Montana’s Deal With Feds Puts Off Lawsuit Over Salmon Officials Agree How Much Water To Release To Help River Systems

Montana reached a compromise Saturday with federal officials that staves off a lawsuit over how much water will be released from Lake Koocanusa to help salmon in the Columbia and Snake river systems.

Andrew Malcolm, Gov. Marc Racicot’s press secretary, said the National Marine Fisheries Service agreed at 5:20 a.m. Saturday not to raise the rate to 20,000 cubic feet per second, but to keep it at 16,000 cfs until Aug. 15.

“Then they’re going to drop it back drastically to letting out only what’s coming in,” Malcolm said.

“So Lake Koocanusa will hold steady.”

The increase to 20,000 cfs, which state officials said would damage recreation, fish and other aquatic life in Montana rivers, was supposed to begin at 8 a.m Saturday.

The release had escalated from 4,000 cfs since Thursday, when the Fisheries Service abruptly withdrew from long-running negotiations with the state.

“Our position had been that we thought the water flowing out of Libby Dam should be at 12,000 cubic feet per second, but as a sign of good faith we would live for a brief period at 16,” Malcolm said.

“The feds said they wanted it at 20.”

The 12,000 cfs rate had been recommended by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

“This is a temporary settlement, which the governor is determined to push to a conclusion,” Malcolm said.

He said the Fisheries Service had agreed to hire a facilitator to monitor negotiations with the state “over the next several months.”

The compromise came after direct talks on Friday between Racicot and Justice Department lawyers in Washington, D.C., Malcolm said.

Both of Montana’s U.S. senators, Democrat Max Baucus and Republican Conrad Burns, got into the argument in Washington on the state’s side.

Baucus called the compromise a temporary victory.

“We are still dealing with a situation where federal officials in Seattle and Washington, D.C., have the final say over how our reservoirs are operated,” Baucus said in a news release.

“Over the next month I intend to work on a final solution that allows Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, rather than the National Marine Fisheries Service and other federal officials, to have the final say in how we operate our dams to recover salmon.”

Malcolm said the Fisheries Service also had agreed to release no additional water from Hungry Horse dam, and that releases will be made at various levels rather than all from the dam’s bottom outlets.

“Our concern there is that letting water out … at the bottom is the coldest water,” he said.

“The lake trout love the colder water, and they follow the cold water and eat our bull trout.”

Lake Koocanusa, which straddles the U.S-Canada border, is formed by Libby Dan on the Kootenai River.