Federal officials met with state and tribal officials, congressional staff and other Columbia River hydrosystem "stakeholders" Tuesday to explain a proposed test of fish management flexibility that involves shutting off one of the downstream fish passage routes in August, and providing more limited access in July.
Fish managers continue to advocate a cautious approach while the Bonneville Power Administration would like all-out implementation of turbine operations at McNary Dam that would deviate from those described in a NOAA Fisheries biological opinion regarding the jeopardy posed to protected fish by the federal Columbia River hydrosystem.
The Independent Economic Analysis Board wants to provide the Northwest Power and Conservation Council with a framework that would allow the Council and others to inject a cost-effectiveness analysis when comparing among alternative fish recovery projects.
"Citizens have the right to challenge governmental decisions that violate the law, and the mere desire of other persons to continue those programs is not a right that can be invoked to foreclose consideration of the challengers," claims, wrote Portland attorney James Buchal in a memorandum filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court.
Ten Northwest members of Congress support the Bonneville Power Administration's efforts to test reduced summer spill operations.
However, they ask for up to three years of testing and say the change in spill operations should be mitigated and result in the same or better conditions for salmon at a lower cost to Northwest electric ratepayers.
Legal jousting continued last week with the Justice Department asking that a Portland U.S. District Court judge stay one legal challenge to the federal government's salmon recovery plan until a separate lawsuit completes its first stage.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Fiscal Year 2005 budget, as proposed to Congress by President Bush, includes $194 million for the Corps' Portland District to fund work in the Rogue, Willamette, Columbia and Cowlitz river basins.
The judge presiding over one legal challenge to the federal Columbia River basin salmon protection plan will remain as magistrate of record in a separate lawsuit that attacks the fish strategy from a different angle.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects to make a decision by early April to move ahead with long-delayed plans for dredging lower the lower Snake River navigation channel and inland ports.
Those easements completed so far have cost $1.9 million, with $1,020,000 of
that coming from a BPA fish and wildlife program focused on mitigating for
habitat lost with the construction of Libby and Hungry Horse dams. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Farm and Ranch Lands Protection program also
contributed to the easement purchases.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency approved in the nick of time new water quality standards submitted to the federal agency in December by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
The water quality rules set new water temperature standards to protect salmon and trout, including some temperatures that are cooler than the state's previously approved standards and some that allow for warmer water. All are based on scientific data, the two agencies said.
Two draft analyses by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council offer new
views of the region's future power supply and wholesale power prices.
One analysis indicates that the Northwest has a surplus of electricity that could last through 2008, depending on the impacts of hydroelectric conditions and growth in the demand for power.
A Columbia River Basin fish and wildlife program budget already facing stress is not a likely target for cuts as the Bonneville Power Administration searches for $100 million in savings and/or "revenue enhancements" in fiscal years 2004 and 2005.
Fishing and conservation groups this week began to lay the groundwork for a legal challenge to the federal agencies that operate Columbia River hydroelectric system, and the one that markets its power, should they opt to reduce summer spill or carry out other operations that threaten the survival of protected salmon.
Organizations representing agriculture-employers, utilities, businesses and other Columbia River users have joined hands with the stated goal of forcing more "cost effective" implementation of basin salmon restoration efforts -- beginning with the immediate elimination of the summer hydrosystem spill program.
Weighing in on a proposal to reduce or eliminate spilling water during summer months, environmental groups and fish and wildlife agencies -- with the notable exception of the State of Montana – said that the analyses of a half-dozen spill options is insufficient and doesn't support the proposed changes.
The fiscal year 2004 fish and wildlife program budget is predicted to reach unprecedented levels because of Bonneville Power Administration accounting policies and management, say project sponsors, Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff and at least some Council members.
Fisheries managers at the Technical Management Team meeting this week proposed threshold criteria designed to help TMT make in-season decisions about when attraction spill is needed for wild steelhead at Bonneville Dam and when to turn off nighttime zero flow at lower Snake River dams.
An official request sent Feb. 13 by the states of Oregon and Washington to NOAA Fisheries requests that greater impact or "incidental take" be allowed on protected, wild winter steelhead during the course of commercial fisheries targeting returning hatchery-raised chinook in the lower Columbia River.
Northwest Power and Conservation Council members this week pondered the adequacy of a newly developed "response" process to address policy and science issues unearthed during technical and public review of subbasin plans soon to be delivered from across the Columbia River basin.
The Bonneville Power Administration is about where it expected it would be financially through the first quarter of fiscal year 2004. Even though revenues are slightly down, cost savings are keeping the federal power marketing and transmission organization in the black.
It appears that a pair of lawsuits attacking NOAA Fisheries' Columbia River salmon protection plan from different directions will continue on separate courses, and potentially with different judges presiding.
Washington’s first effort to recover the largest and oldest freshwater fish in the upper Columbia River will get under way Feb.18, when 2,000 white sturgeon are transported from Canada to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Columbia Basin Fish Hatchery in Moses Lake.
The Columbia River Basin's trail-breaking Clearwater subbasin planning committee, and Northwest Power and Conservation Council, were left to ponder next steps after their product of more than three years of work was deemed scientifically unjustified.
Fisheries managers said this week that an analysis that looks at alternatives to summer spill that was completed by the Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Corps of Engineers, with technical help from NOAA Fisheries, still needs work.
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