Five reasons why the new Columbia-Snake salmon plan is a failure

Posted on October 31, 2007 | Filed Under Dam Removal, Northwest, River Renewal 

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director 

sockeye salmonThe Bush administration, under court order, released its latest plan for Columbia-Snake salmon, and — surprise! – it’s another dud.

The plan includes no real steps to help recover imperiled salmon runs, and does nothing to help the basin’s communities forge a better vision for the future.

For our big-picture thoughts about the situation, read today’s press statement.

For those of you interested in more details, here are our initial impressions of the most glaring shortcomings of the Bush administration’s plan:

1) The draft BiOp fails to sufficiently reduce the percentage of upriver salmon runs killed by the hydrosystem as juveniles.  Survival improvements through the hydrosystem appear to be marginal at best.  This is an especially big problem for the Snake River runs, as there is relatively little that can be done to improve their spawning and rearing habitat – many of these fish spawn and rear in near-pristine wilderness in central Idaho. 

We believe that removing the lower Snake River dams is the best way to reduce hydrosystem mortality, as replacing the dams’ benefits would be less disruptive in the long-run on the Northwest economy than annual implementation of “aggressive non-breach� actions involving extensive reservoir drawdowns, increased “spill,� and acquisition of large amounts of irrigation water for flow augmentation. 

Restoring a free-flowing river would also improve recreation opportunities like fishing, hunting and boating, along with overall quality of life for river communities.

In developing this draft, NOAA Fisheries refused to study either dam removal or aggressive non-breach actions.

2) The draft BiOp fails to take the likely regional effects of global warming into account.  It assumes that the period between 1980 and 2001, which generally featured below average ocean and river runoff conditions, is a reasonable surrogate for what the effects of climate change are likely to be. 

No basis is provided for this conclusion.  Given what the UW’s Climate Impacts Group and others have been saying, the future climate will likely be warmer (and “worse� for salmon) than late 20th century conditions.

3) It appears that the plan will cost around $700 million per year, despite the fact that it likely won’t to lead to the recovery of Snake River spring/summer chinook and steelhead, which are the fish with the most remaining intact spawning habitat in the Columbia Basin.  For the same amount of money, a more effective dam removal or aggressive non-breach plan could be implemented.

4) It fails to explain how minor tweaks to the hydrosystem will allow for the survival, let alone the recovery, of Snake River sockeye.  Only four sockeye returned this year (after three last year), and all were taken directly to a life-support hatchery that the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Independent Scientific Review Panel noted in 2006 was becoming less and less viable due to the effects of domestication and a lack of downstream survival improvements.

5) The federal agencies overstate the importance of the energy produced by the four dams on the lower Snake River. The reality is, when power demands in the region are highest, the lower Snake dams can be counted on for only 425-525 megawatts.  The power from these four dams can be affordably replaced through conservation and renewables.

The bottom line: we can remove these dams, revitalize communities, and enjoy a clean energy future in the Northwest.

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