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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Government Opts To Barge At Least Half Chinook Smolts

Associated Press

Despite opposition, federal officials decided Friday to barge at least half the Snake River chinook salmon smolts downriver this spring, the same number barged last year on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

The Clinton administration’s Salmon Executive Committee, meeting in Portland, rejected a proposal from Idaho and the Columbia River tribes to barge no more than 42 percent when the smolts start migrating this month.

A National Marine Fisheries Service spokesman said the agency still is studying which method of getting young salmon to sea works best, and didn’t want to risk barging fewer fish without more data.

“In spite of what people may say, there is not yet any scientific evidence that we are comfortable with that says unequivocally that barging is the best thing to do for fish under all circumstances,” said NMFS spokesman Brian Gorman.

“That’s why we’re going this spread-the-risk approach to dividing fish up between transporting them and spilling them in the first place.”

The four Columbia River tribes and the state of Idaho wanted the migrating fish to take advantage of this year’s unusually high snowmelt runoff, which would flush them to sea. They argued that similar river conditions in the early 1980s, when about 73 percent of smolts migrated downriver, contributed to high return numbers two to three years later.

“They think there’s a really good chance that in-river channel is going to be way better than barging conditions,” said Rick Taylor, spokesman of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

Idaho also was concerned that if up to 60 percent of the chinook smolts are barged, about 85 percent of steelhead smolts would tag along on the barges past the dam farthest downstream - Bonneville Dam - about 40 miles east of Portland. They advocated barging 54 percent of steelhead.

But commercial users of the river say this year’s high flows could hurt salmon.

“High flows means high involuntary spills at dams. That means high dissolved gas rates, which means high mortality rates,” said Bruce Lovelin, executive director of the Columbia River Alliance.

“We think it makes no sense to leave fish in a river that will be lethal at certain times this year.”

Barging fewer smolts would not have disrupted the river’s commercial traffic, but river users are concerned they’ll end up paying more for salmon restoration efforts when less barging doesn’t work.

If the barging percentage was set lower than 50 percent, the Alliance would have considered a lawsuit, Lovelin said.

“We feel our head is in the noose, and until such time as these salmon do recover, we’re going to be on the dime,” Lovelin said. “From an economic perspective, we want to use our dollars in the best manner possible. This just doesn’t make any sense.”

Environmentalists say barging has failed to reverse, and in some cases contributed to, the downward spiral of the salmon populations. They say the barges help transmit disease, weaken the fish and disorient them so they can’t find their way back up stream on return migration from the ocean.

Utilities opposed keeping the majority of migrating fish in the river because it would divert water away from hydropower production.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Portland upheld the legality of the government’s salmon protection efforts, but questioned whether they would save the fish from extinction. Three Snake River salmon species have been listed under the Endangered Species Act, and others are under review.

The endangered Snake River sockeye salmon and threatened Snake River spring-summer chinook start migrating this month. The threatened Snake River fall chinook begin migration in June.

The Salmon Executive Committee is led by William Stelle, Northwest regional director for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle, and consists of tribal leaders, state and federal representatives, including the Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.