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While agreeing to at least investigate most of a suite of water saving and temperature improvement modifications at lower Snake River dams proposed by Oregon last week, at this week’s meeting of the interagency Technical Management Team the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said one thing it can’t do because of safety concerns is to lower the pool level at Lower Granite Dam.

Idaho proposed today (Friday, July 2) the first of what could be several changes at Lower Granite and Little Goose dams on the lower Snake River to maintain cooler water temperatures in a river facing extreme environmental conditions as endangered sockeye begin to move up the overheated river.

Twenty-one members of the Northwest congressional delegation are urging President Biden to enlist a “top-level White House led strategy” to ensure efforts to modernize the Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada is a top priority for the new Administration. The lawmakers say under the current treaty the U.S. is “vastly overpaying Canada.”

The Washington Department of Ecology this week denied “without prejudice” a water quality permit for the proposed Goldendale Energy Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Project along the Columbia River in Klickitat County.

Forecasts for Columbia River basin water supply at the basin’s major storage dams dropped again this month after much of the region experienced the driest spring on record (March through May).

British Columbia’s Columbia River Treaty Team recently issued a preliminary assessment of the feasibility of building a new dam/weir across the Koocanusa Reservoir to maintain higher water levels on the Canadian side of the border, concluding that increased coordination with the United States is a better option for now. The reservoir is created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Libby Dam in Montana.

Researchers have found enough suitable habitat for more than 32,000 spring/fall chinook salmon to spawn in a section of upper Lake Roosevelt to the border with Canada where current is swifter than it is near Grand Coulee Dam – but that’s only if the fish can make it upstream of Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams.

Monthly estimates of available water supply in the Columbia River basin are continuing to drop after a month of record low rainfall in April.

A lower than average May water supply forecast at Montana’s Libby Dam has reduced the amount of flow augmentation available to encourage spawning of endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon downstream in Idaho.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District is anticipating an insufficient water year as it refills its 13 Willamette Valley and two Rogue River Basin reservoirs for the upcoming recreation season.

The water supply available to Columbia and Snake river basin rivers from spring and early summer runoff is predicted to be near to below average across the region. While lower Columbia and Snake River water supply is predicted to be below average, further upriver in Idaho and Montana water supply predictions are above average.

River operators have ceased their “day load shaping operations” at Idaho’s Dworshak Dam that, when implemented, nearly tripled flows downstream of the dam in the Clearwater River.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s northwest regional office this week released the Columbia River Cold Water Refuges Plan, identifying zones of cooler water important to adult salmon moving upstream, particularly steelhead and fall chinook. However, EPA says fish that use refuges do not have higher survival rates to upstream waters “primarily due to fishing in the refuges.”

Following last month’s British Columbia general election, Premier John Horgan announced the new provincial Cabinet, naming Katrine Conroy as B.C.’s first female Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. She will also return to her role as Minister Responsible for the Columbia Basin Trust, Columbia Power Corporation and the Columbia River Treaty.

The states of Oregon and California, the Yurok Tribe, the Karuk Tribe, PacifiCorp and the Klamath River Renewal Corporation signed a memorandum of agreement this week that describes how the parties will implement the amended Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement as negotiated and signed in 2016. The KHSA sets the terms for the removal of four Klamath River dams.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted Oct. 9 to deny a fish passage waiver for the Crooked River’s Bowman Dam in a split 5-1 vote, after hearing testimony from 28 people for and against the project. At issue is the passage of native migratory fish, such as summer steelhead, chinook salmon and redband trout.

Most of those who commented on the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Total Maximum Daily Load” document intended to set temperature limits in the Columbia and Snake Rivers to protect salmon and steelhead called for further changes to the TMDL.

A British Columbia Province Report on recent Columbia River Treaty community meetings notes “there was a lack of consultation with Basin residents and Indigenous Nations when the Treaty was first negotiated, and feelings of hurt and anger remain to this day.”

Public comment that closed June 22 for the most part favored providing anadromous fish passage at Bowman Dam on the Crooked River in Central Oregon. But if passage is not possible due to the costs, then other comments asked for far more habitat mitigation in the river downstream than was proposed the dam’s operator Ochoco Irrigation District.

On March 11 and 12, 2020, the week before COVID-19 international travel restrictions were put into place, Canadian and American negotiators reconvened in Washington, D.C. to continue discussions about a modernized Columbia River Treaty. This was the ninth round of talks since negotiations started in May 2018.

Flows from Libby Dam in Montana designed to encourage white sturgeon movement and spawning in the Kootenai River will likely begin May 21, depending on water supply.

Thirteen new Deschutes River basin habitat, water quality and fish passage projects are getting a combined $4.5 million in funding, with individual grants ranging from $51,000 for an Upper Deschutes Watershed Council fish passage project to $1.25 million for a Priday Ranch steelhead conservation project.

“The science is clear that removing the earthen portions of the four lower Snake River dams is the most certain and robust solution to Snake River salmon and steelhead recovery,” said Oregon Gov. Kate Brown in a letter last week to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

January was a wet month in much of the Columbia River basin with higher than average rain and snowfall, yet cumulative precipitation for the current water year that began Oct. 1, 2019 is lower than the 30 year average. That likely won’t improve much over the next 6 to 10 days as meteorologists at NOAA’s Northwest River Forecast Center are predicting below normal temperatures and normal precipitation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion for Columbia River basin bull trout, listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in November 1999, was first completed in the year 2000. Some 16 years later a lawsuit was filed to reinitiate consultation with dam operating agencies and 20 years later the Service is now nearing the final update of a new bull trout BiOp, which also includes Kootenai River white sturgeon.

Although precipitation totals to this point in the winter has been dismal, water supply forecasts at the Columbia River basin’s major dams are all in the 90 percent range or better, with the exception of the North Fork Clearwater River basin upstream of Dworshak Dam.

Washington state this week changed its water quality standards by raising the amount of total dissolved gas it will allow at Columbia and Snake river dams during juvenile salmon and steelhead migrations, paving the way for higher spill levels this spring.

A fish culturally important to the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho is making a comeback with an abundance of some 60,000 fish, allowing harvest of the fish in January -- 25 years after the last burbot were harvested in the transboundary sections of the Kootenai River in northern Idaho and southern British Columbia.

Federal agencies Monday (Nov. 4) will begin guaranteed flow operations at Bonneville Dam that sets a tailwater elevation designed to provide ideal spawning conditions for threatened Columbia River chum salmon downstream of the dam.

Pollution levels at Bradford Island, located between Bonneville Dam powerhouses on the Columbia River, have risen since a 2008 determination the island did not qualify as a superfund site, and are now exceeding that threshold level, according to an Oct. 10 letter by states and the Yakama Nation.

Cold water released from Lake Shasta into the Sacramento River to benefit endangered salmon can be detrimental to young green sturgeon, a threatened species adapted to warmer water. But scientists at UC Santa Cruz and the National Marine Fisheries Service have found a way to minimize this apparent conflict through a water management strategy that benefits both species, while also meeting the needs of agricultural water users downstream.

It’s been one of the driest years recorded in the Kootenai River Basin, but recent rains have delivered some relief with increased inflows into Lake Koocanusa, helping to maintain minimum bull trout flows on the Kootenai River and maintain the reservoir elevation, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative informed the Technical Management Team on Wednesday.

Members of the U.S. panel charged with negotiating a modernized Columbia River Treaty heard from a variety of Idaho-centric interests Thursday in Boise, with a contrast between those urging status quo security in hydro operations and those seeking “ecosystem function” provisions in a new treaty.

A system operational request brought to the interagency Technical Management Team this week by fisheries managers and approved by both fisheries and hydro managers helps clarify priorities for the use of cool water from Dworshak Reservoir on the North Fork of the Clearwater River in Idaho.

Among the findings in a report released last Friday by Portland General Electric is that the Crooked River is having a profound effect on water quality downstream in central Oregon’s lower Deschutes River.

The Columbia River Basin is in the midst of a robust runoff period that will level out with near-average flows on the lower Columbia through September, according to the last water supply briefing of the year from the Northwest River Forecast Center in Portland.

Idaho Power has taken a significant step toward a new federal license for its largest hydroelectric project with the states of Idaho and Oregon certifying the company’s plan for meeting water quality standards in the Snake River as part of its operation of three dams in Hells Canyon.

Responding to the reasonable and prudent alternative outlined in NOAA Fisheries’ 2008 biological opinion for federal Willamette Valley dams, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last week proposed to build a selective withdrawal structure at Detroit Dam at a cost of about $100 to $200 million.The SWS would provide water temperature control downstream of Detroit and Big Cliff dams on the North Santiam River and it would provide downstream juvenile fish passage. The Corps would continue to transport adult chinook salmon and steelhead upstream of both dams where they can spawn naturally.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a draft environmental impact statement today that identifies as the preferred alternative the construction of a selective water withdrawal structure at the Detroit Dam reservoir as part of an effort to reintroduce anadromous fish upstream.

With the snowpack melt-out well underway, water supply forecasts have held up throughout much of the Columbia Basin, but drought conditions persist in Western Washington and parts of Oregon, to a lesser degree.

Flows from Libby Dam in Montana designed to encourage white sturgeon movement and spawning in the Kootenai River will soon begin, but with a lower release of water than in past years.