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Report Says 2001 Spill Program Shortchanged Fish by Barry Espenson Columbia Basin Bulletin - December 7, 2001

Spilling more water through Columbia-Snake river hydro projects to aid juvenile salmon migrations during this past summer's severe drought was possible, and affordable, according to a report released this week by a coalition of fishing and conservation groups.

The report says that by increasing "spill" during the summer of 2001, the Bonneville Power Administration could have greatly improved survival of in-river salmon and steelhead migrants at a cost of less than a dollar per month for most residential ratepayers that receive federal power.

That may be true, but decision-makers last spring and summer faced many risks and did not have the benefit of a crystal ball when they opted to declare a "power emergency" and forego most fish spill, according to a BPA spokesman.

The Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition report focuses on the federal agency which markets power produced by federal dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers. The report, based on analysis provided by Steve Weiss of the Northwest Energy Coalition, says that less than 20 percent of the spill called for in federal salmon recovery plans was delivered last spring and summer.

BPA instead ordered nearly all the water coursing down the river system be run through turbines to generate electricity, according to a SOS press release. Water passed through hydrosystem spill gates is considered by most as the safest method of in-river passage for young salmon. Spilled water cannot be used, however, to spin power generating turbines at the dams.

"If BPA had given salmon only half the spill this summer that the new federal salmon plan requires, it would have cost an average Seattle home 19 cents a month for one year, or $2.38 total for the year," said Nicole Cordan, of the SOS.

"It would have cost the average Portland General Electric home 38 cents a month, or $4.56 for the whole year. That spill would have helped migrating salmon that really needed help in a terrible drought year, and we could have afforded it. Yet BPA said no," Cordan added.

That affordable alternative was made possible when a Western wholesale power market that had run amok during late winter and spring suddenly settled into a range closer to recent price averages. Prices that had reached $200 per megawatt hour and more dropped into the $30-40 range to make the purchase of any needed replacement power -- for water spilled -- less costly.

"In the months of June, July and August, the price of purchasing power on the market to make up for lost generation through spill was well within BPA's financial means," according to the report. "For only $112 million ($57 million in June, $34 million in July, and only $19 million in August) in power purchases, BPA could have allowed full spill, as required by the federal salmon recovery plan. For a federal agency with a total net revenue nearing $3 billion, $112 million is well within reason."

BPA officially declared a power emergency April 3 as spring chinook salmon outmigrations were beginning. The emergency was declared by BPA administrator Steve Wright as the agency faced projected West Coast power shortages, high wholesale electricity prices and forecasts of the second-lowest Columbia Basin system water runoff on record. The situation threatened the reliability of the region's electricity system and the agency's financial stability, officials said.

At that point, executives of five federal agencies took over control of the Columbia River hydroelectric system and operated it largely to meet power needs. During the six-month power emergency, the federal executives cut off spill at lower Snake River dams and instead barged all juvenile salmon that typically pass through those dams to Bonneville Dam. It has been estimated that more than 80 percent of the Snake River migrants were transported to below Bonneville Dam.

The SOS says that BPA claimed the drought and high energy prices left no choice but to ignore the salmon plan. The report says that that claim was wrong, especially in the summer when energy prices came back down to nearer-normal levels.

"It's almost a waste of breath to answer a charge like that," said Ed Mosey, a BPA spokesman. The agency would have been irresponsible to let the Northwest power system's reliability hinge totally on the ability to purchase power on the open market at the last minute.

"We didn't know if we could purchase power, at any price," Mosey said of the agency's assessment. Spilling, then depending on the market for replacement power did not seem like a promising option in April.

The agency could have ended up paying exorbitant power prices, gone without expensive purchases and, perhaps, experienced blackouts, "or we could have gotten lucky," Mosey said of the April prospects for reduced power prices. "And the lower probability was that we'd get lucky."

"They (SOS) are using an awful lot of hindsight -- but even their hindsight is myopic," Mosey said.

"It all goes back to how much risk you're willing to take with the power supply," said John Harrison, a Northwest Power Planning Council spokesman. The Council last spring and summer urged that BPA and federal hydro operators spill, but only to the degree that it could maintain system reliability. That reliability includes holding enough water in upstream reservoirs to assure a supply of water, and generation, this fall and winter to minimize the chance of power blackouts.

The lack of spill and low flow, combined with near-record drought in the region, left chinook salmon survival from the lower Snake River to Bonneville Dam on the Columbia at 30 percent, and steelhead survival was just 4 percent - both more 20 percent lower than in 2000, according to SOS.

At the same time, adult salmon and steelhead returns during 2001 approached, and in some cases established, historic record highs. Anglers, guides and outfitters from the Pacific coast inland to Idaho reaped the reward of favorable river and ocean conditions in 1999 and 2000.

But the damage caused to 2001 juvenile migration has fishers and fishing businesses bracing for bad years down the road, SOS said. Salmon and steelhead out-migrants of 2001 will return to the basin primarily in 2003 and 2004.

"BPA wrote off this year's juvenile salmon and set back recovery efforts, all for nothing," said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

"This year's salmon massacre did not have to happen, and could easily have been avoided at minimal cost. As this report shows, all it would have taken was a little effort. Instead, BPA chose to hand us a future of more lost fishing jobs, more coastal unemployment and greater risk of extinction," Spain said

Conservation groups said the failure to implement required salmon measures are the heart of a broader federal failure to implement a new federal salmon recovery plan described in a December 2000 National Marine Fisheries Service biological opinion on Columbia/Snake basin hydrosystem operations.

"BPA failed the salmon and people of the Northwest by abdicating its responsibility to implement the federal salmon plan, including essential flow and spill for migrating salmon this past spring," said Bill Arthur of the Sierra Club in Seattle. "BPA had options and choices they refused to make that would have benefited the salmon. Those failures now set up the region for more costly and difficult actions in the future."

Salmon advocates have long maintained that further salmon extinctions will occur within 20 years unless the region, federal agencies and lawmakers commit to implementing real measures to reverse the salmon's decline. The groups say the legal, financial and moral costs associated with such extinctions would dwarf the modest expenditures BPA refused to make this year.

The report concludes by calling on BPA to pledge that in 2002 it will comply with the river flow and salmon spill provisions of the federal plan.

"As a region, we've grown accustomed to learning tough lessons from our mistakes when it comes to our irreplaceable salmon resources, and unfortunately, it tends to take several years, another few hundred thousand fewer fish, and several thousand fewer salmon jobs before we catch on," said Jeff Curtis of Trout Unlimited. "As bad as this past migration season was, we need to commit, and we need Bonneville Power Administration to commit, not to repeat these same mistakes in 2002."

Related Links:
Save Our Wild Salmon