07. POWER - Columbia Basin Bulletin - Page 117

1. CORPS DELAYS SNAKE EIS, NMFS DELAYS BIOPS

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER, 08. LAW

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last week announced a delay in
releasing its draft environmental impact statement that will recommend
the fate of four lower Snake River dams.
In a related announcement, the National Marine Fisheries Service says
it
will delay its biological opinion on how the federal Columbia River
power system should be operated to restore endangered fish runs.
The Corps had intended to release the Lower Snake River Juvenile Salmon
Migration Feasibility Study and EIS in

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158 cases, but issues such as law enforcement, coded-wire tags, gas

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

supersaturation, monitoring and evaluation, predator control, captive
propagation, lamprey, coordination funding, and wildlife mitigation
proposals will be given closer Council scrutiny.
The Council discussed FY2000 funding proposals during an Aug. 30-31
workshop in Portland. It is scheduled to make recommendations to the
Bonneville Power Administration later this month.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is seeking $379,000 through the
Council program to complete a fourth year of ...

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1998 at a fish trap on the property. While PGE did not purchase the

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 07. POWER

upstream spawning habitat, it did purchase much of the mid-section
of
the creek where smolts rear.
"We are protecting the corridor the fish have to pass through," said
John Esler, project manager in PGE's Hydro Licensing department. "Most
of the spawning is further up in the tributaries."
He said the purchase will allow PGE, or whoever manages the land in
the
future, to effect temperature, water quality and flow in the creek's
rearing area.
"This is prime rearing habitat on what ...

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31, 1999. The license expires in December 2001.

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 07. POWER

However, the license has been contested by the Warm Springs Tribes,
which is expected to also file with FERC in December.
PGE purchased the land with money from a $10 million fund promised by
PGE and Enron when they merged in 1997.
"We were looking for merger support and worked with some environmental
groups to determine what we should do to improve the rivers where we
have hydro projects," Esler said. "We agreed that it wouldn't be for
science, nor for hydro relicensing."
The fund ...

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3. IDAHO BROODSTOCK PROGRAM YIELDS RETURNS

October 1, 2003/in 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER

Since 1991, only 17 sockeye salmon had made the trip home from the Pacific
Ocean to spawn near the headwaters of the Salmon River in Idaho's Stanley
Basin.
That two-a-year average could swell this year with two fish already
completing their journey. They now await their spawning fate at central
Idaho's Sawtooth Hatchery. At least 21 others are still trying to negotiate
the final 430-mile leg of their migration.
The two sockeye that returned to the Sawtooth Hatchery weir over the
past ...

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4. COUNCIL PROCEEDS WITH NEW PROJECT PROCESS

October 1, 2003/in 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER

The Northwest Power Planning Council Aug. 11 gave its staff the OK to
proceed with a plan that attempts to sort out disagreements between fish
and wildlife managers and a scientific panel on fiscal year 2000 funding
priorities for Columbia River Basin fish and wildlife restoration projects.
The outline presented at the Council's meeting in Helena, Mont., would
also potentially serve as a transition to a new process for deciding how
and where fish and wildlife program funds are ...

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5. NWPPC PONDERS PROJECT PROCEDURAL SHIFT

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

A proposal to reconstruct the Northwest Power Planning Council's direct
fish and wildlife program project selection process with independent scientists
in the lead has resource managers nervous about their potential roles.
Council staff on Aug. 10-11 presented for discussion of a vision of
"where the Council's fish and wildlife program may be within the next two
years."
The "Desired End State" paper would line up the process with Independent
Scientific Review Panel desires --project ...

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6. BPA LAUNCHES RATE PROPOSAL

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER

The Aug. 13 publication of the Bonneville Power Administration's 2002-2006
rate proposal intensifies the debate over what the federal agency can do
for its power customers, and what it can do to fuel Columbia River Basin
fish and wildlife recovery.
Average rates would remain at the current level under the proposal,
according a BPA press release.
"By reducing the costs and by avoiding large purchases of new power
supplies, BPA plans to hold the line on wholesale power rates," said ...

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11. LEADERS CALL FOR UNIFIED FISH PLAN

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER, 08. LAW

Two high-profile regional leaders, one elected and the other appointed,
took the podium Aug. 11 in Helena, Mont., to urge the Northwest Power Planning
Council to take a leadership role to ensure that region retains the benefits
it now derives from the Columbia River.
Montana Gov. Marc Racicot said the four Northwest governors whose representatives
sit on the NWPPC want to "ensure the equitable distribution of the Basin's
benefits" and a "fair and balanced sharing of the burden" of fish and

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3. NMFS? MATRIX NEW ANALYTICAL TOOL

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER, 08. LAW

The National Marine Fisheries Service has decided to take matters into
its own hands with a modeling effort aimed at identifying the extinction
risks faced by salmon populations and evaluating which actions have
the
most potential to ward off extinction in the short term, and promote
full recovery for the long term.
NMFS has launched the in-house effort with the goal of providing salmon
recovery planners with an analytical tool to examine the threats to
salmon, including harvest, ...

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4. IT PUSHES FOR FY2000 PATH FUNDING

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

?Bryant
The multi-agency Implementation Team (IT) supported a National Marine
Fisheries Service proposal to continue funding of PATH (Plan for
Analyzing and Testing Hypotheses) in fiscal year 2000 and to complete
a
review of PATH for FY2001 funding.
The proposal, which will be delivered to the Columbia River Fish and
Wildlife Authority next week, came in response to an Independent
Scientific Review Panel recommendation to not fund PATH for FY2000.
The
ISRP concluded that PATH should be

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5. RIVER OPERATORS REACH DWORSHAK COMPROMISE

October 1, 2003/in 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER, 08. LAW

Parties in a tug of war over Dworshak Reservoir's cool waters landed
squarely in the middle Wednesday with a decision to maintain strong
outflows temporarily -- at lower levels than desired by some -- to
push
young salmon migrants downstream.
But those outflows will be at higher levels than requested by those
hoping to preserve water to buoy September spawners.
At least through the week ending Aug. 15, the Technical Management Team
(TMT) agreed to follow a compromise approach to ...

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7. WATER TEMPS PLAGUE DWORSHAK HATCHERY

October 1, 2003/in 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER, 08. LAW

The pursuit of $1.4 million in funds to repair Dworshak National Fish
Hatchery's water intake system was redirected Thursday by NMFS?
multi-agency Implementation Team (IT), whose members decided the IT
has
no established process for settling the issue.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which operates the hatchery, has
for
the past four years been trying to drum up funding to fix water
temperature control problems that impact one-third of the facility's
steelhead production capability.

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1960s and that half of the sediment would be

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

eroded and flow downstream.
A "relevant agreement" analysis provides
information for policy makers about how a
breaching decision impacts or is impacted by
pre-existing intergovernmental agreements, such as
a federal memorandum of agreement on spending for
fish recovery or on the Canadian Entitlement
Allocation Agreement.
The reports are products of the Drawdown Regional
Economic Workgroup (DREW), which has been assigned
the task of estimating the economic impacts of
three alternative

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20 to 30 pages.

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

The final recommendations are expected to go to
the Secretary of the Army in the year 2000. The
report will help Congress determine the best
course of action towards recovery of Snake River
endangered and listed salmon.
Loss of the four dams would reduce the output of
the federal power system by 1,231 average
megawatts in an average water year, or about 11
percent of the federal system's production and
about 5 percent of total energy production in the
Northwest.
That loss will ...

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3. GORTON FLOOR SPEECH

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

New government cost estimates of breaching four
Snake River dams provide additional proof that it
would cause an economic disaster in the region,
Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said this week.
In a Senate floor speech aimed at calling
attention to three Army Corps of Engineers studies
on the impacts on irrigation, barge transportation
and power production, Gorton made one of his
strongest cogent arguments to date against the
proposal for restoring endangered salmon.
Although he ...

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7. PEND OREILLE KOKANEE PLANS COMPARED

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

An alternative plan to boost kokanee populations
in Idaho's Lake Pend Oreille can't be put on a
funding fast track, but the Northwest Power
Planning Council will investigate how the proposal
compares with an ongoing recovery strategy.
The Pend Oreille Public Utility District and
Kalispel Tribe, in a May 27 letter to the
Northwest Power Planning Council, called current
efforts "devastating to interests downstream" from
the lake. It asked for scientific and economic
analysis of both ...

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1997 produced record fry counts and half the

October 1, 2003/in 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER

anticipated population in all of the other age
classes of kokanee.
The IDFG principal fisheries research biologist
says kokanee are often flushed downstream and out
of the lake during such wet springs. The IDFG
would like to continue the study for a fourth year
so it has more representative three-year sample,
excluding that first year.
Buckley said the tribes and PUD wanted to discuss
the project's downstream side effects, and other
recovery options, before extending the ...

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9. COMMITTEE APPROVES

October 1, 2003/in 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER

After winning House committee approval, supporters
of a resolution that would put Congress on record
against breaching four lower Snake River dams were
not in a rush to elevate the issue to the full
House. The non-binding sense-of-Congress
resolution passed the Resources Committee by voice
vote on July 21.
But the author, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said
more work needs to be done before a House vote
could be sought. A leading co-sponsor, Rep. Greg
Walden, R-Ore., signaled he felt ...

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10. COUNCIL LOOKS AT PROJECT

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

The Northwest Power Planning Council has promised
to try bridge a communication gap that many direct
program project sponsors believe exists between
themselves and a panel that reviews their
projects.
During the recently completed review, scientists
scanned the 400 project proposals with a "finer
level of detail" than in past years, Fish and
Wildlife program director Bob Lohn told the
Council July 21. That scrutiny produced a
complicated set of dilemmas for policy makers ...

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12. BASIN FORUM MEMBERS AGREE ON GOAL

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER, 08. LAW

A Columbia Basin Forum effort to "reach common
understanding" on fish and wildlife recovery last
week culminated in a broad goal statement that
attempts to address the concerns of everyone
sitting around the table.
Now, say Forum committee participants, comes the
hard part -- establishing standards or benchmarks
that measure whether regional strategies being
developed can achieve that goal. Those strategies
range from dam breaching to a variety of other
hydrosystem, habitat, ...

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15. SURFACE BYPASS STUDY OPTIONS DISCUSSED

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER, 08. LAW

The scorecards of state and tribal System
Configuration Team members could decide the fate
of a Lower Granite surface bypass program that has
used $20 million in research dollars over the past
two years.
Surface bypass and collection tests began at the
Snake River's Lower Granite Dam in 1996 to
determine if the technology can improve fish
guidance away from turbines to other passage
routes -- the dam's juvenile bypass system,
transport barges or the spillway.
The prototype now in ...

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16. FEEDBACK

October 1, 2003/in 07. POWER

, corporate communications and
relicensing specialist for Chelan County PUD:
While author Michael O'Bryant captured the overall
sense of the issues in the federal relicensing
application for the Lake Chelan Hydroelectric
Project in Chelan County, Wash., a few
clarifications are in order from his piece in the
Bulletin on July 16.
He referred to "remnants" of sockeye and chinook
salmon being landlocked in the lake. There is no
evidence that sockeye or chinook existed naturally
in ...

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2. TROUT UNLIMITED STUDY PREDICTS EXTINCTIONS

October 1, 2003/in 03. HABITAT, 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER, 08. LAW

Sponsors of a study that predicts Snake River wild spring and summer
chinook extinction by 2017 say the new information serves as a call for
policy makers to immediately pursue an aggressive restoration plan.
"This is only going in one direction," Dr. Phil Mundy said of spawning
ground population "trend lines" that have, particularly since 1981, been
plummeting downward.
Mundy prepared the report, "Status and Expected Time to Extinction for
Snake River Spring and Summer Chinook ...

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3. REDFISH-BOUND SOCKEYE NUMBERS SURPRISE

October 1, 2003/in 04. WILDLIFE, 07. POWER

Biologist will still likely be able to count the number of Redfish Lake-bound
adult sockeye salmon on the fingers of one hand, yet Idaho officials are
encouraged about the prospects for this year's return.
As of midweek, the Corps of Engineers had reported "seven sightings
above Ice Harbor (the farthest downstream of four Lower Snake River dams)
but some of them might be duplicate sightings," said Paul Kline, principal
fishery research biologist at the Eagle Hatchery for the Idaho ...

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