More Water To Help Run Of Steelhead

Sat., March 21, 1998

Associated Press

The National Marine Fisheries Service on Friday released a draft biological opinion for steelhead that says the amount of water spilled at the dams will rise to move the young ocean-run fish rapidly past the turbines.

The draft, sent to state and tribal managers, calls for spreading the risk to the fish by barging some of them past the hydroelectric dams and letting others migrate over the spillways.

Steelhead in the upper Columbia and Snake River are listed under the Endangered Species Act, which requires the fisheries service to write a biological opinion.

Fisheries Service spokesman Brian Gorman said he did not have figures on the percentage of fish barged, compared with the spill method. The latest opinion builds on one written for Idaho’s salmon in 1995.

Under the proposal, the amount of water spilled would be increased - curtailed only when state-mandated dissolved-gas standards below the dams were reached. Higher water flows create more dissolved gas in the water and that can be fatal to the fish, causing them to suffer the “bends” as divers do.

The draft also would establish a new flow regime for the mid-Columbia reach of 135,000 cubic feet per second to help the steelhead migrate.

The agency said that in following a spread-the-risk policy, the juvenile fish would continue to be barged around Lower Granite, Little Goose and Lower Monumental dams on the lower Snake.

This month, an independent scientific panel appointed by the Northwest Power Planning Council to study saving salmon and steelhead flatly rejected the recommendation of the Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration to increase barging. The panel said trucking fish dams should be stopped immediately.

Mitch Sanchotena of Idaho Steelhead and Salmon Unlimited said the latest guidelines do not appear to be a true spread-the-risk equation because the steelhead still are transported past the Snake River dams.

Increased water spilled over the dams will result in less water for power generation, and a higher cost to ratepayers in the Northwest, warned Bruce Lovelin, director of the Columbia River Alliance industry group.

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