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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is extending the review period for the Willamette Valley reservoir storage reallocation study. The review period now ends December 28, adding six days to the original 45 day review period.

After long-developing documentation of high levels of selenium, a bi-product of mining in British Columbia’s Elk Valley, and the failure of a water treatment plant to curb the problem, the state of Montana and tribal governments are weighing in on the matter.

A tentative settlement was reached this week in the decades long process to renew the Hells Canyon Complex’s operating license.

It appears negotiations between the United States and Canada on the Columbia River Treaty will begin soon.

A decades-long process to relicense the Hells Canyon Complex of hydroelectric dams on the Snake River has one more delay as Idaho Power analyzes additional data requested by the dams’ bordering states.

Timothy R. Petty has been nominated to be the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, a position responsible for overseeing the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Meteorologists at last weekend’s annual winter weather forecast conference came to near agreement on three things: the 2016-17 winter was unusually nasty, weather this coming winter will likely be influenced by a neutral to weak La Nina, as it was last year, and there will be near normal snowfall or more at higher elevations in the northern Cascade Mountains in Oregon.

The Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $21.7 million contract to Greenberry Industrial LLC in Vancouver, Washington, to replace reverse flow gates at the John W. Keys III Pump Generating Plant, a feature of the Grand Coulee Power Complex in Grand Coulee, Washington.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced that it has awarded a $400,000 grant to the Central Oregon Irrigation District. In partnership with the Deschutes River Conservancy, the funds will help finance the development of a WaterSMART marketing strategy, an innovative water transactions program that will facilitate the trading of water between irrigation districts and benefit stream flows in the Deschutes River.

A contract to build a 1,250-foot tunnel for fish passage at Cle Elum Dam was awarded August 30 by the Bureau of Reclamation -- which operates the dam in the upper Yakima River basin -- to a Vancouver, Washington contractor.

The Bureau of Reclamation has begun its annual “flip-flop” operation in the Yakima Basin by gradually reducing flows out of Keechelus and Cle Elum reservoirs in the upper Yakima River basin and increasing flows from Rimrock Reservoir.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operations officials at Lower Monumental Lock and Dam this week investigated and confirmed a suspected oil leak in hydroelectric generator unit number 2.

More than 1,400 new dams or water diversion projects are planned or already under construction and many of them are on rivers flowing through multiple nations, fueling the potential for increased water conflict between some countries.

A new report examines the potential economic costs and benefits in changing dam operations to mimic natural river flows in the Columbia Basin.

U.S. Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and Kurt Schrader (D-OR) were joined this week by U.S. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Greg Walden (R-OR), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA), and Dave Reichert (R-WA) in a bipartisan letter urging President Trump to commence negotiations with Canada over the Columbia River Treaty as soon as possible.

An acoustic tag developed by a Seattle firm may be the answer to more accurate reports of predation on juvenile fish, according to a recent report.

The Bonneville Power Administration expects to end the year with adjusted net revenues of negative $2 million. While this is $41 million lower than the rate case forecast, it’s a $19 million improvement from the first-quarter forecast.

The Deschutes River Alliance is asking an Oregon federal court to deny Portland General Electric’s request to take its clean water case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A settlement last week of a 2015 clean water case in a Tri-City federal court will fund projects by three conservation groups.

A federal court judge denied Portland General Electric’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against it over a central Oregon conservation group’s claims of water quality violations in the Deschutes River.

The National Weather Service issued a river flood warning yesterday, March 16, saying the Columbia River could crest at 16.1 feet at Vancouver, Washington, one-tenth of a foot over flood stage of 16 feet, and that the river will fluctuate between 15.8 feet and 16.1 feet into the weekend.

The Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continue to increase flows from Lucky Peak Dam because of a combination of lower elevation precipitation and above-normal winter precipitation in the Boise River drainage.

Oregon experienced very low snowpack levels in 2014 and historically low snowpack levels in 2015; now a new study suggests that these occurrences may not be anomalous in the future and could become much more common if average temperatures warm just two degrees Celsius.

A petition filed this fall by Idaho Power asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to declare federal law preempts Oregon’s fish passage requirements was dismissed, leaving uncertainty over studying the feasibility of salmon and steelhead passage at the Snake River’s Hells Canyon Complex.

Snake River flows below Minidoka and Milner dams near Heyburn, Idaho were increased Tuesday (Feb. 7) to accommodate high inflows from the surrounding areas because of increased low-elevation snowmelt from recent warm temperatures and rainfall.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation settled a lawsuit last week initially filed June 29, 2016 by Columbia Riverkeeper. The suit asked the agency to stop leaking “uncontrolled toxic oil pollution” at Grand Coulee Dam on the upper Columbia River.

As spawning of chum salmon near Bonneville Dam has come to an end, fisheries managers are saying the numbers of the salmon returning this year appears to be nearly as high as last year.

Oregon State University’s Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center this week was awarded up to $40 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, to create the world’s premier wave energy test facility in Newport.

As a contrast to especially warm and dry conditions in 2015 throughout the Columbia River basin, 2016 started off with a “reasonable snowpack,” but a warm April melted snow at a record pace resulting in an early runoff, according to a report from the Northwest River Forecast Center.

For the first time, NOAA and partner scientists have connected the concentration of human-caused carbon dioxide in waters off the U.S. Pacific coast to the dissolving of shells of microscopic marine sea snails called pteropods.

In anticipation of higher water in the near future, Washington proposed this week to change how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration operate Bonneville Dam to protect chum salmon redds downstream of the dam.

The Bonneville Power Administration has released its initial rate proposal, which it says will support investments in the Federal Columbia River Power System that provides hydropower to 142 Northwest public utilities.

With more chinook salmon spawning downstream of Bonneville Dam than chum salmon, federal hydro managers Tuesday, November 1, began to maintain flows to protect spawning chum and their redds.

In its most recent brief before the U.S. District Court of Oregon, Portland General Electric, in strongly-worded language, said that a clean water certification is not a permit and reiterated its previous stand that the proper channel for relief is a complaint process through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The federal Clean Water Act language is “unambiguous” according to attorneys for the Deschutes River Alliance in a filing Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

In a recent call with U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States is ready to start talks with Canada on the Columbia River Treaty.

Oregon biologists snorkeling and electrofishing in the Deschutes River twice in August discovered adult smallmouth bass in the lower reaches of the river.

The Bonneville Power Administration has selected Janet Herrin as its next chief operating officer. Herrin will bring over 30 years of energy industry experience and leadership to BPA. She will replace Claudia Andrews, who is retiring from BPA this month after 26 years of federal service.

Five U.S. Senators and 17 U.S. House members from the Pacific Northwest have sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry urging the U.S. Department of State to hasten its progress towards negotiations to modernize the Columbia River Treaty.

The Bureau of Reclamation has awarded a $19 million contract to American Hydro of York, Pennsylvania that calls for replacing and updating equipment for pump generating units 5 and 6 at the John W. Keys III Pump Generating Plant at Grand Coulee Dam.

During high flow years the number of dams juvenile chinook salmon and steelhead pass on their downstream passage to the sea determines their downstream migration survival, according to a recent study.

Colonial waterbirds foraging in the lower and mid-Columbia River and the lower Snake River eat a substantial number of salmon and steelhead, with steelhead mortality approaching 28 percent for fish that migrate through the area, according to a recent study.

Columbia Riverkeeper this week filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation aimed at reducing oil pollution from Grand Coulee Dam.

Javier Fernandez has been appointed executive vice president and chief financial officer for the Bonneville Power Administration.

On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) met with Canadian ambassador David MacNaughton ahead of the North American Leaders Summit to discuss the progress being made toward a new Columbia River Treaty.

Citing more than 1,200 proposed water quality violations at the Pelton-Round Butte Hydroelectric Complex on the Deschutes River, the Deschutes River Alliance notified Portland General Electric last Friday of its intent to sue in 60 days.

An advanced-technology turbine, designed to improve fish passage at federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers is being installed at Ice Harbor Lock and Dam in southeast Washington state.

A group of researchers concluded this week in a study in the journal BioScience that "hydropeaking" of water flows on many rivers in the West has a devastating impact on aquatic insect abundance.

Bonneville Power Administration officials said this week the agency is looking at a normal water year after implementing dry-year operations in 2015.

Efforts toward modernizing the Lower Snake River hydropower facilities continued on Apr. 7, 2016, when workers at Lower Monumental Lock and Dam lifted the unit 1 turbine out of the turbine pit.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Commerce, PacifiCorp, and the states of Oregon and California this week signed an agreement that, following a process administered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is expected to remove four dams on the Klamath River by 2020, amounting to one of the largest river restoration efforts in the nation.

After fifteen years of drought in the U.S. West, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) says it is time to rethink water management in the nation. She released a policy paper outlining a framework to guide federal, state, local and tribal governments to address drought and water security in the coming decades.

A study that was suspended in 1996 is now seeing new light as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its non-federal partner, the Oregon Water Resources Department, are asking for public input on how water storage could be reallocated during the summer at the Corps’ 11 storage reservoirs in the Willamette River basin.

At last week’s State Department lunch with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) says she received commitments from the Prime Minister and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs to move forward with talks on modernization of the Columbia River Treaty.

Oregon, California, PacifiCorp and the federal government – through the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Commerce – announced this week an agreement-in-principle to move forward with amending the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement.

Flows to protect chum salmon redds downstream of Bonneville Dam are still higher than the standard set by fisheries managers, but flows, as measured by the tailwater elevation at the dam will remain high at least through next week.

Fewer than 15 percent of salmon and steelhead smolts were transported by barge from Snake River dams this spring, according to a report by Steve Smith, Fish Ecology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA Fisheries, at last week’s interagency Technical Management Team Year End Review.

If there was a common weather theme across the Columbia River basin in 2015, it would be the difficulty of forecasting how much water would be available in rivers later in the summer.

The grand opening for The Power of the Columbia River, Grant PUD’s new visitor center is Tuesday, Dec. 1 at 10 a.m. Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony, the center will be open to the public with new displays that highlight the balancing act between hydropower, fish passage, recreation, and natural resource management.

Fish health may be affected by pharmaceuticals in treated wastewater released into streams and other water bodies, according to a recent laboratory and field study by the Aquatic Toxicology Laboratory at St. Cloud State University and the U.S. Geological Survey.