Dam Operators Scuttle Plan To Aid Pend Oreille Kokanee
Lake Pend Oreille will not be kept at a higher level this winter, foiling an experiment to save kokanee salmon.
Sandpoint-area anglers and business owners had hoped the water would be kept 3 feet higher to help the lake’s most important sport fish.
That plan was scuttled by the owners of dams downstream in Washington. They would have lost money because less water would have been released from the lake - and unavailable to turn hydropower turbines - when the sale of that power was most valuable.
The Bonneville Power Administration, which sells power generated at federal dams, agreed to the experiment.
Public utility districts did not, according to Mike Field, an Idaho member of the Northwest Power Planning Council.
“We resolved the objections that Bonneville had, and that the Corps of Engineers had,” Field said Thursday. “We were not able to reach agreement with Pend Oreille County PUD, Seattle City Light, and the mid-Columbia PUDs.”
The cost of lost power was uncertain. It depends on how much water will flow into the river system this winter.
Field argued, unsuccessfully, that this would be a good year to begin the test because it is unusually wet so far.
Field promised that Idaho would be back pitching for the test in years that may be drier and more costly.
“We are disappointed, but our resolve has not been dashed.”
Some scientists employed by the utility districts and Indian tribes have argued that the Idaho Fish and Game Department has not offered enough proof that the experiment will work. Ken Casavant, the power council member representing Eastern Washington, has also raised doubts about the test.
Field and Casavant have agreed to reconvene a scientific team to review plans for the experiment, Field said, “so we can get input from our neighbors around the region.”
Kokanee are a land-locked salmon. Their numbers have plummeted since the Corps of Engineers began draining 11 feet of water from the lake each winter in the mid-1960s.
That left gravel spawning beds exposed, according to state biologists.
, DataTimes