As the Northwest Power and Conservation Council seeks new candidates for two scientific review panels, it is also looking to cut the annual budgets for both the Independent Scientific Review Panel and Independent Scientific Advisory Board.
The Bonneville Power Administration paid its 35th consecutive U.S. Treasury payment last week. This year’s $862 million payment brings BPA’s cumulative payments to the Treasury during those 35 years to over $29.8 billion.
The Chelan County Public Utility District commission at its meeting Sept. 18 approved a resolution to enter into a long-term, 15-year agreement with the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation for coho salmon hatchery fish rearing.
An innovative scientific tool was used in Montana to identify when an invasive fish was introduced to a water body and where that fish came from.
A draft report by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council that will be sent to Congress early next year says that changes in the energy markets as the U.S. and the West Coast transition away from coal, competition from other utilities, along with a massive build-up of solar power in California causing lower energy sales to the state is leaving the Bonneville Power Administration less competitive than in past years.
The Bonneville Power Administration and most parties to the previous 10 years of the 2008 Columbia Basin Fish Accords have come to a tentative agreement to extend the Accords beyond Sept. 30, the ending date of the first Accords.
Flood control, ecosystem management, salmon reintroduction and inclusion of tribes directly in the negotiating process were concerns raised by local participants at a town hall on what modernizing the Columbia River Treaty should look like.
NOAA Fisheries’ Columbia Basin Partnership Task Force provisional quantitative and qualitative goals are out for review and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council at its meeting this week in Eugene, Ore. approved comments to the Task Force that were developed by the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee and staff.
The Bonneville Power Administration has appointed Michelle Manary as executive vice president and chief financial officer starting Sept. 30. As CFO, she will oversee the capital and debt management program, accounting, cash management and budgeting for BPA’s $4.3 billion total budget.
A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office calls out federal agencies for not implementing a Columbia River Basin Restoration Program, as required by law, and the report identifies shortcomings in tracking federal spending on restoration efforts that have already been pursued.
The governor of Idaho and the administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration met in Sandpoint, Idaho, Thursday to celebrate the completion of the historic Albeni Falls wildlife settlement agreement. Idaho agrees that the $24 million settlement satisfies BPA’s wildlife habitat mitigation responsibilities for impacts from Albeni Falls Dam.
When given the chance, landlocked sockeye – kokanee – will bolt for the ocean, but as it turns out in one study where a dam had been in place for 90 years, just 20 percent of kokanee in the reservoir were ready to smolt, according to a recent study out of Canada.
At its meeting July 10 in Missoula, MT, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee reviewed draft vision statement, guiding principles and qualitative goals developed over the past year and a half by the Columbia Basin Partnership Task Force.
At last week’s meeting the Committee, along with the full Council, took an extra step and delved into the details of the Partnership’s work.
A long-range plan by tribes to restore Pacific lamprey runs into the Columbia River received approval last week from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council at its meeting in Portland.
A review of floating surface collectors at eight high-head hydroelectric projects found that some designs are better than others in funneling juvenile salmon and steelhead through the dam.
At its May meeting, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee released a letter soliciting recommendations from regional entities to amend its Columbia River Basin 2014 Fish and Wildlife Program. The recommendations were to be due to the Committee Sept. 14.
In each of its rate cases a component that makes up Bonneville Power Administration’s costs is the amount of water it has to spill to aid threatened and endangered juvenile fish passage at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week identified additional reductions to the Bonneville Power Administration’s fish and wildlife program expenditures that total about $1 million.
One new member was appointed to the Independent Scientific Review Panel and two current memberships were extended this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
U.S. Senate legislation that would change the existing Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 by giving more flexibility to remove sea lions that prey upon threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River passed one last hurdle before full Senate approval.
A movement is underway to pursue a comprehensive study of the potential economic impacts that could come with an advancing northern pike invasion across the Columbia Basin river system, including salmon waters referred to as “The Anadromous Zone.”
The lead negotiators for the United States and Canada tasked with modernizing the Columbia River Treaty remained reserved and diplomatically congenial during a forum on the treaty in Spokane this week, but other people weren’t shy in sharing their views on how the 1964 treaty has caused harm on both sides of the border and how it can be improved.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has published its analysis of the public comments received during the scoping process for the Detroit Dam project intended to provide downstream passage for juvenile Willamette River chinook salmon and colder water for migrating salmon downstream of the dam in the North Santiam River.
The U.S. State Department will host a town hall meeting in Portland Sept. 6 to discuss the ongoing re-negotiation of the Columbia River Treaty.
Members of a regional partnership kicked off by NOAA Fisheries in early 2017 have agreed in principle to a vision statement and provisional goals.
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