The Bonneville Power Administration, with several federal, state and local partners, is embarking on a project that will reconnect vital floodplain habitat to the Columbia River. The Steigerwald Floodplain Restoration Project is the largest estuary restoration project BPA has sponsored.
An industry group calculates that removing the four lower Snake River dams would cost the Northwest 80 percent more than a previous study had shown in power replacement costs alone.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Walla Walla District recently concluded fish survival testing for a new fixed blade hydroelectric turbine that showed improved fish passage survival.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has appointed Patty O’Toole to the position of Fish and Wildlife Division Director. She had been the division’s acting director since August 15, 2019.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week took a major step towards updating the 2014 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program when it adopted Part II of the proposed Addendum to the Program.
Idaho Power filed a petition in December in Multnomah County that asks the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed in July 2019 by Pacific Rivers and Idaho Rivers United that had challenged the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s water quality certification for the utility’s Hells Canyon Complex of Dams – Brownlee, Oxbow and Hells Canyon dams.
Is it the obligation of the states of Oregon and Washington? Or is the Environmental Protection Agency responsible for completing Total Maximum Daily Load limits for temperature to protect salmon and steelhead in the Snake and Columbia rivers?
Washington State’s draft “Lower Snake River Dams Stakeholder Engagement Report,” a compilation of views and information about the dams, has been released for public comment.
Columbia River Treaty negotiations are taking too long, are not transparent enough and the region’s utilities are worried that a last minute deal will cost them more money, according to comments heard at a Treaty Town Hall meeting in Richland this week.
Spawning of threatened Lower Columbia River chum salmon in the Ives/Pierce Island area downstream of Bonneville Dam area on the Columbia River’s north shore is nearing an end, prompting the interagency Technical Management Team this week to set a date to transition to incubation flows designed to protect the chum nests, or redds.
The Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program paid out in 2019 nearly $1,162,000 in rewards and removed 146,225 fish. The top angler earned $53,107.
In moving toward an updating of the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week discussed some of the key unresolved issues, such as salmon reintroduction above blocked areas and predator management.
U.S. Columbia River Treaty Negotiator Jill Smail will lead a town hall on December 16 in Richland, Washington, on the modernization of the Columbia River Treaty regime.
More than 500 threatened chum salmon were counted at the end of November on spawning grounds downstream of Bonneville Dam in the Ives/Pierce island area on the Columbia’s north shore. Although only halfway through the spawning season for these salmon, an anadromous fish expert with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says this year’s tally could end up being higher than the last five-year average.
Idaho Power will soon drop a lawsuit it filed in U.S. District Court in Idaho in June 2018 aimed at forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set a two-week water quality standard for fall chinook that spawn downstream of the utility’s Hells Canyon Complex of three dams on the Snake River.
The way the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to operate its Willamette River dams would likely jeopardize chinook and steelhead in the river, according to NOAA Fisheries. Both species are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Climate change, reintroducing salmon and steelhead to areas blocked by dams, dam breaching and predators topped the list of issues in comments received by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee in response to a draft Addendum to its Columbia River Basin 2014 Fish and Wildlife Program.
A fish culturally important to the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho is making a comeback with an abundance of some 60,000 fish, allowing harvest of the fish in January -- 25 years after the last burbot were harvested in the transboundary sections of the Kootenai River in northern Idaho and southern British Columbia.
In a boon to wind farms, average daily wind speeds are picking up across much of the globe after about 30 years of gradual slowing. Research led by a team at Princeton University shows that wind speeds in northern mid-latitude regions have increased by roughly 7% since 2010.
Two of the scientists who reviewed the phase 1 report that assesses the feasibility of reintroducing salmon and steelhead upstream of Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council Wednesday that a cost analysis should be incorporated early in the process and in a stepwise fashion if the effort is to move forward.
Part of a process that was to be decided by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee this January will instead take a step back, adding as many as six months to determine the most appropriate goals, objectives and indicators to be included in the Council’s draft 2020 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program Addendum.
Although operations at Bonneville Dam that sets a tailwater elevation designed to provide ideal spawning conditions for threatened Columbia River chum salmon downstream of the dam began Monday, few chum have yet to hear the call.
A panel of scientists completed a review of the Upper Columbia United Tribes’ phase 1 report that describes the feasibility of reintroducing salmon and steelhead into the reaches of the Columbia River upstream of Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams.
The Bonneville Power Administration is proposing a “programmatic environmental review” for all Columbia River tributary fish and wildlife habitat restoration projects the agency funds through the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program.
A wide-ranging project on the east side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington promises to restore fish runs while also improving water supplies during drought years for farmers.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
