A federal judge has rebuffed an attempt to bring upper Snake River federal water projects into consideration during a court-ordered re-evaluation of Columbia River federal hydrosystem impacts on salmon and steelhead.
The Bonneville Power Administration would like to see expanded testing next year of the long-held theory that operating hydro turbine near peak efficiency provides the highest survival for juvenile salmon.
A proposal to evaluate the effect on survival of deviating from the "one percent efficiency" rule would expand from a limited test at a few units to across all 14 turbines at McNary Dam.
NOAA Fisheries and the Bonneville Power Administration executives "strongly support" continuing to design the installation of a removable spillway weir (RSW) at Ice Harbor Dam on the lower Snake River.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began to ramp down flows at Libby Dam this week to meet a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service request to provide low and slow flows for burbot migrating and spawning in the Kootenai River.
Zero nighttime flow at lower Snake River dams is continuing, but Idaho Fish and Game and the Nez Perce Tribe are protesting the operation which allows the Bonneville Power Administration to sell more power during the day when electricity prices are higher and to stop flow during some nighttime hours to refill reservoirs when prices are low.
The picture for fiscal year 2004 and beyond became only slightly clearer last week as the Northwest Power and Conservation heard of additional pressures that could be applied to an already bulging fish and wildlife program budget.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week voted to stretch the term limits it had created for members of its Independent Scientific Review Panel to take advantage of the scientists' accumulated knowledge through the NPCC subbasin planning process stretch run.
Columbia-Snake River federal hydrosystem operations next summer aimed at evaluating the impacts of reduced spill on migrating juvenile salmon would not necessarily go counter to the government's salmon protection strategy if fish losses are "offset" by other measures, according to the regional chief of NOAA Fisheries.
The Idaho Water Users Association this week forwarded to NOAA Fisheries and the Bureau of Reclamation a new scientific paper contending that flow augmentation from Idaho reservoirs provides little benefit for salmon and steelhead, and that the effects of water withdrawals on fish travel time are “small to insignificant.”
The Bureau of Reclamation says it will oversee drilling this month as part of a federal feasibility study aimed at finding options for additional water storage to benefit the Yakima River Basin.
Economists are working on a report that describes the cost-effectiveness of some juvenile passage measures, particularly measures that could eliminate or cut spill, and how cost-effective analyses could be useful for making decisions about fish and wildlife actions in the Columbia River Basin.
Staff for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council got the go ahead this week from Power Committee members to develop a model that would measure the impact of adverse power operations on fish and wildlife recovery measures similar to how BPA predicts risks to the power system's reliability.
Congress is scheduled to vote next week on a massive federal budget
package that includes more than $100 million for Columbia River and
other Pacific salmon recovery programs in the fiscal year 2004, but
final approval may not come until January.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed an RSW at Lower Granite Dam in early 2002 to improve fish passage and survival at the dam. Early results showed that both passage and survival improved and that it was accomplished with less spill at the dam. Seeking a lower cost and more effective way to spill water to improve fish survival, the Bonneville Power Administration in October 2002 proposed to SCT to accelerate the installation of RSWs at Ice Harbor and Lower Monumental dams...
Washington Gov. Gary Locke Wednesday (Dec. 3) signed the final agreement officially terminating two unfinished nuclear power plant sites at Hanford and establishing a framework for restoring the sites by 2026.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit that has forced the federal government to rethink its Federal Columbia River Power System salmon protection plan continue to press in U.S. District Court for a broader interpretation of that plan's responsibility.
The document in question is the FCRPS biological opinion, which was issued by NOAA Fisheries late in 2000 but is now under reconstruction as a part of a remand ordered by Judge James A. Redden early this past summer.
At the request of the Bonneville Power Administration, nighttime flows through lower Snake River dams will be allowed to drop to zero in order to refill the reservoirs during times when the demand for electricity is at its lowest. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will initiate the operations for up to six hours tonight during the eight-hour period from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
A federal Libby Dam operations plan designed to avoid jeopardizing endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon is being reworked even as new research shows the long-lived creatures are on a steeper slide toward extinction than was thought just a few years ago.
As part of an effort to prepare for the court-ordered revision of the 2000 Biological Opinion for the federal Columbia River hydropower system, the National Marine Fisheries Service has sent a request for information from Tribes and states about non-federal salmon habitat actions that might be included in the new “BiOp.”
David Allen admittedly has only just begun to burrow into the complexities of those issues in his immediate environment, the Columbia River basin, and other locales in the Pacific Region. But he agreed this week to offer some of his first impressions about the efforts of his agency, and of others, to maintain and restore the Columbia Basin's fish and wildlife resources.
Columbia Basin fish and wildlife agencies and Tribes have released the 2002 Comparative Survival Study (CSS) which estimates survival rates for spring/summer chinook – both transported and in-river – from major hatcheries in the Snake River Basin and selected hatcheries from the lower Columbia River.
Tribes, Oregon and conservation groups gave the Columbia River action agencies a much lower score for their efforts to meet NOAA Fisheries' 2000 biological opinion for the Federal Columbia River Power System than the agencies claimed for themselves.
The clock has begun ticking on Northwest Power and Conservation Council consideration of the first of an expected 58 subbasin plan submittals -- for Idaho's Clearwater River -- as an amendment to its Columbia River basin fish and wildlife plan.
Final congressional passage of a comprehensive energy bill, including
modified hydroelectric dam relicensing reforms,was blocked on Friday in the Senate.
During this week’s Council meeting at the Coeur d’Alene Resort, special projects manager Bruce Suzumoto presented a perspective on "Recent Trends in Adult Returns to the Columbia Basin" from the view of fish counters at Bonneville, McNary, and Lower Granite dams.
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