Columbia River Sockeye Salmon. Courtesy WDFW.
The Obama Administration is walking away from what could have become the first big salmon fight of 2010.
NOAA Fisheries is dropping plans to cut off spring time spills at four dams on the Lower Snake River.
Most of the time, spills are used to help young salmon swim past dams as they migrate to the ocean. But faced with unusually low water flows this spring, NOAA proposed rounding up the fish, putting them on barges, and shipping them past dams. It says that’s the best way to help salmon and steelhead survive during a low water year.
The very idea of cutting off spills set off alarm bells with environmental groups and the State of Oregon. After a federal judge ordered increased spills in 2006, Columbia Basin salmon have had some really good years. As far as the environmentalists and Oregon are concerned, that’s not a coincidence. They filed court papers to block NOAA’s plan for barging salmon.
Another problem for NOAA – an Independent Science Advisory Board (IASB) reviewed the barging plans and gave it a thumbs down.
Barging salmon isn’t exactly dead. The plan now is to use a mixed approach, dam spills plus barging. This is what the IASB recommended about a week ago, and it’s what’s been done in the past.
Spills versus barging is a complicated and controversial issue. In the papers it filed with the court, NOAA insists that while it’s going along with IASB’s recommendations, it doesn’t agree with all of them. For example, NOAA says the survival rate of Snake River steelhead that migrate to the ocean this year could be cut in half. On the other hand, NOAA notes this gives scientists a good opportunity to study how well a mixed approach works during a low water year. Low water is a problem for salmon and steelhead because the water is warmer, making the fish more vulnerable to disease.
Environmental groups and Oregon are skeptical that the feds are merely interested in protecting fish. When water is spilled past dams there’s less water available for generating electricity, which makes the electricity more expensive.
Related Stories:
Science Panel: Don’t Cut Off Spills For Salmon This Spring
A Slow Barge To Recovery: Should Salmon Swim Or Be Shipped Past Dams?
Infrequently asked questions:
What contribution will the upper Snake Reservoirs make to flow augmentation downstream from the Hells Canyon complex? More specifically, can upstream irrigators be relied upon to voluntarily make available at least 427,000+60,00 acre-feet of water from upstream reservoirs? Will Idaho Power Co. pass/shape such water if it is available? If Idaho irrigators and Idaho Power refuse to step up, will the Bureau of Reclamation trigger a serious look at alternative strategies for securing additional water supplies, as provided for in the mediator’s term sheet for the agreement between the state of Idaho and the Nez Perce?
What about load following and power peaking? How can Bonneville Power et al. refuse to consider the impacts of day-to-day operations on ESA-listed species when scientists have been calling on the federal agencies to do this since the first “Independent Science Group” issued its first report on spill vs. transport? The need to address diurnal fluctuations to meet power demands has been called for repeatedly by the Independent Science Advisory Board.
Judge Redden has repeatedly made it clear that federal defendants needed to secure additional water supplies from the upper Snake. And, in an order issued after an anon. caller contacted the court, Judge Redden left no doubt that federal defendants on notice of the need to address the
power interface, which links Bonneville’s marketing actions to project operations by the Bureau and Army Corps.