Utility Managers Warn Of Outages Agency Insists Fish Plan Won’t Leave Anyone `Freezing In The Dark’

The government is about to pull the plug on the Northwest’s reliable hydropower supply, say utility company managers.

In drought years, they claim, power outages could result when water is stored to help endangered salmon rather than released through dam powerhouses.

“In some years, it would be impossible to buy enough replacement power to make up the deficit; blackouts or curtailments would result,” said industry spokesman Al Wright.

But officials at the National Marine Fisheries Service insist their plan to restore wild salmon won’t leave anyone “freezing in the dark.”

Agency biologists are convinced that holding water back for release in the spring will help young salmon survive by flushing them more quickly to the ocean. That means less water would be drained from Columbia River Basin reservoirs every winter.

So when the need for light and heat is greatest, there would be less water available to spin turbines at federal dams.

That power is sold to many utility companies, including Inland Power & Light, Kootenai Electric Cooperative and Northern Lights. It’s highly unlikely that salmon recovery efforts will affect the power supply of Washington Water Power Co., which operates its own dams.

The people who buy federal power and sell it to businesses and residents contend the radical change in winter water storage won’t help the fish. In a worst-case year of low water supplies, they say, the tactic would reduce winter power generation by 5,500 megawatts.

That’s nearly half of the energy the river system produces now.

Even an industry analyst’s “middle of the road” estimate would be a loss of 2,000 megawatts. That’s more than Seattle and Portland’s combined use in the fall and winter.

That number is four times higher than the one computed by the staff of the Northwest Power Planning Council. They estimate the fisheries service plan would result in a 500-megawatt loss.

“Will there be more frequent or longer outages? Will we have more trouble meeting the peak demands at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.? I don’t think so,” said analyst John Fazio.

Besides, he added, the fisheries service strategy includes an “escape clause” allowing water to be released in emergency situations, such as loss of a transmission line.

“I think a drought year in cold weather would qualify,” Fazio said.

The council was created by Congress in 1980 to restore salmon runs while protecting the region’s reliable power supply. Its latest salmon strategy calls for phasing out “salmon flush” in favor of Snake River reservoir drawdowns - another expensive tactic, but one which would speed up water with less disruption to power supplies.

Environmentalists like the drawdown approach. The utility industry doesn’t like drawdowns or the salmon flush. Either tactic will raise power rates.

Every interest group is pushing for changes in the “biological opinion” that the National Marine Fisheries Service will finalize this month. If a federal judge approves the opinion, it will become a key part of the Snake River salmon recovery plan.

The fisheries service never meant to jeopardize power supplies, said assistant regional director Donna Darm. She noted that the Endangered Species Act requires recovery actions to be “reasonable and prudent.”

An alternative to releasing more water is cutting back on the amount of energy sold at a discount to energy-hungry aluminum companies. There’s debate over that, said Darm.

There is general agreement that the Northwest, with its growing population, will have to find other sources of power. If enough energy isn’t available for purchase from outside the region, it must be generated here.

MEMO: A longer version of this story ran in the Thursday, February 23, 1995 Spokane edition of the Spokesman-Review.