19 March
2003
Media Contact:
Bob Heinith, CRITFC,
(503) 731-1289
Charles Hudson, CRITFC, (503) 731-1257
The entire 2003 River Operations Plan is available online. Go |
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CRITFC's 2003 River Operations
Plan seeks protection during drought
Higher river temperatures
mean an earlier migration for a banner year of juvenile migrants
Portland, Oregon
- Unusually warm,
drought-driven river temperatures will force tens of millions of baby
salmon downstream much earlier this year, and scientists say steps
must be taken now to prepare the Columbia River hydrosystem for their
journey.
The 2003 River Operations Plan, developed by the Columbia River Inter-Tribal
Fish Commission and released this week, seeks improvements in the
operation of Columbia Basin dams so they are more biologically favorable
to the 35 million to 40 million fall chinook salmon smolts expected
to depart the Hanford Reach for the ocean in the coming weeks. That’s
a 40 percent to 60 percent jump in the smolt population from normal
out-migration counts.
There also are an estimated 24 million spring and summer chinook smolts
coming out of the lower Snake River and some 2.2 million sockeye smolts
leaving the Okanogan River in Canada and north central Washington.
Next year, the sockeye migration is only expected to have about 200,000
migrants.
“ We’re in an another drought year. It’s not as
bad as 2001. It’s part way between 2001 and normal,” said
Bob Heinith, CRITFC hydro program coordinator and the plan’s
principal author. “River temperatures are much higher and we
have a lot more fish coming out of the basin earlier this year, from
record numbers of adults in the last two years. We need to protect
this productivity Mother Nature provided during good flow years and
ocean conditions by safely speeding these juvenile salmon out of the
river to take advantage of still fairly good ocean conditions.”
The plan recommends that federal dam operators reshape the hydrograph
of the Federal Columbia River Power System by using runoff and reservoir
stores to create an earlier “peaking” or “normative”
flow regime that more closely mimics the river’s pre-dam natural
flows.
In such a scenario, “drafts” or releases of water through
the dams are gradually increased in volume beginning the week of March
24 to March 30 to a peak the week of May 26 to June 1.
Such a peaking hydrograph “will get smolts more quickly to the
ocean and create attraction flows to get the adults upstream to their
native spawning grounds,” Heinith said. “It creates a
plume of fresh water with sediments in the near-shore ocean environment,
which protects juveniles from predators and attracts adults to the
river entrance.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service’s 2000 Biological Opinion
only requires a hydrograph that climbs sharply in early April, but
then flat-lines through the rest of the spring and summer.
Peaking the hydrograph also creates more habitat throughout the river’s
mainstem and in the estuaries, the critical lower reaches that provide
resting places and plentiful food supplies during the salmon’s
journey to and from the ocean.
“It sets the best conditions for successful salmon emigration
and immigration,” he said.
In addition to the peaked hydrograph, the River Operations Plan seeks
restrictions on the frequency that dam operators run the river up
and down through the dams based on daily energy needs. Heinith said
this proposal would “smooth out the daily bumps” of what’s
termed “power peaking or load following.”
“Because there are so many fish susceptible to stranding in
the Hanford Reach, we’re advocating a really restrictive spill
regime this year to federal operators and the public utility districts,”
he said.
The CRITFC plan advocates a more robust spill program — 24 hours
— than that called for in the Biological Opinion, which limits
spill at most dams to 12 hours at night. While studies have shown
that juvenile fish pass dams during the day and at night, the Biological
Opinion only requires nighttime spill at many federal dams, which
saves daytime energy production.
In fact, due to the Bonneville Power Administration’s 2003 financial
crisis, federal agencies, including the National Marine Fisheries
Service, are even exploring reduction of lower river spill and not
providing any spill in the lower Snake River this year.
“As we saw with the 2001 migration when we had only single-digit
survival through the hydrosystem, combining drought conditions with
reduced or no spill would establish terrible migration conditions
for the record number of juvenile migrants headed to sea,” Heinith
said.
The Biological Opinion’s spill period runs from April 10 to
August 31, but the River Operations Plan period would extend from
March 20 to Sept. 15 to accommodate this year’s larger fish
run.
Another area of concern that the River Operations Plan addresses is
actual “nuts and bolts” operations and maintenance issues,
such as how far the spill gate should be lifted and how many spare
parts are on hand at any given time to repair a fish ladder or other
structure critical to the salmon’s safe passage.
Heinith recalls a 1997 incident in which debris and heavy flows blew
out diffusion screens in the adult fish ladder at the Bonneville Dam,
shutting down the fishway during the peak of the adult migration upstream.
Lack of planning and spare parts can immobilize fish passage structures
and set up passage barriers for migrating salmon and steelhead.
The plan’s operations and maintenance component “is to
assure that if something breaks down, there’s a backup that’s
ready to go, in terms of material and parts, that can be brought on
line very quickly and efficiently,” he said.
The plan also calls for continuing the Corps of Engineers’ partnership
with the Earth Conservation Salmon Corps to train Salmon Corps members
in helping with fish facility inspections at the dams. In operating
29 dams of the Federal Columbia River Power System, the Corps can
often find its hands full, and has welcomed the help in the past.
“Funding is limited for inspections, like other salmon funding
these days,” Heinith said.
Kyle Martin, a CRITFC hydrologist, presented the River Operations
Plan today at a meeting of the Technical Management Team, a group
of federal dam operators, energy marketers and salmon managers who
discuss technical issues of the Federal Columbia River Power System.
A committee of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Adaptive
Management Forum, the team — as well as the forum itself —
have made the “honest exchange of information and decision making”
difficult for CRITFC and its member tribes.
“Some sort of other forum needs to be set up so there can be
honest engagement on decision making between fisheries and dam managers,”
Heinith said. “We’ve suggested going to the Columbia Basin
Fish and Wildlife Authority on such issues.”
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About CRITFC
The Portland-based Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission is
the technical support and coordinating agency for fishery management
policies of the Columbia River Basin's four treaty tribes: the Confederated
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes
of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes
and Bands of the Yakama Nation and the Nez Perce Tribe.
CRITFC, formed in 1977, employs biologists, other scientists, public
information specialists, policy analysts and administrators who work
in fisheries research and analyses, advocacy, planning and coordination,
harvest control and law enforcement. |
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