lifted snowpack totals and spring-summer water runoff forecasts closer to normal.