Five dams and reservoirs on the Columbia River in Washington State between McNary Dam and Chief Joseph Dam are being managed under a unique “No Net Impact” survival standard for salmon and steelhead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Columbia River Treaty negotiations are taking too long, are not transparent enough and the region’s utilities are worried that a last minute deal will cost them more money, according to comments heard at a Treaty Town Hall meeting in Richland this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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