Plans Don’t Include John Day Drawdown Corps Of Engineers Request Lists Dam Changes, More Barges

More barges, dam modifications and studies - but no John Day Dam reservoir drawdown - are called for in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ budget request for the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Drawdown of the 90-mile-long pool behind John Day Dam, on the Columbia River about 100 miles east of Portland is considered a key component to regional plans to help get more migrating juvenile salmon to the ocean more quickly each year.

One method of collecting fish to get them safely around dams without costly reservoir drawdowns will get another look this year, the corps said in releasing its budget request Thursday. The corps operates eight hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

But the administration’s proposed budget makes no mention of lowering the John Day pool, a plan supported by groups as diverse as Indian tribes and the Northwest Power Planning Council to Idaho’s Republican Gov. Phil Batt.

“Drawing down the John Day pool is the most important thing the federal government could be doing right now to save salmon,” said Lori Bodi of American Rivers in Seattle.

The plan is opposed by some regional lawmakers, who insist that studies be done of the drawdown’s effectiveness before giving approval. No drawdowns of reservoir pools are planned this year on the Columbia or Snake rivers.

The budget request calls for completion of two more barges used to transport juvenile salmon past dams, bringing the fleet to eight.

Bodi called the corps’ $127 million salmon budget - which includes numerous small salmon-saving projects - “mere tinkering.”

One such project is expansion of a prototype salmon collection system at Lower Granite Dam, corps fisheries biologist Dan Kenney said.

The $10 million “surface collector” is designed to divert fish away from powerhouse turbines and sweep them safely over the spillway.

The device was installed over three of the Snake River dam’s six turbine intakes last spring, but the test was disappointing because of poor river conditions and the fact that many fish apparently swam around or under the 65-foot-deep collector.

The plan is to expand the collector over a fourth turbine intake and extend it deeper below the surface, then channel the fish into the device using a floating plastic curtain.

The $43.4 million fish program for the Walla Walla District includes:

Continued studies of fish passage through corps dams, including potential benefits of drawdowns and ways to abate harmful gases that are formed when water goes over dams.

Modifications of screens that divert fish away from turbines at Lower Granite and Little Goose on the Lower Snake River and McNary Dam on the Columbia.

Installation of fish ladder water temperature controls at Lower Granite and Little Goose dams.

Completion of spillway deflectors at Ice Harbor Dam to lower levels of dissolved gases in water.