Salmon Plan To Require Change In Dam Operations

The government has settled tentatively on a halfbillion-dollar plan to save endangered Northwest salmon by increasing water flows through the Snake and Columbia rivers at the expense of hydroelectric production, congressional sources said Wednesday.

Aides to three members of Congress said that the National Marine Fisheries Service is about to propose to a federal judge in Portland that controversial changes be made in the operation of the fish-killing dams. The proposal is to be announced next week, they said.

The aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the plan would require flushing some water out of storage reservoirs in Idaho and Montana and drawing down the reservoir level at one dam on the Columbia River to provide young salmon with additional flow needed to migrate to the sea.

That would mean less water would be available for churning the turbines on the hydroelectric dams that provide the region with more than half its electricity. It also could mean less water for irrigation farming and shipping.

“It will eat into our ability to produce power in the region,” especially in the winter months, one aide said Wednesday night.

Saving salmon would become a higher priority under the Fisheries Service plan being prepared in response to a federal court order, the aides said.

Currently, flood control is the first priority, followed by power production and “fish on down the ladder,” one aide said.

“Under this, flood control still would be first, but fish would come in second and power is maybe third,” the aide said.

Fisheries Service officials briefed some Congress members on the plans Tuesday and Wednesday.

All three aides said the proposal is subject to changes before a draft is scheduled to be made public on Monday. The plan would cost an estimated $120 million the first year, with annual costs rising as high as $165 million by the final year of the five-year plan, they said.

One of the biggest questions still unresolved is who would foot the bill for lost power. Northwest lawmakers in both parties argue federal taxpayers have a responsibility to help save the salmon. Otherwise, the costs would fall to electric ratepayers in the region, the aides said.

Government scientists say the hydroelectric dams are a primary cause of the dramatic decline in Northwest salmon populations in recent years.

In addition to inhibiting upstream travel for salmon returning to their home streams to spawn, the dams have slowed the downstream flows, making young salmon more susceptible to predators. In some cases, young salmon die because their gills begin changing from fresh to saltwater before they arrive in the ocean.

Fred Disheroon, the federal government’s lead attorney in the case, refused to comment Wednesday on details of the plan.

“If you want my opinion, I would say that yes, there will be significant changes in the hydroelectric system,” he said Wednesday. “But a lot of people might not agree whether they’ll be significant enough, and there probably will be some who say they are too significant. We’ll probably make everybody unhappy.”