A Fair Shake For Salmon Communities

MYTH

FACT

The coalition's injunction would devastate the Pacific Northwest's economy by crippling irrigation, barge transportation, and driving up electricity costs (especially for large industrial users).

The coalition filed the injunction request because we have a responsibility to protect and enhance our Northwest way of life, which includes stable jobs, healthy food, good fishing, abundant salmon populations and outdoor places for our families to enjoy. Restoring self-sustaining, harvestable populations of salmon to the Northwest will be an economic boon of more than $6 billion per year. This injunction seeks a balanced approach to salmon recovery: rather than asking federal agencies to meet the salmon plan's flow targets in this low water year, the coalition's injunction asks for just a 10% improvement in river flow conditions. The region cannot afford to leave the multi-billion dollar salmon economy high and dry and put more than 30,000 family-wage jobs at risk.

The coalition's request for increased spill over the federal dams would cost $100 million.

An NW Energy Coalition analysis concludes that the combined spill and flow additions sought by the injunction would result in a loss of revenue for BPA of about $43.3 million in 2005. For the average residential electric consumer, that translates into as little as 11 cents to no more than 54 cents per month extra on the monthly bill this year. Looking at spill alone (without additional flows), the cost to ratepayers would only be slightly higher.

Additionally, the Northwest has a surplus of energy resources, including ample amounts of cost-effective energy efficiency as well as renewable energy. Reducing our dependence on hydropower by investing in clean energy will help insulate the region from the harsh economic effects of recurring droughts while aiding salmon recovery.

Salmon runs in the Columbia River have reached record levels. There is no need to worry or to put in place special salmon protections. The actions already taken are working to restore salmon throughout the federal hydrosystem.

Recent salmon returns have been higher than in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite these returns (which consist mostly of hatchery-reared salmon, not wild fish needed for self-sustaining populations), salmon returns are nowhere near the level that the government itself says is needed for salmon recovery. In fact, since reaching so-called “record” levels in 2001, most Snake River populations have dropped significantly. Spring/summer and fall chinook, for example, have declined by more than 50% since 2001. The 2005 return of Columbia and Snake River Basin spring chinook was drastically below what was predicted -- a severe decline even from last year. This year's spring/summer chinook returns have plummeted to levels similar to those of the 1990s when the fish was listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act. The intent of the coalition's request is to ensure that high salmon returns are the norm, not fleeting visions.

The coalition's request won't actually save more fish. Instead, the injunction is based on old science that won't help fish.

This is simply untrue. Analysis by tribal fish managers indicates that the coalition's request would significantly increase salmon survival in the basin compared to the 2004 federal salmon plan. Increasing spill alone could increase salmon survival by at least about 50%.

The primary intent of the coalition's request is to increase fish survival by getting salmon through the hydrosystem faster and safer. This approach is supported by a mountain of the best available scientific evidence from federal, state and tribal biologists and is, in fact, the main objective of the federal Salmon Plan's hydrosystem measures. There simply is no more effective way to help salmon than to ensure that they reach the ocean safely. The tools identified in the request – meeting river flow/water velocity targets, spill, reducing fish transportation – are the very tools salmon biology experts, including the Independent Scientific Advisory Board, say are needed to improve salmon survival, and have been a part of regional salmon restoration strategies for at least the last two decades. The problem is that these measures often do not get implemented, particularly in a low-water year.

The coalition's request requires the drawdown of all reservoirs on the Snake and Columbia rivers, devastating river transportation and costing hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars to the regional economy.

The coalition's request does not require the drawdown of any dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers. The request merely requires a 10% improvement in how quickly the river water flows downstream.

Achieving that goal cost-effectively might call for a few feet of drawdown at one or two dam reservoirs on the Columbia River, but not to below-minimum operating pools. On the Snake River, the Lower Granite Dam may need to be drawn down a bit farther, potentially interrupting commercial transportation above that dam for July and August. Under the worst-case scenario, this would mean interrupting transportation of commercial goods on the lower Snake River to and from Lewiston for two months. Transportation of goods at ports below Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River and at all ports on the Columbia River would be unaffected.

Few goods are shipped on the river during these months. For example, nearly 66% of the wheat and barley crop is shipped out from September through February, and less than 10% of the wheat shipped on the lower Snake River uses the Lower Granite pool in July and August.

There is still time to plan for any such interruption by shipping early, storing grain for later shipping, pre-positioning cargo and using the railroads that say that they can carry the goods from Lewiston to outgoing ports at cost-effective prices.

The coalition's request would require the drawdown of the Columbia River dams, devastating irrigation communities.

Again, the coalition's request does not require the drawdown of any reservoirs on the Snake or Columbia rivers. It merely requires the federal agencies to find a way to improve river velocity by 10%.

To meet that improvement standard in a cost-effective manner, some dams on the Snake and Columbia river may need to be drawn down several feet, but none of the reservoirs have to be drawn down to a degree that would harm irrigators' abilities to withdraw water from these rivers.

The request will require the drawdown of Montana reservoirs in a way that would adversely impact Montana's endangered fisheries.

The request doesn't require any specific measures for meeting the 10% improvement. And more specifically, it states that the 10% improvement should be done in a manner that will not adversely affect other imperiled resources. The coalition is eager to find a balance between upriver and downriver endangered fish so that protecting one does not mean abandoning the other.

The coalition's request will actually harm fish. In years when river levels throughout the salmon migration are likely to be as low as they are this year, science dictates that the best approach for salmon and steelhead is to take them out of the river and put them on barges and trucks.

The request is likely to significantly increase salmon survival.

Science to date is at best inconclusive on whether transporting fish helps them or hurts them. That's why fish biologists across the region -- tribal, state, federal -- and the Power Council have endorsed a “spread-the-risk approach” of putting some salmon in trucks and barges and allowing others to make their way to the ocean in the river. The request would allow this approach.

Additionally, instead of leaving salmon and steelhead in the river without improving river conditions, the coalition's request sets out a mechanism for increasing spill and increasing river flow. So the request, if implemented, would make the in-river travel safer for the salmon than in previous years.

The coalition's request to move salmon through the federal dams faster would require and additional 2 million acre feet of water from Canada and an additional 430 million acre feet of water from the Upper Snake River Basin. There simply is no way this amount of water can be found in this dry water year. The coalition's request is simply undoable.

The coalition's request to improve river conditions in the Snake and Columbia is not only doable; it is necessary to help salmon businesses and communities in this drought year. In the Columbia, less than 1.0 MAF of water beyond that already planned would need to put into the river. The upper Columbia Basin's water resources can provide this amount of water – which then could be used to produce more electricity for the region. That's a win-win for salmon and power.

In the Snake, the Snake River Basin Adjudication, recently supported and signed by the state of Idaho and the federal government, promises to send at least 427, 000 acre feet of water downriver for salmon protection. The coalition's requested improvement would require less than this legally required amount of water.