A number of funding decisions remain in limbo as the Northwest Power and Conservation Council enters the stretch run in deciding which of $1 billion in funding requests will fit into a fish and wildlife program budget that holds about half that amount for fiscal years 2007-2009.
Restarting early-summer flow augmentation for fish, at least in the near term, from the Hells Canyon Complex of dams could potentially be one of the terms for the federal relicensing sought by the hydro projects’ owner, the Idaho Power Company.
A July 21 letter from the Bonneville Power Administration's CEO Steve Wright reiterates the agency's intent to defer funding for new Nez Perce tribal hatchery facilities while the project’s full biological benefits are weighed in an ongoing court-ordered process.
A process to rebuild the government's salmon protection strategy for the Columbia River hydrosystem is on track, aiming for recovery of imperiled salmon and steelhead stocks, federal attorneys told U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden July 21.
Federal attorneys have attempted to trivialize the government's responsibility under the 1980 Northwest Power Act to fund Columbia River basin fish and wildlife restoration activities, according to a legal brief filed Monday for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
U.S. District Judge James A. Redden will hold an Aug. 14 conference to hear widely divergent views on how the remand of NOAA Fisheries' upper Snake River "biological opinion" should be carried out.
A rapid, late spring snowmelt that caused harm to northwest Montana resident fish could, in a round-about way, also bring those same trout long-sought benefits.
Implementing the purposes of the Northwest Power Act is a balancing act that requires discretion, and the Bonneville Power Administration's CEO used it well last winter in deciding not to issue a new contract to fund the Fish Passage Center, according to a federal brief filed in federal court.
In a July 14 opinion and order, U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden denied a request to have a single Endangered Species Act "biological opinion" prepared for two sets of federal Columbia Basin dams.
Federal officials -- reluctant July 6 to implement a hydrosystem operational strategy offered by Montana -- will next week consider an alternative that would draw down Libby and Hungry Horse faster than the state would like but not as fast as is now planned.
The state of Montana and the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho have joined a lawsuit contesting Libby Dam operations on different sides but with similar goals.
Montana intervened as plaintiffs in a lawsuit initiated by the Center for Biological Diversity, which has staunchly advocated higher flows in the Kootenai River for the benefit of white sturgeon, an endangered species. The Kootenai Tribes, meanwhile, joined in support of a recent biological opinion that the lawsuit challenges.
The state of affairs will become clearer in the coming weeks within the federal government's "collaborative" process to reconstruct its Columbia River hydrosystem salmon protection plan.
With advice from a variety of sources now in hand, Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff will begin piecing together a recommendation for how available fish and wildlife monies will be spent in fiscal years 2007-2009.
In an unprecedented decision, a three-judge federal appeals court panel on July 3 that a Canadian metals smelting company can be held liable under U.S. environmental law for pollution resulting from nine decades of slag discharges into the Columbia River.
Montana officials will have to wait another week to find out if their long-sought summer outflow plan from Libby and Hungry Horse dams will be accepted by regional interests and implemented by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation.
A new effort to have federal lower Snake/Columbia river and upper Snake River dam salmon protection plans combined is based on faulty interpretations of the law, according to attorneys for the federal government, the Nez Perce Tribe, the state of Idaho and water users groups.
The Bonneville Power Administration ignored provisions of the Northwest Power Act and followed instead non-binding congressional report language last year when it chose to stop funding Fish Passage Center operations, allege briefs filed June 16 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Girded by a recent appeals court decision in a separate case, fishing and conservation groups last week resumed their call to have biological impacts of upper Snake River and lower Snake/Columbia river dams judged as a single unit.
Officials from tribes, fish agencies, the U.S. Forest Service, local government, Grant Public Utility District and interested individuals on Wednesday met in Leavenworth, Wash., to discuss preliminary projects that could help restore populations of Upper Columbia River spring chinook salmon to the White River.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week released its annual report to Congress on the status of U.S. marine fisheries for 2005, noting some progress toward reducing the number of stocks that are overfished.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week endorsed expansion of the hatchery captive broodstock program that is the sole barrier between Snake River sockeye salmon and extinction.
New "PIT tag" data analysis developed by NOAA Fisheries should better allow the agency to calculate survival rates of adult salmon and steelhead as they attempt their spawning journey up through the Columbia and Snake rivers' system of dams and reservoirs.
Federal attorneys argued June 1 that the government's job is to assure that its activities do not worsen the lot of Columbia River basin salmon stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The Independent Scientific Review Panel last Friday (June 2) issued its preliminary review of projects proposed for inclusion in the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Columbia River basin fish and wildlife program during the 2007-2009 funding cycle.
Under an agreement signed last week, the financial burden for evaluating contamination levels in the upper Columbia River, and resulting risks to human health, will shift from U.S. taxpayers to the Canadian zinc producer that long used the river as a waste repository.
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