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A recovery scenario of interest to Idahoans, and to Idaho farmers in
particular, is one that suggests squeezing another million acre-feet of
water from the Upper Snake River drainage to aid salmon and steelhead passage
in the Columbia and Lower Snake rivers.

An independent study of such a scenario is being carried out by the
Bureau of Reclamation at the request of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In its Lower Snake River Juvenile Salmon Migration Feasibility Study,
the Corps is ...

The Columbia River Alliance wants its proposed $200 million a year salmon
recovery plan to be one of the options in Bonneville Power Administration's
"Keep the Options Open" fish and wildlife funding process.

Currently, BPA is considering a future fish and wildlife budget that
includes salmon recovery scenarios with annual costs ranging from $439
million to $786 million a year for the years 2002-2006. For the years 2007-2012,
some of the drawdown options reach as high as ...

Must the federal hydro system meet Clean Water Act standards for total
dissolved gas? A multi-agency scientific team charged with designing a
dissolved gas research plan stalled on this question.

A plan needs a goal, Dissolved Gas Team chair Mark Schneider of the
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) said, and setting this goal is
a high-level policy question, not one the scientists can answer. Schneider
presented the team's final report to the NMFS Regional Forum ...

Preliminary data from a federal study of spill and
salmon survival at The Dalles Dam indicates that less spill results in
higher survival, say Army Corps of Engineers fish biologists.

But the Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission says The Dalles Dam Spillway
Survival Study is flawed research that has not been subjected to proper
peer review and that researchers are harming thousands of listed and unlisted
salmon that come from tribal hatchery programs under U.S. v. Oregon.

The ...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is kicking off this month a regional sediment management project that looks at how sediment naturally moves and how to keep it in the littoral zone at the mouth of the Columbia River.

The result of investigations conducted early this summer into spillway mortality at Ice Harbor Dam does not suggest that the current spill pattern at the dam needs to be changed, NOAA Fisheries said at this week's Technical Management Team meeting.

Fisheries managers this week asked federal dam operating agencies to mitigate for the reduction of spill at Ice Harbor Dam on the lower Snake River by increasing spill at one of the lower Columbia River dams in order to aid juvenile salmon passage through those dams.

Montana Gov. Judy Martz faxed a strongly worded letter to federal operations and fisheries executives Thursday asking to meet with them as soon as possible to resolve the "ongoing dispute" over how to use water from Montana reservoirs for the benefit of salmon in the Columbia River while also balancing the needs of Montana citizens and resident fish.

With lower than expected inflows into the reservoir that backs up behind Dworshak Dam and few juvenile fish still migrating in the lower Snake River, the Technical Management Team this week dropped outflows at the dam to a level requested by tribes and the state of Idaho. That puts the operations on course to provide Dworshak's cooling water into early September.