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.

The letter responds to a June 13 letter from Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee Chair Rebecca Miles asking BPA to reconsider its June 9 decision to defer funding for the $16.4 million Northeast Oregon Hatchery project.

She said the deferral closes a summer, in-water work window and delays a federal obligation to the tribes under treaties and under the Northwest Power Act.

The NWPA requires BPA to fund measures that mitigate for fish and wildlife affected by the federal dams’ construction and operation. Those funds are channeled through the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s fish and wildlife program.

“At this time, the project has not completed full ESA review, which entails addressing the effects of the artificial propagation and the indirect effects of the hatchery program on harvest by-catch,” Wright said in his July 21 letter to Miles. He said the agency must consider ESA and power act obligations “in concert.”

“We believe our decision on funding must await the resolution of these issues. In the course of this evaluation, an assessment of the overall biological benefits of the project (“crediting”) will be necessary for us to proceed,” Wright said.

Complicating the issue is a May 2005 court order that declared NOAA Fisheries’ biological opinion on the Federal Columbia River Power System illegal. The judge faulted, among other things, its biological analysis of whether the federal dams jeopardize the survival of salmon and steelhead listed under the ESA. The BiOp, issued late in 2004, said listed stocks were not jeopardized by the hydrosystem.

BPA, which markets power from the hydrosystem, is working with NOAA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation to develop a new federal hydrosystem “action” that would be judged in a new NOAA Fisheries BiOp. The remand is being conducted in collaboration with states and tribes, including the Nez Perce.

The decision by Judge James A. Redden, if it is upheld on appeal, “implies that any proposed action funded or carried out by the Federal government, in any of the four Hs, would need to be assessed in the context of all mortality affecting ESA-listed fish, as opposed to simply addressing the effects of the individual action itself,” Wright said.

The court decision changes federal agencies funding considerations, “whether it’s a decision on NEOH, other hatcheries funded by the federal government, or the effects of any and all hydro, habitat and harvest actions on ESA-listed stocks.”

The Wright letter stresses that the NEOH hatchery project is well-conceived and could contribute to near-term rebuilding and long-term recovery of listed Snake River spring chinook salmon. But that exact value hasn’t been determined yet.

Hatchery supplementation programs such as NEOH are intended to boost naturally spawning populations by outplanting of juvenile hatchery fish that would eventually return to spawn in the wild. Potential negative side effects could include a reduction in the overall fitness of wild populations and increased competition for limited habitat. Now, BPA says indirect effects must be assessed too as federal agencies build a new BiOp that includes hydrosystem fixes to improve salmon survival as well as habitat, harvest and hatchery measures.

“BPA supports Tribal Treaty Rights and is sensitive to the Nez Perce or Umatilla Tribes’ interest in obtaining potential increases in harvest of listed fish as a result of increased production from NEOH,” Wright said. “We share a common interest in enabling harvest while allowing sufficient escapement for natural spawning, to rebuild these depressed populations.

“However, given the Court’s ruling, to the extent that NEOH production allows for increases in allowable harvest, it is important that the accounting of any increase in harvest not reduce the hatchery’s ESA benefits to natural spawners,” Wright added. He said the added analytical step could have far ranging consequences.

“Crediting is a biological accounting issue. In a broader context, given that a likely outcome of the remand will be specific actions across the four H’s (hydro, habitat, hatcheries and harvest) that will have very substantial effects on the Pacific Northwest economy, it is critical that BPA’s projects implementing the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program that involve ESA-listed species be determined, from a regulatory perspective, to benefit ESA-listed fish,” Wright wrote.

“We’re working on that with folks,” the tribe’s David Johnson said of efforts in the remand’s hatchery technical work group to develop a crediting assessment approach that can be applied to the NEOH and other hatchery projects. That product would have to win the endorsement the remand’s Policy Working Group.

BPA officials have said they need all of the parties involved to sign on to a positive assessment before the agency would proceed with funding. NOAA officials have previously said they endorsed the project.

The Nez Perce Tribe feels the NEOH has unfairly been singled out in the remand process. Johnson, manager of the tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resource Management, used as an example the Snake River sockeye salmon broodstock program. That long-funded hatchery project recently won NPCC approval for a $2.7 million expansion. BPA endorsed the project, saying it responded to a goal set out in NOAA’s 2004 BiOp. The sockeye are listed as endangered.

Wright’s letter said that the same ESA crediting issues must addressed for all BPA-funded artificial production facilities, but that the agency didn’t intend to immediately halt funding for ongoing hatchery operations.

“What separates our position on NEOH from the existing projects at this time is that it is a new start,” Wright said.

“If we can resolve the crediting issue in the next month, we could get in there” and start construction yet this year, said Becky Johnson, deputy director of the tribe’s hatchery production division. Contractors have said they could begin the main hatchery building in September. The tribe had awarded some bids, which soon expire. Reinitiating the bid process could be difficult at this late date, she said.

The NPCC during its May meeting in Walla Walla, Wash., recommended that the BPA fund the construction of the NEOH facilities on the Lostine and Imnaha rivers in northeast Oregon. It conditioned that construction go-ahead on confirmation that the supplementation project can earn “credit” for improving the survival odds of Snake River spring/summer chinook salmon.

BPA notified the tribe the following month that funding would be deferred. The Nez Perce had hoped to begin construction this summer. The federal power marketing agency funds the NPCC program as mitigation for impacts on fish and wildlife from the federal hydrosystem. It also uses to the program to meet ESA and federal treaty obligations to tribes.

The new facilities would allow the fish managers to meet full-production goals in the Lostine, Grand Ronde and Imnaha rivers, which are established under ESA guidelines. In addition, the facilities also will improve the quality of current production at multiple facilities and sites.

A new incubation and rearing facility in the Lostine River, a Grande Ronde tributary, wold accommodate Lostine stock production (250,000 smolts per year), and also rear half of the total Imnaha production (245,000 smolts) and hold returning adult fish from both river basins. In addition, a new adult-fish capture facility on the Lostine River will be built, and a satellite facility on the Imnaha River will be improved for adult-fish collection and acclimation of smolts before they are released.