Bpa: Spending Cap Best For Agency, Salmon Congressional Limits On Recovery Spending Will Keep Agency Afloat, Chief Says

A congressional proposal to cap salmon-recovery spending by the Bonneville Power Administration could save both the fish and the BPA, agency chief Randy Hardy said Friday.

During a taping of the “Viewpoint” program for KTVB-TV, Hardy said the federal agency is reeling from rising costs and increased competition for power customers. If it doesn’t slow the flow of millions of dollars going into fish recovery efforts, he said, the agency could miss its multimillion-dollar debt payments and go broke.

Congress is considering several options, including capping fish recovery spending at $400 million per year, or linking it to the BPA’s revenues.

Environmentalists don’t like the plan. They say it amounts to writing off fish runs because recovery efforts would be based on costs, not results.

Hardy said Friday that he can’t slow spending without the cap because of political pressure on the agency to keep spending more.

He estimated the BPA has spent $2.5 billion on fish recovery, and “the runs are still declining.”

A spending cap, he said, “will require people to make real choices.”

Under the $400 million cap, Hardy said, the agency will easily be able to continue testing two major methods of saving endangered salmon. One is increased river flows to flush young fish to the ocean. The other is dam modifications that would allow fish to be collected near the surface and routed into channels around the hydropower turbines.

The surface-collection option is being tried at two Mid-Columbia dams, Wells and Wanapum, and looks promising, Hardy said. He estimated it would cost about half a billion dollars to make those modifications to all the dams in the BPA system.

“It’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper,” he said.

Increasing river flows means releasing water in the summer from upstream reservoirs. That has led to outcries from recreation and business interests around the lakes where the water drops. Idaho’s Dworshak Reservoir has been particularly hard-hit.

Hardy said he’s not convinced by a new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study that found the Dworshak water releases are causing significantly more fall chinook salmon to survive their downstream journey.

He estimated the BPA will know within five years which of the two methods - more flows or improved bypass systems - is better for fish and makes financial sense.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Kokanee plan likely win to approval Plans to keep Lake Pend Oreille at a higher level in winter to boost the kokanee population are likely to win the support of the Bonneville Power Administration. “We’re moving toward supporting that,” BPA chief Randy Hardy said Friday in Boise. “It costs us some money” in lost power generation, he said. But Hardy said if the Northwest Power Planning Council feels it’s necessary, BPA will go along. Council members have given all but the final, formal approval of the lake-level change at Pend Oreille. That’s expected to come this month. The higher water level would provide more shoreline spawning areas for the popular sport fish, which state biologists say are in danger of disappearing.