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Opinion Adds Ammo to Dam's Foes by Beth Quinn, Correspondent The Oregonian, February 1, 2001

A report says breaching the Elk Creek Dam is vital to threatened coho in the Rogue River tributary

GRANTS PASS -- Attempting to improve fish passage at Elk Creek Dam by any means other than breaching the half-completed dam puts some endangered Rogue River coho salmon in danger of extinction, federal fisheries officials say.

In an endangered species act biological opinion issued last week, the National Marine Fisheries Service told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that continuing to trap and haul fish around the 83-foot-tall dam -- even with a new $8 million trap-haul system --also would destroy habitat critical to the threatened coho and degrade habitat essential to chinook salmon.

Conservationists hailed the finding, which bolsters the corps' 1997 decision to notch the dam 30 miles north of Medford.

"I think the fact that the National Marine Fisheries Service has said that this dam is illegally killing coho should be very persuasive politically," said Pete Frost of the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene. "This dam is illegal. It's time for political leaders to step up to the plate and provide the corps with the money it needs to breach the dam and comply with the law."

Local political pressure has kept Congress from funding dam-breaching, but the corps plans to ask again, said Heidi Helwig, a corps spokeswoman.

"The first thing we're going to do is report back to Congress on the biological opinion and then seek funding to do the modification to the dam," she said. "After we do that, we'll wait to hear from Congress. If the notch were created, then you have a no jeopardy, which means that endangered species would not be harmed."

First authorized in 1962 as part of a three-dam, flood-control project on the Rogue River, the Elk Creek Dam was stopped by a federal court in injunction in 1987 for the corps' failure to assess the dam's impact on Rogue River fish. In 1995, the corps abandoned the project after spending $100 million, and two years it later proposed partial demolition to enhance fish passage. Since 1987, crews have been trapping salmon and steelhead at the base of the dam, hauling them in trucks upstream and releasing them to reach spawning habitat.

Jackson County Commissioner Ric Holt vowed to oppose any attempt to dismantle the mothballed dam, which he said should be completed to generate power, provide water and avert floods.

"They'll have one hell of a fight on their hands," he said. "You think chaining to log trucks was in vogue back when, you ain't seen nothing yet. There's . . . a lot of people out there who will stand up for that dam at almost any cost."

But conservationists plan to continue their quest to reopen Elk Creek to in-stream fish passage, noting that the dam was not designed for hydropower or water storage and that it blocks access to 40 percent of the suitable spawning habitat for coho.

"That little basin is tremendously important for recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Rogue River," said Wendell Wood of the Oregon Natural Resources Council. "It is the classic in terms of a boondoggle, pork-barrel-type project. Some projects are real turkeys, and they should never have been built."