Currently browsing: Northwest Power & Conservation Council

Guy Norman is the newest member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, appointed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee this week to replace Phil Rockefeller, who retired earlier this year.

The chief executive officer of a tribal entity that acquired Kerr Dam – now called the Salish Kootenai Dam -- in western Montana says the transition of business and project operations over the last couple of years has been busy and challenging, but it has also been a relatively smooth process.

Saying that double-crested cormorants are not an endangered or threatened species, but that many of the salmon and steelhead they feast on in the lower Columbia River estuary are, U.S. District Court of Oregon Judge Michael H. Simon’s tentative ruling would allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ to continue culling cormorants in the estuary.

The outlook is good — compared to last year — for cooler water temperatures in the Lower Snake River basin with continuing benefits into the Columbia River due to some fortuitous weather developments, water and fish managers in the basin stated this week.

The July 2016 Council meeting in Olympia was the last for Washington Council Member Phil Rockefeller, who was appointed by then-Governor Christine Gregoire in 2011.

Shooting double-crested cormorants and suffocating their eggs with corn oil to reduce their predation on juvenile Snake River steelhead likely has no impact on the number of adult steelhead returning from the ocean to spawn, a US. Fish and Wildlife scientist has concluded in a preliminary analysis.

An annual plan that guides operations at Columbia River dams for fiscal year 2016 is available for review by fish and dam managers at http://www.nwd-c.usace.army.mil/tmt/documents/wmp/2016/Oct_1_Draft/20150930_WMP_Draft_1.pdf.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has released a new report on the “long-term cost planning” for its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council will be sponsoring a “Columbia River Eulachon (smelt) State of the Science and Science to Policy Forum” August 21.

The most recent water supply reports for the Columbia River Basin showed a continuing trend of deteriorating conditions due to warmer-than-average temperatures, below-average precipitation through much of the basin and a rapid, early runoff from mountain snowpack across the region.

The late winter presence of marine mammals in the lower Columbia River has been huge, and obvious, with animals settling in at Astoria, Ore., and other estuary sites to prey, many suspect, on returning eulachon.

Fish protections, irrigator access and hydro power generation are chief among the concerns at the mid-Columbia River’s Wanapum Dam, where on Feb. 27 a 65-foot long horizontal crack was discovered at one of the facility’s 12 spillways.

For the eighth year in a row, energy efficiency improvements in 2012 exceeded the annual target established by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the Council reported this week.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has fielded an estimated 197 comments over the past two months regarding how it should amend its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program.

The Bonneville Power Administration will not pay for gill netting lake trout on Flathead Lake unless there is management consensus between the state of Montana and the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, and talks have been under way on developing a new co-management plan for the lake.

About 480 recommendations are in hand and due for consideration by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council as it works toward the amendment of its fish and wildlife program for the Columbia-Snake river basin.

An Independent Economic Advisory Board “update” released this week indicates that the money spent – an estimated $5 million per year from a variety of sources -- in attempts to ward off an invasion of non-native zebra and quagga mussels into the Columbia River basin is money well spent.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council voted June 21 to extend by two months the time allowed for Indian tribes and state and federal fish and wildlife agencies to recommend actions and objectives for reshaping the Council's Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program.

An assessment by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff shows that the efficiency of electricity use continues to improve and that the region is on track to meet the Council’s goal to improve efficiency by 1,200 average megawatts in the five years between 2010 and 2014.

The upper Columbia River basin in British Columbia and northern reaches in Idaho and Montana have held their own over the past month, suffering dry stretches but enjoying a few wet, snowy storms in recent days that have helped hold the basin’s water runoff volume expectations near, though slightly below, average for the spring and summer.

The world has changed for salmon as a result of human development.

But, perhaps even more so, it has changed for the large, long-lived white sturgeon that historically ventured up the Columbia River system as far as British Columbia’s Windermere Lake, and branched off up into the Snake River basin until being blocked by Shoshone Falls in southern Idaho.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has two assigned tasks under the Northwest Power Act, and they must be completed in synchrony, not as independent products, according to petitioners asking a federal appeals court to order a reconsideration of the NPCC’s “Sixth Power Plan” and Columbia River basin fish and wildlife restoration goals encased in it.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced this week that it has chosen longtime Northwest power industry official Bill Drummond to be the new Bonneville Power Administration administrator. He is currently the deputy administrator.

In just seven years, one of the two coal-fired power plants in the Northwest and one unit at the other will shut down, reducing the region’s power supply by an amount equal to about twice the power demand of Seattle.

A legal challenge to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s “Sixth Power Plan” is misdirected, and should be rejected, say intervenors in a consideration process now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has announced that Montana Council member Rhonda Whiting will serve out the remaining term as Council chair, replacing for Oregon member Joan Dukes.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced this week that Pendleton’s Henry C. Lorenzen has been nominated to serve on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

Charlie Black has been named the new director of Power Planning at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.