SalmonThreatenedByUSplan

By JOE GROSSMAN, UPI Science News

PORTLAND, Ore., April 14, (UPI)-- As the Pacific Northwest struggles with one of the worst droughts in 70 years, a far-reaching water plan made public Friday has elicited blistering criticism from a broad spectrum of groups concerned about endangered salmon. The plan proposes that no water be released this year from reservoirs in order to create the river current young salmon need to get downstream to the ocean.

Nine Federal agencies have been meeting for months to create the plan, which was finalized Friday morning just minutes before a meeting at the Sheraton Portland Airport Hotel to make the plan public.

Thirty-two dams affect water supply in the Columbia River Basin, but the eight key dams on the Columbia and Lower Snake Rivers are controlled by the federally owned hydroelectricity producer, Bonneville Power Authority (BPA). The four uppermost BPA dams create a lake 140 miles long. The water current that is critical if juvenile salmon are to migrate to the ocean is not present unless artificially created by spilling water at BPA dams.

When fresh water salmon have matured enough to survive salt water, they allow themselves to be carried down to the ocean by the river current where they mature. Years later they swim up rivers and streams to the exact spot where they hatched, in order to spawn in one of the thousands of tributaries throughout Washington, Oregon and stretching deep into Idaho.

The endangered Snake River Sockeye salmon swim nearly 1000 miles to spawn in a critical habitat of 510 square miles of hundreds of mountain streams and creeks.

Some critics have said the Bonneville Power Authority should purchase water from Canada or Idaho and sell the power generated to free-up water for salmon spill. But according to BPA chief press officer, Ed Mosey, purchasing water is not an option.

"Canada is in bad shape as well. They are expecting to have difficulty in meeting their own loads. Buying water from Idaho or the Snake River Basin is not an option. It's less than 60 percent of precip(itation) all through the Snake and Upper Columbia Basins where our water comes from. We're looking at 50 percent of normal water throughout the Basin," Mosey told United Press International.

The cost of spilling water to create the current for the salmon is projected at $1.5 billion, about 100 dollars per person per year in the region. Mosey says spilling would bankrupt BPA."Our reserves would be totally depleted and we'd be missing our treasury payments," he said.

BPA owes billions to the Federal Government borrowed to build its dam system and pays $600 million a year in debt service to the United States treasury. BPA also has a bond debt of about $7 billion from a disastrous nuclear power venture that failed 25 years ago.

Four Native American tribes, the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama, who fished for salmon in the area for centuries before the arrival of Europeans, are sharply critical of the plan not to spill water. The tribes have strong fishing rights guaranteed by treaty and rely on the salmon runs for income.

Charles Hudson, spokesperson for the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, representing the four tribes, spoke with UPI. "There's been a water grab, a water seizure. The river has been declared a cash register for BPA at the expense of the lives of salmon. It's a disgrace. . . . The fact that aluminum companies are buying and selling electricity to profiteer is indicative of the smash and grab economics that have ruled the river for decades," Hudson said.

The eleven industrial purchasers of BPA electricity, almost all aluminum manufacturers, have made more than $1 billion reselling electricity to the highest bidder on power purchased cheaply from BPA on long term contracts. The Federal government has refused to outlaw the profiteering, in which some companies are taking 2000 percent markups, when re-selling to utility companies.

Brian Gorman, spokesperson for the National Marine Fisheries Service was not critical of his fellow Federal agency, the BPA: "We don't have enough water to run the hydroelectric system in the Columbia River Basin. This is a situation where we all have to make some compromises." Six years ago, National Marine Fisheries issued a court-ordered opinion in which they stated that spilling water was necessary for the salmon's survival.

"Bonneville has made enormous strides in trying to provide as much protection for fish as it can but it has other obligations, as well. We're all aware that there just isn't enough water to go around," Gorman said. Gorman believes that the barge transport method of loading millions of juvenile fish into barges and taking them down the river is effective, a view not shared by groups critical of the Federal agencies' plan.

Gorman estimates a loss about 15 percent beyond a normal year, while Sierra Club spokesperson Bill Arthur and Glen Spain, who represents thousands of small operation commercial fishermen, say 95 percent of the run could be lost. "The view of biologists is that one bad year for the salmon does not mean the end of salmon for the Pacific Northwest. It just means one bad year," Gorman said.

Glen Spain, regional director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, told UPI, "We're talking about a massacre here that is unnecessary and counterproductive and will set back the salmon recovery effort for years to come.

When you kill a year-class that means that very few adults come back to spawn and the stocks are depressed for several generations," Spain said.

John Kober, northwest regional organizer for the National Wildlife Federation, told UPI, "The agencies have been scrambling to substantiate why they aren't going to do anything for fish this year. But clearly they're going to do everything they can for power."

(Reported by Joe Grossman in California.)