Currently browsing: Hydropower

Idaho Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson has been discussing with regional parties a $32 billion “Columbia Basin Fund” to finance the breaching of the lower Snake River dams, new energy technologies to replace the lost hydropower, and compensation to communities and businesses that depend on the dams.

The Washington Department of Ecology is seeking comment on what should be considered when preparing an environmental impact statement for a new hydropower project proposed along the Columbia River in Klickitat County.

In releasing its proposal for Fiscal Year 2022-2023 rates and tariff changes, the Bonneville Power Administration says it “is maintaining its commitment to keeping its wholesale rates as low as possible consistent with sound business principles, striking a balance between cost containment, long-term financial health and spending to meet the needs of its customers.”

In its second year, which was an average flow year, the higher flexible spill operations yielded faster travel time for juvenile salmon and steelhead, fewer collisions by juveniles with turbines and better overall survival through Snake River dams, all while the Bonneville Power Administration actually made some money.

The Bonneville Power Administration’s fiscal year 2020 annual report says the agency exceeded projected net revenues by $233 million.

Last July, National Geographic reported that global populations of migratory fish have declined by 76 percent over the past half-century. Habitat loss was cited as one of the main culprits, and dams as a major cause of habitat loss. This type of cause and effect in worldwide decline holds true in the Pacific Northwest. It doesn’t take a degree in marine biology to see that dams are bad for fish. But it might take someone with a PhD to convince you that salmon don’t need rivers.

Dam operators this week said they would not delay the start date for zero nighttime generation in the Snake River, despite the continued presence of migrating adult salmon and steelhead in the river. That forced fishery managers at the interagency Technical Management Team meeting, Wednesday, Sept. 30, to elevate the request to a policy-level group known as the Regional Implementation Oversight Group.

Fishery managers this week asked dam operators to postpone zero nighttime flow operations at lower Snake River dams, effectively asking them to set aside an operation included in NOAA Fisheries’ 2020 biological opinion of the impacts on salmon and steelhead of the Columbia/Snake river power system and the Columbia River System Operator’s environmental impact statement even before the CRSO completes its record of decision.

For the second consecutive week, fisheries managers at the multi-agency Technical Management Team denied the Port of Clarkston a request to raise the Lower Granite Dam reservoir one and a half feet above the normal minimum operating pool (MOP +2) to provide more depth for barges loading grain at the port’s docks.

With wheat harvest in full swing, the Lewis-Clark Terminal on the lower Snake River at the Port of Clarkston is having difficulties loading barges due to shallow water as the result of sediment buildup at the facilities. On Wednesday, the port requested that river operators raise the Lower Granite Dam reservoir up to a foot-and-a- half more to provide some more wiggle room for loading.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration released this morning the final environmental impact statement for the Columbia River System Operations that includes as an appendix a new biological opinion for salmon and steelhead.

Biological opinions of the federal hydroelectric system’s impacts in the Columbia and Snake rivers on salmon and steelhead and the final 2020 Columbia River System Operations environmental impact statement released this morning, have benefited from NOAA Fisheries’ life-cycle modeling.

The Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Columbia Riverkeeper have moved to intervene in the Army Corps of Engineers’ appeal of Washington State’s Clean Water Act certifications requiring temperature limits for Columbia and lower Snake River dams and reservoirs to protect salmon and steelhead.

Summer transportation of juvenile salmon and steelhead out of the Snake River will resume sooner than planned, according to action taken this week, Wednesday, July 15, at the interagency Technical Management Team.

Even with heavy May rainfall, most of the Columbia River basin, including the Willamette River basin, is predicted to be at some level of drought – abnormally dry to severe – in the coming months, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

After a 20-year wait and a lawsuit that was finally decided in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a study to determine temperature limits in the Columbia and Snake rivers for the protection of salmon and steelhead was released this week by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Over the past five years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been working on a number of structural upgrades at Lower Snake and Columbia river dams, all designed to make passage at the dams safer for salmon and steelhead. Those projects are nearly finished – the last will be new fish friendly turbines at McNary Dam in 2025 followed by new turbines at John Day Dam – and the Corps now plans to concentrate on operational improvements at the dams, while ending the more expensive construction.

The Washington Department of Ecology has issued final water quality certifications for the eight federal dams on the lower Columbia and lower Snake rivers, with conditions requiring federal agencies to address high water temperatures impacting salmon and steelhead.

A new system installed at Lower Granite Dam to track migrating juvenile salmon has detected more than 10 times as many juvenile fish in its first several weeks of operation as could have been tracked before, biologists say.

Spring spill at Columbia and Lower Snake River dams to aid migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead has begun under an agreement that could through the season allow far more spill for fish than past years. But the Army Corps of Engineers is alerting parties that if Covid-19 restrictions interfere with required biological monitoring, spill will be reduced.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration said Thursday they are continuing to accept comments on the draft environmental impact statement for Columbia/Snake River dams through April 13. The agencies also made clear the comment period will not be extended, despite requests to do so due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Washington State’s final “Lower Snake River Dams Stakeholder Engagement Report,” a compilation of views and information about the dams, was released last week.

Reservoir fill operations will change this spring for two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams on the Middle Fork Willamette River. Worried that a catastrophic earthquake, such as an anticipated Cascadia Subduction Zone quake, could damage the dams, the agency says it will not allow Hills Creek and Lookout Point dams reservoirs to fully fill.

In a now-famous July 13, 2015 story in The New Yorker magazine titled “The Really Big One,” Katherine Schultz shocked Northwest residents when she made the case that an earthquake along the Northwest’s coastline was imminent and that the magnitude of the quake would measure 8.0 to 9.2.

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.

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.

The upstream migration of adult spring chinook salmon in the Snake River slows down in the Lower Monumental Dam to Little Goose Dam reach more than in other reaches in the Snake River.

The gas cap for spill for salmon and steelhead will rise in 2020 from 120 percent total dissolved gas that was required by an agreement this year to 125 percent, resulting in far more spill for migrating juvenile fish at most federal Columbia and lower Snake River dams.

As a result of a late November settlement, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will reduce inadvertent oil discharges from Chief Joseph Dam, downstream of Grand Coulee Dam, and it also will apply for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Columbia-Snake River Irrigators have prepared a “Risk Mitigation Response Alternative” that would protect “Irrigation Sector assets from the adverse economic impacts that would be caused by Lower Snake River dam breaching and project pool drawdowns.”

Barges loaded with grain and pushed by tugboats, as well as a river cruise liner, were again able to pass downstream through the Bonneville Dam lock beginning Friday, after the lock was closed in early September and they were stranded upstream of the dam. The opening was at least 48 hours earlier than that originally planned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Bonneville Power Administration last week took steps that position it to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market, a move aimed at enhancing the value of the federal power and transmission systems in the Northwest.

Survival estimates for juvenile salmon and steelhead during the 2019 spring migration through Snake and Columbia river dams – Lower Granite Dam to Bonneville Dam – varied: Snake River sockeye survival was above average, while Snake River yearling chinook survival was near average, and Snake River steelhead survival fell below average, according to a recently released NOAA Fisheries memorandum.

The navigation lock that allows commercial and recreational vessels to pass upstream and downstream through Bonneville Dam will be out of service for the remainder of this month. River traffic through the dam can return to normal Sept. 30, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In a Sept. 3 article with the headline “Hydropower Giant Bonneville Power is Going Broke” the national E&E News said the Bonneville Power Administration is “careening toward a financial cliff.”

Attorneys general from a dozen western states want the Trump administration to halt a proposal by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that they say usurps states' authority over their own water.

The economic consulting firm ECONorthwest released a report this week analyzing the tradeoffs associated with removing the four lower Snake River dams in Washington, suggesting the benefits of removal exceed the costs by $8.6 billion, and thus the region would likely be better off without the dams.

The Washington Department of Ecology is now taking comments on a draft Environmental Impact Statement that would allow more spill at lower Snake River/ Columbia River dams during juvenile salmon migration by adjusting the water quality standard for total dissolved gas.

With lower water and the switch to summer spill operations at lower Snake River dams June 21, a chain of changes in dam operations that began May 21 and were designed to encourage better passage of adult spring chinook salmon at Little Goose Dam, effectively ended.

The Bonneville Power Administration, the primary source of funding for Columbia River basin fish and wildlife mitigation, is one step closer in its consideration of joining the Western Energy Imbalance Market.

An advanced-design hydroelectric turbine, built to improve fish passage at federal dams in the Columbia River Basin, has been installed at Ice Harbor Dam on the Lower Snake River.

Northwest U.S. Senators are making their opposition known to a provision in President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2020 Budget that would have the Department of Energy auction off the transmission assets of the Bonneville Power Administration.

In a second step to encourage passage of adult spring chinook salmon at Little Goose Dam on the lower Snake River, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers agreed to reduce spill at the dam for a continuous eight hours. That operation began Wednesday, May 29, at 4 am and will continue through June 5.

Although a draft environmental impact statement for the Federal Columbia River Power System’s impacts on salmon and steelhead listed under the Endangered Species Act won’t be complete until February, federal agencies are making public five alternatives, including a no-action or status quo alternative and an alternative that includes breaching lower Snake River dams.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill this week that provides $750,000 to study how the breaching of the four Lower Snake River dam would impact communities.

Heavy rain this weekend is likely to force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release more water from Dworshak Dam and, with the dam’s largest generator being tested, much of the water that will be released through spill.