The Northwest Power and Conservation Council was told last week that it needs to get more involved itself, and use its influence to stir up others, if the Columbia River basin is to dodge the looming threat of invasive quagga mussels.
Flows out of west-central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam were increased this week in an attempt counteract the effects of a hot spell and increased flows from the Hells Canyon Complex of dams on lower Snake River water temperatures.
The number of invasive American shad counted passing over Bonneville Dam’s fish ladders this year is the lowest since 2000 and continues a downward trend that started following 2004’s record count of nearly 5.4 million fish.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week unveiled a fiscal year 2010 “start of year” fish and wildlife budget that reflects increased spending called for in the federal government’s Columbia River basin salmon protection plan and in so-called “Columbia River Fish Accords” signed with states and tribes.
The Bonneville Power Administration has begun installing 14 anemometers in the region specifically designed to forecast for wind turbines.
Folks that monitor the fish counts at Columbia-Snake river hydro projects did a double take Wednesday when the Tuesday steelhead tally at Bonneville Dam was displayed online by the hydro project’s operators, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Fishery managers predict this year will see the largest Snake River fall chinook salmon run in four decades with as many as 28,000 adults expected to cross Lower Granite Dam on their way back to Idaho.
A legal note this week from the Obama Administration says that, before delivering it to the court, the government needs time to field test with litigants its “position” on the federal plan for protecting salmon and steelhead that migrate through the Columbia-Snake hydro system.
Washington’s Department of Ecology and the state’s governor this week announced the award of $11 million in grants to local entities to improve water availability, water quality and fisheries habitat across the state.
Strengthening “El Nino” conditions in the equatorial Pacific in combination with a Pacific Decadal Oscillation “warm phase” pushes up the odds that the Pacific Northwest will experience a winter season warmer and drier than usual, according to the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group.
President Obama’s mailbox is stuffed with advice from former governors, current senators and others as the administration prepares to issue a critique of the government’s own plan for protecting wild Columbia-Snake river salmon and steelhead stocks affected by the basin’s federal hydro system.
Columbia River basin hydro and salmon managers relaxed the outflows gushing from Dworshak Dam, as well as their own worries, this week as a variety of forces combined to prevent, as least in the near term, a superheating of the lower Snake River.
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-WA, and Rep. Tom Petri, R-WI, introduced the “Salmon Solutions and Planning Act” last Friday, just before Congress adjourned for the August district work period.
THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN:
Weekly Fish and Wildlife News
www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org
July 31, 2009
Issue No. 494
Federal hydro managers opted this week to reduce nighttime voluntary spill at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam as a means of reining in total dissolved gas levels downriver that in recent days have exceeded water quality standards.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this month unveiled its 10-year plan for improving both juvenile and adult Pacific lamprey passage and survival through the federal Columbia-Snake river hydro system.
Spill levels were pushed up late Wednesday morning at west-central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam in order to flush more cooling water into the lower Snake River ahead of advancing temperatures there.
Warming air and water temperatures and a switch in juvenile salmon bypass strategies have resulted in spikes in subyearling fall chinook mortality as high as 17.1 percent at the Columbia River’s McNary Dam.
The settling in of this summer’s heat has forced salmon and hydro system managers to sprint through the steps of their plan for holding down water temperatures in the lower Snake River for migrating salmon and steelhead.
The first two spawners of the year have arrived home Thursday in central Idaho’s Stanley Basin to lead what is expected to be a bumper crop of Snake River sockeye salmon.
It’s almost time for a changing of the fishing seasons on the Columbia-Snake river mainstem, and in the ocean and tributaries as well.
Those in attendance at last week’s Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s saw graphic evidence of just how quickly and completely invasive zebra and/or quagga mussels can disturb infrastructure such as the Northwest region’s invaluable dams and water delivery systems.
Regional officials say momentum is building towards the development of a long-needed plan to better coordinate the Columbia-Snake River basin’s widespread and expensive salmon monitoring and evaluation activities.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Lamprey Conservation Initiative Team has scheduled a set of regional work sessions to develop regional components of a plan to boost populations of the beleaguered fish.
CBB Shorts: Climate Change Threats To Western Water; Benefits Of Modest Fisheries Reductions; Oregon Conference On Salmon Conservation; Klamath Watershed Restoration Projects
Last year’s huge adult Snake River sockeye salmon run sent Columbia River fishery scientists scurrying for some answers — what could have boosted spawner returns to the Sawtooth Hatchery and Redfish Lake Creek to 650 adult fish after the run had averaged fewer than 40 annually over the previous nine years?
The implementation of a revamped project selection process reached an initial milestone Thursday with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s recommendation that 34 wildlife projects be funded in the coming years under its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Four Columbia River treaty tribes this week launched what will likely be their last chance of the summer season to net and sell summer chinook and sockeye salmon on the mainstem Columbia River reservoirs above Bonneville Dam.
A first-ever sampling of juvenile salmon survival during the initial leg of their ocean journey would indicate they do not suffer negative after-effects from their journey down through the Columbia-Snake river hydro projects, according to a research paper published in the peer-reviewed Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
A repeat of last year’s booming sockeye salmon return to the Columbia and Snake river basins has materialized with counts at hydro project fish ladders continuing to mount.
A federal authorization that allows the lethal removal of sea lions from the Columbia River is an “executive decision-making failure of the worst kind, and an example of governance by fiat rather than logic and principle,” according to the Humane Society of the United States.
The federal government has requested, and received, more time to decide whether it might consider changes to the strategy it completed a little over a year ago to reduce Columbia-Snake river hydro system impacts on protected salmon stocks.
Just as flows out of the high country usually begin to taper off, the pulse of water from the upper Snake River has built to a new crest thanks to a series of storms that have spread across the southern part of the Columbia River basin this month.
Feedback: The Science Of Supplementation
— From Bill Bosch, Yakama Nation Fisheries, Yakima-Klickitat Fisheries Project Research Office
Re: June 12 CBB Story “Hood River Study Looks At Reproduction Fitness Of Wild-Born Offspring Of Hatchery Fish”
Dworshak Dam’s unit 3 stirred to life Wednesday afternoon, providing hydro operators and hydro managers assurance that the turbine can generate power and deliver cool water downstream for fish during the fast approaching hot season.
Dam operators agreed to hold lower Columbia River reservoir elevations relatively steady this week and next week to avoid raising havoc with tribal nets deployed to sweep in returning summer chinook and sockeye salmon, steelhead and other fish.
In updating its fish and wildlife “program,” the Northwest Power and Conservation Council contemplated thousands of pages of recommendations, comments on those recommendations and comments on draft amendments.
CBB Shorts: Marbled Murrelet; New License For Spokane River Project; New Forest Service Service
The total amount of ratepayer revenues expended by the Bonneville Power Administration to boost Columbia River basin fish and wildlife has risen to nearly $12 billion, according to a draft report released this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
A legal attempt to force the spilling of more water at federal Columbia and Snake river dams and to enhance river flows to ease salmon migrations has run out of time, at least for the 2009 season, according to a brief filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by a coalition of fishing and conservation groups.
An improving upriver spring chinook forecast translates to fewer Endangered Species Act “impacts” and thus allowed the opening this morning of a Columbia River mainstem sport fishery for steelhead and sockeye from Portland’s Interstate 5 bridge down to Tongue Point-Rocky Point near the river mouth.
A “proposed order” filed Tuesday pledges that summertime spill operations this year to facilitate juvenile salmon passage at federal Columbia-Snake river hydro projects will mimic as closely as possible — as a federal judge requested — those of 2008.
Congress created the Marine Mammal Protection Act’s Section 120 “specifically” “to address the type of situation” that now prevails at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam, according to a federal brief filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
No, Idaho’s senior U.S. senator, Mike Crapo, is not a born-again dam breaching advocate.
NOAA Fisheries released its final biological opinion Thursday that finds the water pumping operations in California’s Central Valley by the federal Bureau of Reclamation jeopardize the continued existence of salmon, steelhead and sturgeon listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The governors of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington have signed a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Energy supporting funding for the Bonneville Power Administration to study technologies for integrating wind and other renewable energy into the Northwest power grid.
Dworshak Dam’s operators are hoping that a new problem that emerged nearly two week’s ago to force the shutdown of the facility’s largest turbine unit is really an recurring problem that could be fixed, at least for the short term, relatively quickly.
Studies indicate that the release of sediment during the removal of the White Salmon River’s Condit Dam would actually reduce risks from mercury by making it “less likely to accumulate in fish,” according to a draft Second Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement released today for public comment.
Top officials traveled west this week to continue the Obama Administration’s examination of a legally beleaguered strategy for assuring that federal dams in the Columbia River basin don’t jeopardize the survival of protected salmon and steelhead.
The largest of three turbine generating units at central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam will be idled for at least a month, and could stay down for more than a year.
The threat seems ever closer — and more and more effort and money is being expended to try ward off an invasion of zebra and/or quagga mussels that could potentially paralyze the Columbia River basin’s vast hydro system, city water works, irrigation systems and other infrastructure.
CBB Shorts: Fishers Restoration; Polluted Ecosystems Recoverable; Nutrient Over-Enrichment In Estuaries; Reclamation Commissioner Confirmed; Proposed NPPC Budgets; Wildlife Grants
A federal judge says more funding commitments, higher guaranteed river flows, additional scientific analysis and another look at the breaching of four dams on the lower Snake River may be needed to shore up, and make legal, the federal government’s Columbia River basin salmon protection plan.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation got the go-ahead Wednesday to complete final design for the construction of a salmon hatchery below central Washington’s Grand Coulee Dam.
Precious water behind west-central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam has been at the center of a tug of war over the past two weeks between competing, though mutual, biological interests.
New research indicates that a warmer climate has a significant effect on the snowpack, as measured by water content on April 1, even if other factors keep year-to-year measurements close to normal for a period of years.
Within-year budget adjustments totaling nearly $2.3 million for six fish and wildlife projects were approved Tuesday by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Parties to long-running litigation over the federal government’s Columbia River hydro system biological opinion now have an extra 30 to 60 days to “explore whether further discussions regarding the BiOp might be productive.”
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will likely be able to provide desired flow augmentation volumes for salmon this spring and summer, according to agency officials.
Nearly 400 tribal, federal, state and local leaders returned today (May 8) to a historic fishing village on the banks of the Columbia River to celebrate the “Columbia Basin Fish Accords” signed a year ago.
Anglers can earn cash and help save salmon by participating in the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program, which kicked off May 1 in the lower Columbia and Snake rivers. The program continues until Sept. 27.
Newly announced U.S. Army Corps of Engineers economic “stimulus” projects will create jobs while also accelerating efforts in the Columbia River basin to boost populations of salmon and steelhead and other fish and wildlife.
The potential “interactions” between fish and wildlife project implementation and Columbia River basin power system economics needs to be better analyzed as the Northwest Power and Conservation Council prepares its Sixth Power Plan, according to a new report by the Independent Economic Analysis Board.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers next week will conduct spill tests at Chief Joseph to evaluate the effectiveness of recently installed flow deflectors at reducing total dissolved gas concentrations downstream of the dam.
CBB Shorts: USFWS Grants For Basin Habitat; Proposed Rockfish Listings; Developing Offshore Wind Power
— USFWS Grants Fund Upper Columbia Basin Habitat Land Acquisitions
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday recommended that the next steps – ranging from further explorations to actual construction — be funded for four “accord” fish and wildlife projects.
A proposal to spend an additional $4.5 million annually on Columbia River estuary habitat projects in Washington should provide survival benefits above and beyond those gained through a federal salmon strategy launched last year.
The Columbia Land Trust announced Monday the acquisition of what it says is one of the most significant chum salmon spawning sites in the entire Columbia River basin — 305 acres at the confluence of the Grays River and Crazy Johnson Creek in Wahkiakum County, Wash.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration submitted to Congress this week its proposed recovery plan as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Electric power generation (28 percent) and irrigation to grow crops (22 percent) drew the most votes in a recently conducted poll in which Idaho, Oregon and Washington citizens were asked, among other things, what are the most important uses of the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff Thursday signed an agreement that clarifies their agencies’ jurisdictional responsibilities for leasing and licensing renewable energy projects on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.
The Columbia River basin water supply forecast for spring and summer remains well below normal despite a March battering by a steady stream of storms.
Apparently for the fifth year in a row spawning upriver spring chinook salmon are biding their time before launching themselves up and over the fish ladders at Bonneville Dam, the first hydro project they encounter on the Columbia River.
Changed conditions will allow an early opening after all of the “corner collector” at Bonneville Dam’s second powerhouse to provide a safer passage route for spawned-out steelhead kelt and for any early migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead that approach the hydro project.
An off-again, on-again precipitation pattern this winter has made water supply forecasters’ jobs tougher than ever, and has also complicated storage reservoir management for multiple uses – fish flow augmentation, flood control, hydro production and recreation.
An Interior Department report says U.S. offshore areas hold enormous potential for wind energy development near the nation’s highest areas of electricity demand — coastal metropolitan centers.
In order to achieve both harvest goals and the goal of conserving imperiled Columbia River basin salmon, harvest and hatchery reforms are needed, according to a 1,000-page scientific report released to the public today.
A recently completed Columbia River basin hatchery-harvest reform report includes detailed “solutions” ranging from the number and type of salmon or steelhead that should be reared and released from artificial production facilities to what kind of gear should be used to pull adult hatchery fish from the river.
Forecasts of 2009 salmon returns to the Snake River basin, including endangered sockeye, are expected to continue a recent upward trend, state officials told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council earlier this month during its meeting in Boise.
The Humane Society of the United States re-launched its legal effort to reverse federal agency and court decisions allowing the lethal removal of California sea lions from below Bonneville Dam on the lower Columbia River.
The 1984 Swan Falls water agreement was reaffirmed this week in a proposed legal settlement between the State of Idaho and Idaho Power Co.
All of the signs — called ocean indicators — point toward swelled returns to the Columbia River basin in 2010 and 2011 that could even challenge 2001’s record upriver spring chinook salmon run, according to ongoing research conducted by NOAA Fisheries Service’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
The proposal has evolved, but opinions are unchanged about whether Bonneville Dam’s “corner collector” should be opened earlier than scheduled to provide another passage route at the project for steelhead kelt making a run down the Columbia River.
An exhaustive, comparative independent science review of fish tagging technologies used in the Columbia River basin was completed this week along with recommendations for making tagging programs more productive and efficient.
President Obama announced this week that he intends to nominate Michael L. Connor as Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Cage doors slammed shut on two California sea lions this week during the initial 2009 effort by Oregon and Washington to trap and remove the big marine mammals from the area below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
A prevalence of blue skies this winter in the Northwest is beginning to make power producers, fish managers, irrigators and other snowpack watchers fret.
A proposal to open Bonneville Dam’s “corner collector” early in order to facilitate downstream passage for spawned-out steelhead kelt got mixed reviews Wednesday from members of the Columbia River basin’s Technical Management Team.
(Revised version of “BiOp Court Hearing: Redden Says ‘I Think It Is Very Close’ To Being Legal” https://www.www.www.staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/324249.aspx , posted Monday, March 9.)
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden entered his courtroom Friday (March 6) with three major areas of concern about the federal plan intended to boost survival for protected salmon that traverse the Columbia-Snake river hydropower system.
Non-native, predatory species such as bass and channel catfish may pose as great a threat to imperiled Columbia River salmon and steelhead as do such factors as harvest and the hydro system, yet invasive fish have largely been ignored, according to Northwest Fisheries Science Center research published this week.
Pacific lamprey will have a new, and much safer, passage option as they approach the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam this summer on their way upstream to spawn.
Effects of climate change projected this century for the upper Willamette River basin, including Eugene-Springfield, will threaten water supplies, buildings, transportation systems, human health, forests, and fish and wildlife, according to a report produced by the University of Oregon’s Climate Leadership Initiative and the National Center for Conservation Science & Policy.
Montana is on the verge of joining a broader effort aimed at curbing the proliferation of tiny freshwater mussels that have caused huge damage in other parts of the country.
A federal appeals panel on Thursday refused to block the states of Oregon and Washington from removing, by lethal means or otherwise, California sea lions that prey on salmon below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
Litigants are girding for a marathon when they meet March 6 for oral arguments regarding the legal and scientific validity of the government’s strategy for protecting imperiled salmon stocks that migrate through the federal Columbia-Snake river power system.
What enabled the quantum rise in sockeye salmon adult returns to the Columbia River basin in 2008?
It depends on who you ask.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week gave the go-ahead for a $7 million overhaul of an outdated fish ladder on the Klickitat River in south-central Washington that is expected to help boost populations of salmon returning to the basin.
Ever since the signing, and in most cases well before the signing, of the so-called economic stimulus package, federal agencies across the country have been scrambling to develop lists of projects that can be launched quickly and that will create jobs.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden, in a letter sent this week, set the stage for March 6 oral arguments over the legal validity of the federal government’s Columbia River hydro system’s salmon protection plan.
Listed below are the 15 subjects U.S. District Court Judge James Redden is directing participants to address in the March 6 oral arguments in the litigation over NOAA Fisheries Service’s 2008 salmon and steelhead biological opinion for the Federal Columbia River Power System.
A legal attempt by the Humane Society to stall a sea lion control effort at the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam is “based on nothing more than its distaste for the lethal removal program,” and not on sound legal arguments, according to a legal brief filed Feb. 13 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A campaign to win a prohibition on commercial gill-net salmon fishing on the lower Columbia River mainstem has gained a foothold in the Oregon Legislature.
A new surface-bypass technology was installed this week to benefit out-migrating juvenile fish passing Little Goose Lock and Dam in southeast Washington, according to officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Walla Walla District.
A huge and unexpected return of sockeye salmon to the Columbia River basin last year was most likely caused by variables in the Pacific Ocean that foster sockeye growth and survival, according to an analysis completed last week by the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week adopted amendments to its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program — the nation’s largest regional effort to protect and enhance fish and wildlife.
The Bonneville Power Administration announced this week that it likely will need to increase its wholesale power rates for the first time since 2003, beginning October 2009.
With the dawning of a new administration, NOAA Fisheries Service’s only politically appointed regional administrator — the Northwest’s Bob Lohn – was ushered out.
A new regional “forum” taking shape will allow state and tribal sovereigns to direct policy level input over the next 10 years as federal agencies implement new strategies aimed at improving the survival of protected Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead stocks.
The most detailed report ever on how climate change could affect Washington state paints a stark picture, but scientists say it should help the state avoid being surprised by climate-related changes coming down the road.
A protein biomarker under development to detect traumatic brain injury in humans can also reveal the same injuries in salmon that struggle to migrate in freshwater rivers, according to a study by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.
CBB Shorts: Avista, Spokane River Settlement; Corps’ Sediment Evaluation Framework; Odessa Subarea Wildlife, Habitat Survey; Idaho Expects Good Spring Chinook Season; ODFW Says No Spring Chinook Fishing On Deschutes
Central Washington’s Colville Tribes have seen early successes in tests of selective fishing gear that they say can increase the viability of wild salmon populations by allowing increased spawner escapement and lessening the straying of hatchery fish on to spawning grounds.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is closing in on two waterfront land acquisitions in the Flathead Valley with Bonneville Power Administration funding.
A modern-day record total of 3,322 fall chinook salmon redds were observed during 2008 late fall-early winter surveys in the Snake River basin.
A federal court judge on Thursday denied a request that he put on hold state plans to begin in March trapping and removing salmon-eating California sea lions from below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
Beginning in 2010, Grant PUD will produce more hydropower out of Wanapum Dam as generator upgrades get under way.
CBB Shorts: Post Falls Dam Study; Toxic Algal Blooms; Oregon PFMC Seat; Alaska Sportfishing Study; Northern Idaho Ground Squirrel
NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center is seeking funding, and regional approval, for a pilot study that could lead to a better understanding of the impact predatory seals and sea lions have on spawning spring chinook salmon in the lower Columbia River.
First-year construction costs for The Dalles Dam’s “spillwall” — an estimated $27.2 million — will eat up nearly one-third of fiscal year 2009 Columbia River Fish Mitigation program’s anticipated budget.
Legal arguments about how the federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system will be operated this year to accommodate migrating salmon and steelhead have been put on hold while U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden mulls the big picture — a 10-year strategy for avoiding jeopardy to the protected fish.
Regional warming and drought stress are the “dominant contributors” to a rapid increase of tree mortality in old growth forests across the West during the past 50 years, a new report concludes, with the Pacific Northwest the hardest hit of all areas studied.
A $9.4 million genetic sampling project designed to better chart Columbia River basin salmon genetic diversity, stock composition, and stock specific run timing won the favor of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council Thursday.
The Columbia River basin’s wet season got off to an extremely slow start but has rallied in recent weeks thanks to a series of mostly southerly storms that have blanketed the lower Columbia and Snake river regions.
Northwest Power and Conservation Council members this week entered the home stretch, still debating final strategies that will guide their Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program for the next five years or longer.
Idaho’s Bill Booth was elected unanimously Thursday to serve a second one-year term as chairman of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Soot from pollution causes winter snowpacks to warm, shrink and warm some more. This continuous cycle sends snowmelt streaming down mountains as much as a month early, a new study finds.
With a favorable Northwest Power and Conservation Council funding recommendation now in hand, an Oregon fish screening project awaits a determination on whether the $198,000 expenditure is prohibited under the Northwest Power Act.
A newly minted permitting requirement for discharging ship effluent into U.S. waters has immediately been challenged in court by environmental groups that say it will not staunch a flood of invasive species that are threatening coastal environments, economic infrastructure and fish.
Reach-by-reach survival was above average for migrating Snake River yearling chinook salmon in 2008 through the Lower Granite reservoir and the first five hydro projects they encountered, then spiked for the McNary Dam-to-John Day Dam reach and plummeted on the home stretch.
An aggressive effort is planned during the new (fiscal) year aimed at reaching the goal of reducing the Columbia River estuary’s East Sand Island Caspian tern colony by roughly two-thirds by the spring of 2010.
The memory of Reclamation Commissioner John W. Keys, III, will be honored at a key feature of Grand Coulee Dam on the west bank of the Columbia River.
U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden said this week he’ll need more time to review an avalanche of documents that debate the legality of the federal government’s strategy for assuring the Columbia/Snake river basin hydro system doesn’t jeopardize protected salmon stocks.
Ten of 11 “Accord” fish and wildlife projects submitted last month for review failed to make the grade, according to a preliminary memorandum released Dec. 12 by the Independent Scientific Review Panel.
Hydropower authorities in the United States and Canada are beginning to think about the future of the 1964 Columbia River Treaty authorizing construction of three large dams in British Columbia to protect against flooding in the province and downstream in the United States, and to boost electricity generation.
The Bonneville Power Administration reported Thursday that the federal power system is keeping up with a record demand for electricity even as below freezing weather continues its grip on most of the Pacific Northwest.
The NOAA Fisheries Service next month will launch a review of some 100 federally funded salmon and steelhead hatchery programs in the Columbia River basin to assure they don’t hinder efforts to recover protected species.
Avian predation has made the Mid-Columbia River a bit of a murderers’ row for migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead, though the toll upriver still pales in comparison to fish consumption by Caspian terns and double-crested cormorants in the estuary, according to ongoing research.
Preliminary analysis of 2008 data shows that the world’s largest colony of nesting Caspian terns grew ever so slightly from last year while the world’s largest colony of double-crested cormorants shrunk dramatically, by 20 percent, from one year to the next.
CBB Shorts: OSU Oceanographer Leads Ocean Observing Program; USFWS Science Leadership Award; Fish Captive Breeding Research; Birth Control Pills And Rainbow Trout; Sea Temps And Climate Change; Ocean Chemistry And Climate Change
The state of Oregon and a coalition of fishing and conservation groups have asked a federal court to order increased flow augmentation and spilling of water for fish passage at Columbia/Snake river federal dams as a means of improving the lot of salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
A U.S. District Court judge last week ruled that the federal government complied with the law earlier this year in granting permission for the removal, lethal or otherwise, of California sea lions that gather below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam to prey on imperiled salmon and steelhead.
A petition filed by fishing and conservation groups in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit alleges that Bonneville Power Administration’s decision to implement a new Columbia River basin salmon protection plan is illegal.
Slow-moving ocean and river currents could be a new, reliable and affordable alternative energy source. A University of Michigan engineer has made a machine that works like a fish to turn potentially destructive vibrations in fluid flows into clean, renewable power.
A new federal salmon plan that agencies say will boost beleaguered wild populations instead “seeks to shrink the magnitude of the problem salmon face” and continues a “pattern of matching an analysis to an outcome, rather than allowing the analysis to inform the outcome…,” according to a legal brief filed Tuesday by Earthjustice.
Eleven projects outlined in new “Columbia Basin Fish Accords” have been forwarded to the Independent Scientific Review Panel for evaluation.
CBB Shorts: Indicators Measuring Council Program Success; California Native Fish Crisis; Electric Car Impacts On NW Power System; Puget Sound Sockeye Fishery Disaster Funds; Boise River Steelhead; Nominations Sought For Columbia Fishery Committees; New WDOE Director For Central Wash.; WDFW Sport Salmon Season Workshop
— Council Moves Forward On ‘Indicators’ Measuring Salmon Recovery Progress
Can the Columbia/Snake river basin “have its cake and eat it too,” — i.e., enjoy sustainable harvests of salmon and steelhead while also lifting beleaguered wild, naturally spawning populations toward recovery?
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes on Nov. 7 signed an agreement with federal agencies that makes available approximately $61 million over 10 years to help rebuild populations of Snake River spring/summer chinook and Snake River steelhead in Idaho’s Salmon River basin and Snake River sockeye and native Yellowstone cutthroat in the upper Snake River.
The federal government, the state of California, the state of Oregon and PacifiCorp on Thursday announced an “Agreement in Principle” aimed at resolving Klamath River resource issues and includes a plan for the removal of four Klamath River dams.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last week dismissed a legal attempt to derail $1 billion in fish and wildlife funding agreements made between Columbia River basin states and tribes and federal agencies.
Calling a new Columbia River basin salmon protection plan a worsening of the status quo “reflects a stubborn and dogmatic refusal to look honestly at the effect of past mitigation, current data, and recent fish counts,” according documents filed by federal attorneys late last week in U.S. District Court.
A new study by researchers in Oregon and British Columbia has found that survival of juvenile salmon and steelhead during their migration from the headwaters to the sea down two large Northwest rivers — the Columbia and the Fraser – is remarkably similar despite one major difference.
Scientists have proven new miniature tagging and tracking technologies can follow the travels of small salmon through vast distances and highly dissimilar waters – from as far as the Rocky Mountain headwaters of the Columbia River through the ocean to the coast of Alaska.
A pair of environmental groups, one indigenous and the other not, have filed appeals challenging Washington state approval of a plan to tap as much as an additional 132,500 acre-feet of water from Lake Roosevelt each year to feed farms and municipalities and keep salmon afloat.
To spill, or not to spill?
That’s no longer a question following a “landmark” agreement now in place that involves moving part of the Spring Creek National Fish Hatchery’s fall chinook salmon tule production elsewhere. Reducing numbers there eliminates the need for early juvenile releases that have, year after year, prompted debates about providing spill passage at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
Utilities and power consumers and fish and wildlife managers on Tuesday gave their view of the strengths and weaknesses of Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s draft amendments to its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
An association of irrigators this week released a memorandum that say Oregon’s legal effort to discredit a plan for mitigating Columbia/Snake river hydrosystem effects on salmon and steelhead could also derail a mainstem harvest agreement between states, tribes and the federal government.
The Eugene Water & Electric Board this week signed an agreement with 16 federal and state natural resource agencies, Indian tribes, environmental groups and other parties outlining the environmental, recreational and other improvements EWEB will undertake for relicensing of its Carmen-Smith Hydroelectric Project on the upper McKenzie River.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council, with some reluctance, voted 7-1 Thursday to allow more time for the submittal of comments on its draft amendments to the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
The planned removal of north-central Oregon’s Powerdale Dam in 2010 will allow salmon and steelhead unimpeded access to the Hood River’s upper reaches and restore natural flows, but it will also take away one of the key tools in efforts to rebuild those species’ populations.
Col. Steven R. Miles, commander of the Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has decided to split John Day and The Dalles dams into two separate projects.
The newest prototype of a wave energy device being developed by Oregon State University and Columbia Power Technologies was successfully tested last month in the ocean off Newport, Ore., providing data that moves the research program closer to commercialization.
Where there’s a way there’s the will to spawn — as tule chinook salmon are proving in the gravels of southwest Washington’s White Salmon River.
Researchers in recent weeks have identified about 69 salmon redds in reaches above the river’s Condit Dam. The salmon eggs likely nested in those gravels are the first deposited above the dam in nearly 100 years.
Changes ranging from the replacement of existing water supplies, to shifting species emphasis to better localizing broodstocks are among the recommendations contained in a draft report on the operation of three federal hatcheries in Idaho’s Clearwater and Salmon drainages.
The spawning behavior of kokanee this year will dictate how fast and how far north Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille will be drawn down.
Technical Management Team members on Wednesday agreed to an Albeni Falls Dam operational plan aimed at dropping the reservoir to its winter minimum control elevation of 2,051 feet by Nov. 15. TMT’s federal, state and tribal members discuss day-to-day federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system operations that might benefit fish listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The state of Washington this week officially joined the legal defense of the latest federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system salmon protection plan.
The lower Columbia River’s “chum flow” balancing act could become even more difficult with the recognition of a new hydro system management constraint in the form of another project intended to help improve salmon survival — the construction of a $45 million spillway wall at The Dalles Dam.
Lake Pend Oreille continues falling to its winter level with increased outflows that began Thursday, says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Reservoir Control Center in Seattle.
Sockeye salmon are known to be hell-bent during their spawning journey up the Columbia and Snake rivers. And that rapid pace is apparently true for the young fish when they leave freshwater for their ocean sojourn.
An unexpectedly strong return of upriver bright chinook this year has allowed the opening of a fall chinook salmon sport fishery on the lower Snake River for the first time in 20 years.
The new federal plan to protect salmon and steelhead migrating through the Columbia/Snake river hydro system employs a “newly lowered bar” that fails to properly assess, in scientific or legal terms, the listed species’ chances of recovery, according to motions for summary judgment filed in U.S. District Court Sept. 19 by a coalition of fishing and conservation groups and the state of Oregon.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service, the federal agency charged with protecting salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act, is now seeking public comment on a proposed recovery plan for threatened steelhead in the middle Columbia River.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week responded to three 2007 Ninth Circuit court rulings with a decision that will lower its wholesale power rates by 1 percent for fiscal year 2009, return an additional quarter of a billion dollars in past overcharges to the region’s consumer-owned utilities in 2009, return additional overpayments in future years, and re-establish Residential Exchange Program benefits to most of the region’s investor-owned utilities.
The Bonneville Power Administration expects to increase its “integrated” Columbia River basin fish and wildlife program spending by 55 percent during the fiscal years 2009-2011 period, agency officials told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council Wednesday.
The time is not yet ripe to choose a spill-smolt transportation regime for Columbia and Snake river hydro projects that best promotes life cycle survival of salmon, steelhead and lamprey, according to a new report by the Independent Scientific Advisory Board.
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes announced today that they intend to join four Columbia River tribes, two states and three federal agencies in signing an unprecedented agreement designed to improve habitat and strengthen fish stocks in the Columbia River Basin over the next 10 years.
Clean Water Act arguments have been added to the slate as attorneys this autumn debate whether a newly devised strategy adequately protects salmon and steelhead that migrate up and down the federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system.
The National Science Foundation has award Idaho a five-year, $15 million award that will support new faculty and facilities at the University of Idaho, Boise State University and Idaho State University in an effort to understand the current and future impact of climate change on the Snake and Salmon River watersheds.
The Northwest has an adequate supply of electricity to avoid severe power outages for the next five years, according to an analysis by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
An Idaho economist had charged that the Bonneville Power Administration exceeded its authority and took other legal missteps this spring in making commitments to states and tribes to spend nearly $1 billion in electricity ratepayer revenues over the next 10 years on fish and wildlife projects over the next 10 years.
Reaches of southwest Washington’s White Salmon River devoid of salmon for 90 years should again be teeming with spawners this autumn.
An attempt to inject Clean Water Act claims into the long-running Columbia River basin salmon protection lawsuit should be rejected, according to a brief filed by federal attorneys Wednesday in Portland’s U.S. District Court.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced Tuesday it is seeking public comment on a proposal that identifies critical habitat for a distinct group of North American green sturgeon that spawn in California’s Sacramento River but migrate along the west coast of Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
After three hours of legal debate, U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Mosman said Wednesday that his “tentative thoughts now” were that NOAA’s Fisheries Service had complied with federal law in granting authority for the lethal removal of California sea lions from below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam.
If higher summertime flows are indeed a benefit for salmon, upper and mid-Columbia fish could well be the first to benefit from a plan to release more water from behind Grand Coulee Dam for a variety of uses.
The flow of endangered sockeye salmon into central Idaho’s Stanley basin has slowed, but the last few stragglers serve to pad a record return to the hatchery program that is keeping the species alive.
A coalition of fishing and conservation groups is seeking to expand litigation that challenges the federal government’s salmon protection plan with charges that the Columbia/Snake river hydro system is being operated in violation of the Clean Water Act.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council Thursday has issued its draft 2008 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program for public review and comment through Oct. 30.
CBB Shorts: Willamette River Website; OSU Climate Research Institute; Yakima Basin Water Flip-Flop Ops; Salmon, Trout Enhancement Conference; Lower Snake Hatchery Recommendations; Oregon Environmental Grant Funds Available
Draft amendments to the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program won approval Thursday by a 6-2 vote during a special meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Sockeye salmon will be in the spotlight Tuesday when Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter takes part in two special events marking Idaho’s largest sockeye run in more than three decades.
Federal, state and Humane Society attorneys continued legal arguments during the past few weeks over Congress’ intent in allowing the lethal removal of sea lions only if they are having a “significant” negative impact on protected salmon.
“A bunch of volunteers” from south-central Washington continues to make the pitch for construction of the so-called Black Rock Dam and reservoir to store water for fields, cities and salmon in the Yakima River watershed.
“Independent” scientists will remain on the sideline as attorneys plunge into arguments this autumn over the legality of the latest federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system salmon protection plan.
BiOp: Irrigators Granted Status To Argue John Day Pool Issues; Montana Tribes Focus On Resident Fish
The list of combatants continues to grow in litigation over how federal Columbia/Snake river dams manipulate a limited, coveted resource — water.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week gave the go-ahead for the Yakama Nation to launch into final design for new Klickitat River subbasin hatchery facilities that have an estimated cost of $36.9 million.
At Wanapum Dam this week, elected officials, heads of governmental agencies, tribes, and the community celebrated Grant County Public Utility District’s receipt of a new, 44-year federal license to operate Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams.
Thursday’s catch of 15 salmon in Idaho’s Stanley basin pushed the seasonal total, 263, to an all-time record for the 17-year-old Idaho Sockeye Salmon Captive Broodstock Program.
The time is likely not ripe to call on independent scientists to evaluate whether a new federal government plan for the Columbia/Snake river hydro system is adequate to avoid jeopardizing the survival of salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Saying it wants to refute “erroneous views concerning the relationship between river velocity and salmon survival to be proffered by the State of Oregon and plaintiffs,” the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association has asked to intervene in renewed litigation over the adequacy of the federal government’s Columbia/Snake river hydro system salmon protection strategy.
A federal judge on Wednesday put his stamp of approval on a new 10-year agreement guiding salmon harvest and hatchery production on the Columbia River with the goals of rebuilding weak fish populations and providing sustainable fisheries.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council came to an agreement this week, though not unanimous in all respects, on draft strategies that could guide its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program for the next five years.
Lake Koocanusa and Hungry Horse Reservoir will drop 20 feet below full pool over the next couple months, and it will happen in a way that has been long fought for by the state of Montana.
About a dozen people gathered at the Idaho Power substation on Amity Road in east Boise on a recent warm summer morning. Several trucks stood ready, loaded with boxes of pasteurized, frozen salmon and steelhead carcasses, and bags of manufactured pelletized fertilizer — known to biologists as salmon “analogue” meant to simulate dead salmon.
CBB Shorts: Spotted Owl Habitat; Bliss Rapids Snail
— Final Revised Critical Habitat Designation For Spotted Owl Issued
Before the real battle begins, litigants will debate whether independent scientists should be employed during a legal review of the government’s new strategy for assuring that the federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system avoids jeopardizing the survival of salmon and steelhead stocks protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game this week released its draft plan for reviving flagging populations of white sturgeon, a popular game fish found in the Snake River.
A mechanical breakdown at central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam will limit fish and hydro managers’ ability this summer to control the reservoir’s cool waters to augment flows downriver and, more importantly, help hold down water temperatures for migrating salmon and steelhead.
The state of Oregon on Tuesday asked the U.S. District Court to send federal agencies back to the drawing board to develop a Columbia/Snake hydro system strategy that makes imperiled salmon stocks, not the power system, the top priority.
The idea has surfaced once again to employ “independent” scientists in legal proceedings over the how the federal Columbia/Snake river hydro should be operated to provide the most benefit for migrating salmon and steelhead.
A vastly changed landscape has allowed non-native species to flourish to the point they now “represent major impediments to the restoration of native salmonids in the Columbia River Basin,” according to a recently completed Independent Scientific Advisory Board report.
Eye popping numbers of sockeye returning to the Columbia River basin this year have fishery experts speculating about the cause of the spike.
A new report prepared for the Oregon Invasive Species Council concludes that the state needs to more strongly consider the economic consequences of addressing invasive species and not just focus attention on the biology and ecology.
Efforts to boost Columbia River basin salmon survivals are being undercut by toxic chemicals that impact fish health and disease resistance, according scientists from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week debated how deeply they should plunge into a pool of issues that would be addressed for the first time in its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Mainstem Columbia/Snake River hydroelectric operations planned in NOAA Fisheries Service’s 2008 biological opinion are expected to cost the region’s ratepayers an estimated $15 million more per year as compared with 2004 BiOp provisions, according to analysis prepared by Northwest Power and Conservation staff.
Staff members this week were urged to produce details regarding the resources necessary to move forward with an envisioned Columbia River Basin Center of Information — a comprehensive, publicly accessible repository of information about the basin in its international dimensions.
A group of scientists has used deep ocean-floor drilling and experiments to show that volcanic rocks off the West Coast and elsewhere might be used to securely imprison huge amounts of globe-warming carbon dioxide captured from power plants or other sources.
The forests of the future may need to be managed as much for a sustainable supply of clean water as any other goal, researchers say in a new federal report — but even so, forest resources will offer no “quick fix” to the insatiable, often conflicting demands for that precious resource.
CBB Shorts: Re-Introducing Chinook To Upper Klamath; Wash. Road-Kill Verified As Wolf; Offshore Aquaculture Forum; Idaho Wolf Killings
A long-sought, and the first ever, “biological opinion” for federal multi-purpose dams in Oregon’s Willamette River basin was released today, outlining actions NOAA Fisheries Service says will avoid jeopardy to imperiled fish stocks and spur their recovery.
NOAA Fisheries, in effect, rewrote language in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and ignored other language, in granting authority for the lethal removal of California sea lions that prey on salmon below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam, according to a motion filed last week in U.S. District Court asking that the decision be rescinded.
This year’s surprising run-in-progress is already known to include more of the Columbia River Basin’s most imperiled salmon stock – Snake River sockeye – than in any year since 1976.
Salmon and hydro managers reached a rare consensus this week at the “technical” level on Libby and Hungry Horse dam summertime operations that aim to better meet the needs of resident fish while still providing flow augmentation for migrating salmon far downstream in the Columbia River.
Columbia/Snake river hydro controllers learned a not-so-hard lesson recently when an unanticipated boost in wind power into the transmission system forced increased spill, which boosts total dissolved gas that can be harmful to migrating juvenile salmon.
The Columbia River Compact on Thursday approved tribal commercial fisheries in mainstem reservoirs above Bonneville in each of the next two weeks targeting summer chinook and sockeye salmon and steelhead.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published the final rule designating approximately 18.3 river miles of the Kootenai River as critical habitat for the endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon, a rare fish found in Idaho, Montana and British Columbia.
Olympic National Park was created in 1938, in part “to preserve the finest sample of primeval forests in the entire United States” – but a new study at Oregon State University suggests that this preservation goal has failed, as a result of the elimination of wolves and subsequent domination of the temperate rainforests by herds of browsing elk.
CBB Shorts: Yakima Basin Water Supply; Upper Salmon Chinook Fishing; Dead Fish in Coeur D’Alene Area Lakes; Imnaha, Wallowa Chinook Fishing; Columbia Oil Spill Cleanup; WDFW Seeks Salmon Recovery Board Member; New Commander For Corps’ Walla Walla District
CBB Shorts: NOAA’s Plan on Catch Limits; Fish Loss At Umatilla Facility; Measuring Water Diversions In Washington; Measuring Mercury In B.C. Salmon; Oregon Toxic Standards Agreement
— NOAA Outlines Annual Catch Limits to End Overfishing
The captive broodstock hatchery program that has kept the endangered Snake River sockeye salmon population afloat has begun an expansion aimed, through sheer numbers, at helping revive the stock and providing better understanding of its problems.
While the peak may have been reached, counts of spawning sockeye salmon remain high enough at the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam to prompt a big jump in the forecast return.
Unlike some West Coast salmon stocks that have or are expected to nosedive, the Columbia River basin’s upriver spring chinook run trended upward this year.
The state of Idaho this week asked Judge James A. Redden to dismiss a new challenge to the federal government’s Columbia/Snake river salmon protection plan, saying the U.S. District Court does not have current jurisdiction in the lawsuit.
World marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 50 percent between 2005 and 2030, driven by robust economic growth and expanding populations in the world’s developing countries, according to the International Energy Outlook 2008 released this week by the Energy Information Administration.
Sockeye salmon are creating a stir on the Columbia River, surging past Bonneville Dam in unexpectedly high numbers and biting surprised steelhead anglers’ hooks.
(Revised From June 17 Version)
A new plan for protecting salmon and steelhead affected by the Columbia/Snake hydro system — like the document it replaced — faces a legal challenge from fishing and conservation groups who contend federal agencies changed their biological analysis methods in order to produce a “no jeopardy” conclusion, but changed little else.
Federal and state officials this week continued mulling how fast and deep Libby Dam’s reservoir should be drawn down this summer, and will spend the next few weeks seeking answers to policy and legal questions regarding the operation.
Cool water is stacking up behind central Idaho’s Dworshak Dam for use later this summer to chill warming water downstream in the Snake River for migrating salmon and steelhead.
A new plan for protecting salmon and steelhead affected by the Columbia/Snake hydro system — like the document it replaced — faces a legal challenge from fishing and conservation groups who contend federal agencies changed their biological analysis methods in order to produce a “no jeopardy” conclusion, but changed little else.
Changing freshwater conditions, hydro effects, ocean ecosystems, sea lion appetites and other variables continue to vex fisheries experts who predict how many Columbia River salmon will return to spawn each year.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers took a cautious approach Thursday in setting Columbia River commercial fisheries for summer chinook salmon, mindful of a spring chinook forecast gone bad and chinook problems up and down the coast.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week released for public comment a “working list” of biological and implementation indicators that would, ultimately, show the worth of its Columbia River Basin fish and wildlife program.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week continued its review of proposed strategies for shaping its Columbia River Basin fish and wildlife program and braced for a next round of input.
Despite “cooler than normal temperatures that suppressed the runoff early,” most Columbia/Snake river basin tributaries will provide normal or above normal water supplies, according to the latest monthly “final” forecast produced by the Northwest River Forecast Center.
Mother Nature held back the Columbia/Snake river basin’s store of water until mid-May, when an outpouring began that has fish and hydro managers struggling to rein in total dissolved gas created by spill at federal projects.
Montana officials this week again pressed the state’s long-running desire for changes to Libby and Hungry Horse dam operations which they say raise havoc with resident fish in reservoirs and the rivers downstream.
Preliminary data from analysis of sediment, clams and crayfish collected below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam show few signs of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl), an indication that an ongoing cleanup/investigation of hazardous waste is on target.
Terms like “quite good,” “the possibilities are promising” and “credible job of reflecting dynamic reality” sprinkle the latest scientific review of the statistical modeling tool used to choose federal Columbia/Snake river hydro operations that might best benefit migrating salmon and steelhead.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
