Sturgeon Hatchery Funds Approved Bonners Ferry Facility Damaged By Heavy Snow Last Winter

The Northwest Power Planning Council on Wednesday approved spending $1.7 million for emergency rehabilitation of a North Idaho sturgeon hatchery that was damaged by heavy snow last winter.

The panel also endorsed a pared program for controlling squawfish in the Columbia River and its tributaries, focusing on a $3-per-fish bounty, and called for fisheries managers to continue seeking the most cost-effective way to keep predators from eating young salmon as they migrate.

The council rejected a request from those fisheries managers to recommend a $2 million, 90-day extension of funding for law enforcement programs by the Bonneville Power Administration targeting illegal catches of steelhead and salmon.

“It is the council’s collective judgment that continued law enforcement assistance is no longer an appropriate use of limited Bonneville ratepayer dollars,” said council Chairman John Etchart of Montana.

The BPA, the region’s federal electricity wholesaler, uses ratepayer money to implement power and fish and wildlife policies that are required by law to be consistent with plans developed by the Northwest Power Planning Council. The governors of Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Montana each appoint two members to the council.

On Wednesday the council considered requests from the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority - made up of state, tribal and federal fish managers - to reconsider some of last September’s recommendations for allocating the BPA’s $127 million annual budget for fish and wildlife programs.

The council, with new influence over how the money is spent on efforts to mitigate fish and wildlife losses from Northwest dams, is emphasizing efficiency and effectiveness by requiring more scientific justification for projects.

On Wednesday it unanimously approved a request from fisheries managers to recommend additional BPA funding to repair a sturgeon hatchery operated by the Kootenai Indian Tribe in Bonners Ferry.

The BPA sells electricity generated at Libby Dam in Montana, and the dam is on the Kootenai River, home of the endangered white sturgeon.

The tribe’s hatchery program recently gained more importance when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that hatchery-raised sturgeon are a key component of the short-term recovery plan for the fish.

The hatchery was built in 1991 as an experimental hatchery, not with the intention of raising large numbers of fish.

The roof of a new building at the Kootenai hatchery collapsed in January 1997 under the weight of heavy snow.

The building was designed to shield sturgeon from the snow or sun while in captivity during the spring spawning season.

Then, last summer, the tribe lost 150,000 sturgeon larvae when the hatchery system accidentally allowed too much chlorine into the fish tanks.

, DataTimes