A Columbia River basin fish and wildlife program budget that already threatens to push past boundaries established by its funding agency, the Bonneville Power Administration, has bulged further with the identification of more than $5 million in previously unidentified needs.
Federal action agencies released a plan this week that outlines how the agencies will implement conservation measures in the NOAA Fisheries and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biological opinions for the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS).
The Bonneville Power Administration announced today that Ruth Bennett has been named chief operating officer and a member of the Senior Executive Service. Bennett has been acting in the position since November 2002. The permanent appointment takes effect immediately.
U.S. Justice Department attorneys say, in a Nov. 14 brief, that expanding the scope of the court-ordered Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion remand to include the upper Snake would be illegal.
Conference speakers agreed that perceptions about salmon and salmon runs aren't always backed up by reality.
Scientists and policymakers converged at the conference Friday (Nov. 14), titled "Salmon Crossroads: Record Runs and New Directions," where before an audience made up largely of utility representatives, they debated how to interpret the recent favorable salmon return news and what to do next.
The public won't support salmon recovery programs if they perceive those programs are poorly managed and too expensive, Bonneville Power Administration Administrator Steve Wright told participants at a conference in Portland today.
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more conference stories here this weekend...
The agency’s audited financial results for fiscal year 2003 ending Sept. 30 show net revenues of $555 million on total revenues of $3.6 billion. However, absent bond re-financings and other actions taken by BPA to hold down rates, net revenues would have been $37 million.
The new wind farm will interconnect to PacifiCorp’s transmission system and deliver enough power to serve about 12,000 Pacific Power households.
The colony, which now nests five miles from the river mouth on East Sand Island from April to midsummer, gobbled up an estimated 4.2 million juvenile salmonids this year as the fish forged toward the Pacific Ocean, according to a draft 2003 summary report on the summer field season.
That compares to a peak of an estimated 12.4 million consumed by the terns in 1998, the second year of the study that has been financed by the Bonneville Power Administration.
A new report from the National Academies' National Research Council says new submersibles -- both manned and unmanned -- that are more capable than those in the current fleet are needed and would be of great value to the advancement of ocean research.
Conference co-sponsors include the Bonneville Power Administration; the Northwest Power and Conservation Council; Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee; Portland General Electric; Grant, Chelan and Douglas County public utility districts; Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative; Pacific Northwest Waterways Association; NOAA Fisheries; and Weyerhaeuser and Energy News Data.
The Army Corps of Engineers received $85 million in construction
funds for salmon mitigation projects at the eight federal dams on the
Columbia and Snake rivers, the largest Northwest recovery program.
That is the same as this year's amount but $10 million less than Bush
sought in his FY2004 budget. The program pays for fish screens,
collectors, ladders and passage improvements, including the
downstream migrant juvenile fish bypass at Bonneville Dam.
Subbasin planning participants responded coolly this week to the prospect that they will be asked to redirect some portion of their energies to help NOAA Fisheries shape a new biological opinion regarding operations of the Federal Columbia River Power System.
Federal representatives said at a multi-agency Implementation Team meeting today that they would complete the fiscal year 2004 one-year Implementation Plan for salmon and steelhead recovery in mid-November, but that the plan will contain uncertainties, leaving it open to future changes.
The new draft document would modify the existing basin plans by listing specific management policies, objectives and actions for managing anadromous summer steelhead, spring chinook, sockeye salmon and pacific lamprey, and resident bull trout upstream from the Pelton-Round Butte Hydroelectric Project. Currently, only bull trout are present upstream of the project.
A $50 million remodeling project at Bonneville Dam's second powerhouse is expected to draw more migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead away from hydro turbines and deliver them to a safer place in the Columbia River below.
Construction is all but complete on the modification of the powerhouse's trash and ice chute, which has long been a preferred route past the dam.
A new large-scale, multidisciplinary ocean exploration program would increase the pace of discovery of new species, ecosystems, energy sources, seafloor features, pharmaceutical products, and artifacts, as well as improve understanding of the role oceans play in climate change, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies' National Research Council.
Larry Cassidy, a Washington member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, has been appointed chairman of the Pacific Salmon Commission, an agency of the governments of the United States and Canada that implements the Pacific Salmon Treaty.
The division of the Columbia/Snake River Basin into provinces and subbasins is intended to be the foundation for salmon and steelhead recovery in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
This new approach, dryly called “subbasin planning,” at some point will be the guiding light for directing millions of public dollars each year to implement locally-developed, watershed-based fish and wildlife restoration and protection plans.
A project to evaluate the damage being done by these so-called “ghosts nets,” and recover them, was cited in a recent Federal Caucus mailing as one of the hundreds of steps that have been taken since late 2000 to improve the survival of salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
A draft plan that sets out an approach on how research in the lower Columbia River estuary and its plume should proceed is in the peer review process and is nearing its implementation date in February 2004.
An operation at Bonneville Dam designed to provide spawning habitat for lower Columbia River chum salmon, a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act, will begin Monday, Nov. 3, but at a lower level than requested by fisheries managers at this week's Technical Management Team meeting.
Grant County Public Utility District this week delivered to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) 39 volumes of documents to relicense its two mid-Columbia River dams. Licensed since the 1950s, the dams' current 50-year license is up for renewal by October 31, 2005.
It's seven months and counting down until dozens of subbasin plans -- intended to be the essence of a regional Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife program -- fall into the laps of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, its staff, the Independent Scientific Review Panel and the public.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
