Two Northwest senators on Wednesday raised concerns over possible federal
requirements for additional spill at Columbia and Snake river dams to aid
salmon migration.

The issue arose during the first hearing of the Senate Water and Power
Subcommittee under the leadership of its new chairman, Sen. Gordon Smith,
R-Ore. The topic was the fiscal 2000 budget proposals for the Bureau of
Reclamation and federal power marketing agencies. Witnesses included Reclamation
Commissioner Eluid Martinez

A "scoping" study now under way intends to compare the potential
costs related to John Day Dam drawdown with the chances such measures would
help revive dwindling salmon runs.

Those comparisons are expected to form a recommendation to Congress
-- either to drop the issue altogether or investigate drawdown options
in greater detail and at much greater cost.

"It's going to have to be a black and white answer" project
manager Stuart Stanger said of the study's ...

Spring Creek hatchery "tules" - a fall chinook stock that
originated in the Big White Salmon River - will get a boost in spill over
the Bonneville Dam this spring.

Last Friday (Jan. 29), the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission granted
a waiver of the water quality standard for dissolved gas below Bonneville
to allow spill for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hatchery release.

Last year the waiver was denied. The Commission "got more information
from the fish ...

Environmental groups concerned about the rapid conversion of natural
shrub steppe and grassland habitat to farmland along the Columbia River
filed separate actions to stop the development of 2,800 acres of state
land near Boardman, Ore.

Defenders of Wildlife, the Northwest Environmental Defense Council and
the Oregon Natural Desert Association last month filed with the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife an emergency endangered species listing
for the Washington ground squirrel, ...

Army Corps of Engineers officials say it was a misunderstanding which
prompted Washington Republican Sen. Slade Gorton's letter this week expressing
concern that the Corps might be initiating a preliminary study on the impacts
of drawing down the pool behind McNary Dam and reconfiguring the lower
Columbia River system.

Corps officials say they have no plans to do such work during the current
fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1. Any proposal to evaluate a McNary drawdown
in Fiscal Year ...

The scientific group called PATH (Plan for Analyzing and Testing Hypotheses)
summarized its 1998 work on salmon recovery Thursday (Dec. 10) for the
National Marine Fisheries Service's multi-agency Implementation Team.

Most of the information presented had been previously released in a
series of reports over the last year.

PATH's analyses have consistently indicated that drawdown of the four
lower Snake River dams would give all salmon stocks the best chance of
recovery.

New results

The Columbia/Snake River flow augmentation regime prescribed in 1995
as part of the National Marine Fisheries Service's salmon recovery strategy
will be continued at least through next spring and summer.

That's the decision agreed to Monday by NMFS' interagency Implementation
Team (IT), though Idaho's representative went along somewhat grudgingly.

River flows have for the past several years been augmented in the spring
and summer from Snake River storage reservoirs in Idaho. The ...

An Army Corps of Engineers' meeting Nov. 12 in Astoria drew heated opposition
to a proposal to deepen by three feet 115 miles of the lower Columbia River
and Willamette River shipping channel.

Lower Columbia River residents accused the Corps of proposing to take
actions designed to pump economic benefits into the Portland metro area
at the expense of people who live and work along the lower river.

The Corps accepted public testimony at the second of three scheduled
hearings on the ...

At a early September congressional hearing in Pasco, Rep. Doc Hastings,
R-Wa, asked National Marine Fisheries Service Regional Administrator Will
Stelle to submit a letter by Oct. 1 explaining NMFS' "interpretation
of state water rights and how those rights interact with your agency."

Hastings and other members of the Northwest congressional delegation
expressed concern at the hearing that NMFS's flow policies for salmon,
using the authority of the Endangered Species Act, ...