The plaintiff in a two-year old case that was dismissed in U.S. District Court of Oregon in early August has asked the judge to reopen the case to reconsider one aspect of his decision.
Despite continuing high temperatures over the Columbia River basin and in the Clearwater and Snake river basins, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has managed to keep the tailwater temperature at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake under the 68 degree Fahrenheit limit set by the 2014 salmon/steelhead biological opinion for the federal power system.
A Thurston County Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order Aug. 20 that prohibits the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife from lethally removing one or more wolves from the Togo pack in northern Ferry County.
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.
A two-year old case that alleges the operations at Portland General Electric’s Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams is responsible for more than 1,000 clean water violations in Oregon’s lower Deschutes River was dismissed August 3 by the U.S. District Court in Portland.
With air temperatures expected to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week in the Clearwater and Snake river basin, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Monday increased flows of cold water from Dworshak Dam from about 10,000 cubic feet per second to 13 kcfs.
Flow and spill in the lower Snake and Columbia rivers during June dropped below the involuntary spill levels seen in May at four lower Snake River and four Columbia River dams, according to a third and last spill report on court-ordered spring spill that covers the month of June.
All three generators at Dworshak Dam tripped off Tuesday, July 24, at 11 a.m. and, although one generator, Unit No. 1, the largest of the dam’s generators, was back online within a couple of hours, the other two were not restored until 10 p.m. Tuesday night, according to Alfredo Rodriguez of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Walla Walla District.
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.
A two-year old case that alleges the operations at Portland General Electric’s Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams is responsible for more than 1,000 clean water violations in the lower Deschutes is about to end.
The cost of federally funded fish and wildlife programs in the Columbia River Basin totaled $450.4 million in fiscal year 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016 – Sept. 30, 2017), according to the annual report released last week by the Northwest Planning and Conservation Council to Northwest governors.
Cool water from Dworshak Dam on Idaho’s North Fork Clearwater River is keeping tailwater temperatures at Lower Granite Dam cool as air temperatures in the lower Snake River rise into the 90s. The water is released to ensure that adult Snake River sockeye salmon, listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, have a cool passage upstream.
Looking for a 10 percent cut in Bonneville Power Administration fish and wildlife funding and with an extension of the Columbia Basin Fish Accords still uncertain, one member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week says he would like to see a closer coordination between the Council and Bonneville in determining priorities, especially with the Accords.
NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region, with its Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif., and Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, have released a new blueprint for how the agency will put ecosystem-based management principles into practice on the West Coast.
Flows in the lower Snake and Columbia rivers during May were well above average and so was spill and levels of total dissolved gas in the tailwaters of dams, as well as in dams’ forebays, according to a second report on court-ordered spill.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission last week appointed Kelly Susewind of Olympia as the new director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Willamette Riverkeeper and the Conservation Angler filed a second amended complaint in U.S. District Court that asks the court, among other things, to order the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop releasing hatchery produced summer steelhead and rainbow trout into the North and South Santiam rivers. The complaint was filed in the Eugene Division of the District Court June 20, 2018.
At the invitation of U.S. District Court in Oregon Judge Michael H. Simon, the Deschutes River Alliance filed an amended complaint last week in a lawsuit that alleges Portland General Electric is violating Clean Water Act rules due to their operations of the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams on the lower Deschutes River.
A NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center report on juvenile salmon released last year found that survival of juvenile sockeye salmon – both hatchery and wild – from Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River to Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River was just 17.6 percent, the fourth lowest survival estimate from 1998 to 2017.
Without offering an explanatory opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a tie vote Monday affirming the position of Washington Indian tribes in a lengthy litigation series requiring the state to modify road culverts that block salmon passage.
The Columbia River basin fish and wildlife budget funded by the Bonneville Power Administration will likely see as much as a 10 percent cut in fiscal year 2019, according to Bryan Mercier, executive director of BPA’s fish and wildlife division.
A June 11 U.S. District Court of Oregon decision ruled against dismissing the 2016 case brought by the Deschutes River Alliance against Portland General Electric. In that lawsuit, DRA alleged PGE is violating Clean Water Act rules due to their operations of the Pelton Round Butte Complex of dams on the lower Deschutes River.
NOAA Fisheries last month delivered its first report on court-ordered spring spill for juvenile salmon and steelhead passage to the U.S. District Court in Oregon.
As the snow melt-off progresses and nears an end in some areas, river flows in the Snake and Columbia rivers are declining and so is involuntary spill at eight dams on the rivers that in May forced total dissolved gas levels higher than Washington and Oregon clean water standards allow.
Idaho Power has filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency over, says the utility, “failure to act on the State of Idaho’s adoption of a new water-temperature standard for salmon spawning in the Snake River.”
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