News Articles

Lewiston Morning Tribune: Crowded conditions likely on Clearwater

By Eric Barker of the Tribune, May 2, 2013

Salmon anglers are accustomed to rising early, sometimes long before fishing hours, to ensure they get a prime spot.

Those fishing the Clearwater River might be forced to go to even further extremes this year.

A below-average return of spring chinook prompted the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to close long stretches of the river and to limit fishing to Fridays through Mondays.

"They are going to shove a lot of people into a little area and everybody is going to be fighting for spots," said Toby Wyatt, owner of Reel Time Fishing of Clarkston. "It's going to be mayhem."

The river will be closed to chinook fishing from Arrow Bridge to the mouth of the North Fork and from Greer Bridge to the mouth of the South Fork. The Lochsa River won't open at all and only a short section of the South Fork Clearwater, from the State Highway 13 bridge near the Harpster Grade to the State Highway 14 bridge near the Mount Idaho Grade, will be open.

That will make for stiff competition when it comes to territory.

"People who want to get in those holes are going to have to get there at 3 in the morning," Wyatt said.

Joe DuPont, fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Lewiston, said some people will be forced to find new places to fish and others will contend with crowding at their favorite holes.

"People used to fishing in one area might see people they haven't seen before, so yes, there is going to be a need for people to get along."

He said the Clearwater regulations were designed to try to ensure the small number of chinook available for harvest are shared evenly over time and throughout the river system. This year's run, as measured at Bonneville Dam, got a late start. Fisheries managers like DuPont still don't know if the run is simply late, as it has been over the past few years, or weaker than expected.

To make sure enough adults return to Clearwater River hatcheries to meet spawning targets, the department took a conservative approach to season setting. That means if the run is simply late, there is a chance there will be more fish to catch than expected.

DuPont said the department prefers to loosen regulations if the strength of the run allows rather than to be overly optimistic and have to shut fishing down early.

"I'm hoping we can expand areas and expand days, but I guess that is yet to be determined."

Outfitter Jason Schultz of Hells Canyon Sport Fishing at Lewiston said he thinks there is some reason to believe the run might be stronger than the forecast used to set fishing regulations. According to his theory, fishing in the lower Columbia River in Oregon and Washington is concentrated on the early part of the run. Fish that return to Idaho have the furthest to swim, so they are generally the first to pulse through the lower Columbia and because of that they face heavy fishing pressure. But the Idaho fish that bring up the rear face less pressure downriver and have a better shot at reaching their destinations.

"Over the years, it is making our run later and later and later," Schultz said.

Evelyn Kaide, owner of the Guide Shop and Clearwater Drifters at Orofino, said planning for spring chinook fishing is nearly impossible.

"We've had some really good years and some bad years and we've gotten stopped in the middle of the season and then had it reopen," she said. "Everyone of them has been different."

Many outfitters like Kaide, Schultz and Wyatt book trips before the season starts and are now juggling to compensate for the days of the week fishing won't be allowed.

"It's tough and it's very nerve-racking," Kaide said.

But she said once people start fishing, they should try their best to get along and forget about the hassles of booking trips or getting their spots.
"You just got to let it go and just fish," she said.

For those looking to avoid the crowds, the vast stretches of lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers and the Snake River in Hells Canyon will be open seven days a week.

Crosscut.com: Salmon - Will the feds ever get their dam act together?

In preparing a new Biological Opinion, NOAA asks stakeholders how to resolve longstanding conflicts between Northwest dams and salmon.

By Daniel Jack Chasan
April 23, 2013

It's April, so once again, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is spilling water over Columbia River system dams, speeding salmon smolts on their way downstream. The spill is "voluntary," but since 2006, federal courts have ordered the Corps to spill water over the lower Snake River dams every spring. Three years ago, the Corps, the Bonneville Power Administration, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Northwest office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proposed a shortened spill period, but after several scientific groups suggested that would be a bad idea, they thought better of it. The agencies have, at least for the time being, stopped fighting over spring spill.

However, there's no sign that the Obama administration has stopped fighting for approval of a Biological Opinion (BiOp) on operation of the Columbia River dams. (A Biological Opinion, issued by a regulatory agency such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, assesses the impact of some action on an endangered species.)

The first Columbia River system salmon population (Snake River sockeye) was listed in 1991. The feds have yet to produce a BiOp that can survive its day in court. U.S. District Judge James Redden tossed the last effort — basically an Obama administration repackaging of a Bush administration plan — in 2011. That document relied on possibly-fictitious habitat improvements to recover endangered salmon, and didn't even consider breaching the lower Snake River dams. Redden ordered the feds to produce a new BiOp by next January 1.

So far, people outside the government say they have no indication that the new plan will differ significantly from what has been found wanting in the past. But that doesn't mean nothing has changed.

Under NOAA's aegis, the William D. Ruckelshaus Center and Oregon Consensus are interviewing "stakeholders" — or, if you prefer, interest group representatives — about salmon and dams. People are being asked what the major issues affecting salmon are and how they'll know recovery when they see it; beyond that, the questions are about process. This marks the first time NOAA has solicited the opinions of interest groups — beyond the traditional insiders — about the longstanding regional conflicts between dams and salmon.

Logically, these discussions will figure into NOAA's preparation of a new BiOp, but that is far from certain. For now, the two processes are being kept apart. The new BiOp would shape operation of the dam system through 2018. The stakeholder process would help shape a discussion of how to operate the dams after 2018. This isn't exactly the fast track. The interviews won't wrap up until the fall. The BiOp is due at the end of the year. Presumably, no one expects the former to have much effect on the latter.

Read more...

Lewiston Morning Tribune: Analysis questions economics of barging

Kooskia-area man known for his opposition to megaloads says grain shipments costly to taxpayers

Analysis questions economics of barging

By ERIC BARKER of the Tribune The Lewiston Tribune

Monday, January 21, 2013


A critic of the Port of Lewiston says U.S. taxpayers are shelling out $13,000 to $18,000 for every barge that leaves the port and collectively subsidizing farmers who use the river transportation system about $2 million per year.

Linwood Laughy, a Kooskia-area resident who was one of the leading opponents of megaload traffic on U.S. Highway 12, said the cost of keeping the river's shipping channel clear of sand and other sediment is huge compared to the amount of goods transported to downriver destinations like the Port of Portland.

Admittedly a layman when it comes to economic analysis, Laughy nonetheless said his numbers are both solid and shocking.

"I have to admit I was shocked when I first ran the data," he said. "I thought, 'Nah, there is a decimal point off.' But I kept coming up with the same answer and I thought, 'Oh my God, this is pretty damn spendy.' "

Without accepting or rejecting his analysis, which neither has seen, Port of Lewiston manager David Doeringsfeld and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Bruce Henrickson defended the river transportation system.

About 220 barges each loaded with 100,000 bushels of wheat or barley leave the Lewis Clark Terminal at the Port of Lewiston each year, Doeringsfeld said. Based on the current price of wheat that equates to just shy of $1 million per barge, he said.

"You have $220 million just in agriculture exports leaving the Port of Lewiston. The cost of barging over rail is maybe one-third of the cost of rail so that is a significant saving to the area ag community provided by the Columbia-Snake system and that is just simple math."

Henrickson said one barge is equal to about 35 railroad cars and 134 tractor-trailers, saving both wear and tear on the road and reducing the number of fossil fuels burned and the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere.

"We are here to serve the public and help goods move up and down the river, and the river transportation system does have its efficiencies," Henrickson said.

Laughy began his analysis by looking at the recent release of the corps' draft Programmatic Sediment Management Plan, a 20-year outline for dealing with sediment accumulation in lower Snake River reservoirs. The plan calls for long-term actions and for short-term measures such as dredging more than 400,000 cubic yards of sediment from the channel as soon as next winter.

He focused his analysis on the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers where most navigation dredging has occurred. When it comes to goods shipped on the river he excluded the Port of Clarkston, which has not operated its crane in several years. Nor did he look at the Port of Wilma, which sits downstream of where most navigation dredging has occurred.

He calculated that the corps has removed about 3.7 million cubic yards of sediment from the shipping channel in the past 21 years for an average of about 177,950 cubic yards per year. The last time the corps dredged the shipping channel, in 2005, it removed about 400,000 cubic yards at a cost of $5.1 million, or $12.75 a yard. So he figures it will cost about $2.3 million a year to remove 177,950 yards of sediment.

But Laughy said that is just the cost to do the dredging. Add in the cost to perform pre-dredging environmental analysis and the price, by his figuring, climbs to about $3.2 million a year. He used the corps' expenditure of $16 million to write a draft sediment management plan as a basis for his calculation.

In 2011, Laughy said the port shipped about 587,177 tons of grain and other freight downriver. Divide that by $3.2 million and he gets $5.40 a ton. A fully loaded barge weighs about 3,500 tons, so by his calculations it takes $18,900 of dredging per barge. If the cost of environmental analysis is excluded it comes to $13,510.

"The bottom line is perpetual dredging is going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money," he said.

When he accounts for inflation, Laughy said it will cost about $38 million over the next 10 years to maintain the shipping channel. He welcomes others to look at his numbers and tell him where and why he might be wrong.

His analysis doesn't factor other expenses like the cost to maintain locks on Snake and Columbia river dams. Nor does it consider economic benefits to dredging or the costs and benefits of hydropower production at the dams. That is something salmon advocates who support breaching the four lower Snake River dams to recover threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead would like to see.

"Looking at long-term salmon recovery options, we want to see a regional conversation that has all options on the table," said Sam Mace of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition at Spokane. "Part of that is an honest analysis of what the economic costs are for any options we look at, whether it's options that keep the dams in place versus recovery options that involve removing the four lower Snake River dams."

Dustin Aherin, a rafting outfitter and head of the Lewiston-based group Citizens for Progress, said the numbers should lead people to ask if river transportation is the best way to spend our tax dollars.

"Once we do the cost-benefit analysis of keeping the shipping channel on the status quo, we should realize the Port of Lewiston can fairly easily maintain and, from my perspective, grow from switching from water-based transportation to rail-based," he said.

Daily Astorian: Wyden welcomes federal agency’s plan to seek consensus on saving salmon

Friday, December 14, 2012 Associated Press

The federal agency in charge of saving salmon has hired two consensus- building groups to ask Northwest leaders what long-term steps should be taken to overcome persistent conflicts over restoring dwindling salmon and steelhead runs.

The move was welcomed Thursday by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden in a statement to The Daily Astorian.

NOAA Fisheries Service has hired the Oregon Consensus program at Portland State University and the William D. Ruckelshaus Center in Washington state to interview 150 people. Their initial report is due this summer.

Barry Thom, deputy regional administrator for the agency, said they are looking for a regional picture of what people think it will take to bring about recovery for the fish.

States, Indian tribes, conservation groups, fishermen and farmers have long had different views on how to regulate fishing, dam operations, hatcheries and irrigation withdrawals.

Sen. Wyden has pressed for all groups to work together for some time.

“As I said earlier this year, I have great faith in collaborative discussions and I support stakeholders meeting to talk about an issue that is so vitally important to the Pacific Northwest - the recovery of the salmon,” he said in a statement to the newspaper. “I commend NOAA for taking steps to engage all the interested parties in looking at the long-term recovery of the salmon.”

The interviewers will be neutral, NOAA said, and responses will not be attributed to specific people to promote candid conversations.

The effort, outlined in a NOAA letter to 150 groups this week, will cost more than $200,000, with roughly 50 additional slots set aside for interviews of people mentioned in initial conversations. NOAA wants a basinwide plan that integrates the local recovery plans developed in the Columbia and Snake River basins, Thom said.

A bigger challenge is reaching consensus on the right mix of fishing restrictions, hatchery reforms, dam modifications and habitat restoration to bump 13 runs of salmon and steelhead off the endangered species list.

Interest groups on both sides applauded NOAA’s first step, saying the’d welcome a more comprehensive, collaborative approach to salmon recovery. Lawsuits have driven the process for more than a decade.

A broad approach would expand the focus beyond hydroelectric dams, said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest River Partners, whose members include utilities, farmers and ports on the Columbia and Snake.

“There are so many things actually going on, if we can understand how they link up that’s a good thing,” she said.

Gilly Lyons, policy director for Save our Wild Salmon, said, “Maybe it will get a more constructive conversation going.”

http://www.dailyastorian.com/news/local/wyden-welcomes-federal-agency-s-plan-to-seek-consensus-on/article_48360790-4610-11e2-ab3d-0019bb2963f4.html

NOAA fisheries takes first step toward building consensus on Columbia Basin salmon recovery

By Scott Learn, The Oregonian
on December 12, 2012

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees Northwest salmon and steelhead listings under the Endangered Species Act, has hired two university consensus-building groups to interview Columbia Basin leaders about how to best recover wild salmon in the long term.

The Oregon Consensus program at Portland State University and the William D. Ruckelshaus Center in Washington will conduct hourlong interviews of more than 150 people, with a first report due late next summer.

Leaders of tribes and myriad interest groups in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana will be among those interviewed. The interviewers will be neutral, NOAA says, and responses will not be attributed to specific people to promote candid conversations.

"We want to see if it can provide a better picture of what it would take to get to salmon recovery," says Barry Thom, deputy regional administrator for the Northwest region of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service.

The effort, outlined in a NOAA letter to 150 groups Tuesday, will cost more than $200,000, with roughly 50 additional slots set aside for interviews of people mentioned in initial conversations. NOAA wants a basinwide plan that integrates the local recovery plans developed in the Columbia and Snake River basins, Thom said.

A bigger challenge: Reaching consensus going forward on the right mix of fishing restrictions, hatchery reforms, dam modifications and habitat restoration to bump 13 runs of salmon and steelhead off the endangered species list.

Interest groups on both sides applauded NOAA's first step, saying they'd welcome a more comprehensive, collaborative approach to salmon recovery. Lawsuits have driven the process for more than a decade.

A broad approach would expand the focus beyond hydroelectric dams, said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest River Partners, whose members include utilities, farmers and ports on the Columbia and Snake.

"There are so many things actually going on, if we can understand how they link up that's a good thing," she said.

Said Gilly Lyons, policy director for Save our Wild Salmon: "Maybe it will get a more constructive conversation going."

-- Scott Learn; Twitter: @slearn1

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/12/noaa_fisheries_takes_first_ste.html

© 2012 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

The Return of the Redfish

- A Seattle Times feature by reporter Lynda Mapes. Snake River sockeye are rebounding, but the extraordinary effort comes at a cost to the public - nearly $9,000 per fish.

After 20 years and more than $40 million spent, the new direction for Snake River sockeye focuses on rebuilding population rather than just preventing extinction. But will it work?

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019705443_captivefish18m.html

By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter

REDFISH LAKE CREEK, Idaho —

A vermilion slash in clear, cold water, the Snake River sockeye in this mountain stream is one of nature's long-distance athletes, traveling at least 900 miles to get here.

That this fish can make such a journey — the longest of any sockeye in the world — is remarkable. But it's more incredible that this fish is still around at all.

Down to just one known fish — dubbed Lonesome Larry — in 1992, state, tribal and federal fish managers have painstakingly preserved the species in captivity ever since.

Twenty years and $40 million later, they have a new goal. Not just mere survival for Snake River sockeye, but rebuilding the run to at least 2,500 wild fish, free of any hatchery influence, making the epic journey all the way from the Pacific across a time zone to the high mountain lakes of Idaho.

To appreciate how big a step that is, consider this: It's taken fish managers in six federal, state and tribal agencies to get this far. They oversee the lives of these fish, plotting their genetics on spreadsheets, mixing their gametes in plastic bags, and whisking them in various life stages around the Pacific Northwest in plastic shipping tubes, barges, trucks and planes, using five different facilities in three states to hatch, incubate and rear them, in both fresh water and salt.

By now, Bonneville Power Administration ratepayers have spent nearly $9,000 for every sockeye that's made it back to Idaho since this all started in 1991.

The sockeye rescue is part of a much larger Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program — believed to be the largest of its kind in the world — that has cost Bonneville ratepayers more than $12 billion since 1978, depending on how you count it.

While Elwha Dam removal cost U.S. taxpayers $325 million, BPA ratepayers spend more than $200 million each year — including $311 million budgeted this year alone — on programs intended to restore fish, wildlife and habitat harmed by the Columbia and Lower Snake River dams. It adds up: The program's cost accounts for one-third of the wholesale rate Bonneville charges utilities that use its power, including Seattle City Light, which buys 41 percent of its power from BPA.

A recent jump in sockeye returns, including more than 1,000 fish in both 2010 and 2011, encouraged managers to expand the program and break ground on a new, $14 million hatchery this year. The goal now is way beyond just saving sockeye from extinction, and on to building a wild, self-sustaining population.

It's quite a comeback. The captive brood program was nearly canceled in 2006, because so few sockeye were making it back to Idaho. "We thought it was a little bit of a moonshot," said Rick Williams, a member of a scientific panel that recommended against continuing to fund the program.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council, appointed by governors from four Western states, voted to keep it going anyway, after Idaho's governor asked members to vote with their hearts, not their heads. Then came a couple of good years of sockeye returns. Last summer, the council doubled down, voting to expand the program and build the hatchery.

Lorri Bodi, BPA's vice president for environment, fish and wildlife, said she was glad nobody pulled the plug on Snake River sockeye. She has a photo in her office of herself releasing one of the fish back to Redfish Lake to spawn a few years ago, a feel-good moment that still gives her hope. "We went from zero to four fish coming back every year. They were functionally extinct. Now, in good years, we have more than 1,000. We are going to take it to the next level. ... This is a testament to optimism.

"Our goal is to have a few thousand sockeye again, just as we did in the 1950s, before human impacts were so severe. It's a pretty cool thing to do."

The issue of dams

But where some see cause for optimism, others see denial. Idaho, Oregon and Washington are replete with hatcheries, but 16 runs of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin are still listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act. And despite a few good years of returns, Snake River sockeye remain endangered. Just 243 sockeye made it back to Idaho this year.

With eight dams between their spawning grounds and the Pacific, hatchery production alone won't be enough to rebuild healthy, naturally spawning populations of Snake River sockeye and other Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead, said Joseph Bogaard, outreach director in the Seattle office of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for dam removal on the Lower Snake River.

"There was a lot of opposition to this emergency-room life support and a sense that it would not work, and that if it did, it would become a replacement for dealing with the deeper, more difficult issues," Bogaard said. "We were thankfully wrong on the first issue; it has provided a new opportunity for sockeye. But it has also been so politically easier to find the money to do this than deal with the real issues.

"It's more of the same, kicking the can down the road, and it's certainly not working for us," Bogaard said of the new sockeye hatchery.

Jim Lichatowich, author of "Salmon Without Rivers," sees agencies protecting their comfort zone, instead of salmon. "Building a large hatchery infrastructure to try to compensate for the dams is the status quo; it is the comfort zone for the management agencies," Lichatowich said. "Agencies get big budgets to run them, and politicians get credit for solving the problem. But the fact is ... hatcheries haven't been measuring up, otherwise we wouldn't have so many salmon in the Columbia Snake Basin that are listed."

Jeff Heindel, deputy director of hatchery programs for Idaho, says he knows he faces skepticism, as Northwest ratepayers pour even more money into Snake River sockeye.

"Even my own mother thinks it's crazy," Heindel said. "If I can't sell it to her, I'm not sure I can sell it to the average Joe."

Larry's descendants

The extraordinary effort that has gone into preserving Snake River sockeye is not unusual. There are dozens of publicly funded efforts, most of them run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under way around the country to bank the genes of devastated populations of animals, from red wolves to black-footed ferrets. By definition, the programs require extreme measures to sustain small populations of animals in totally artificial settings.

In a building outside Boise, sockeye kept in the captive brood program circle in fiberglass pools. Fed on the hour, they are grown to adult size, graduating to ever-larger tubs. Exercise is provided by a jet of water sputtering in the tubs, against which the fish steadily swim.

They live somewhere between captive rearing and extinction; no longer wild animals, but not gone from the Earth, either.

"Slimy little suckers," says a technician as a fish he lifts to check for weight and length slides from his hands and hits the deck. Quickly picking it up and blotting its abundant slime with a paper towel, he measures the fish and puts it back, unharmed, in its tank. Fish techs dubbed the food that fattens these fish "beefcake." But while they will bulk up, captive-reared sockeye are slimier, dimmer in color and less fecund than the wild fish from which they descend.

Go back to the beginning, and you'll meet Lonesome Larry, so-called because he was the only sockeye to return to Redfish Lake in 1992. With no mate with which to spawn, Larry was injected with hormones to pump up his milt production; stripped of his gametes, killed, stuffed and mounted in a nearby nature center. His milt was stored in liquid nitrogen, to dribble out year by year.

Descended from Lonesome Larry and other founders of the captive brood, some of these fish in the baby pools every year are allowed conjugal visits to Redfish Lake to reproduce on their own, along with some fish returned to the lake after capture.

Amazingly, Heindel says, the fish reared in captivity still understand their primal task, and head to the southeast end of Redfish Lake, as their wild forebears did, to successfully spawn.

Today, every sockeye returning to the Stanley Basin of Idaho is trapped by the state's department of fish and game at its Sawtooth Hatchery and at Redfish Lake Creek. From there, they are driven two and a half hours to a hatchery complex outside Boise, where the captive brood program is located.

Driving six sockeye to Eagle one day last August, Dan Baker, manager of the Eagle hatchery, kept an eye on a dashboard light glowing green to assure him oxygen was still bubbling in the chilled water in the box in the back of the pickup.

He stopped at a gas station mid-journey, and popped the top to check on the fish, as a fluffy dog came tail-wagging over. One fish tipped its nose out of the water, making for the edge, but Baker was too quick for it, and thunked down the lid. "Haven't lost one yet," he said, climbing back into the truck.

A battery of technicians was waiting when he arrived, to work up the new fish. In less time than it takes to make a sandwich, they cataloged each fish, then scanned it for tags, measured it, weighed it, yanked off a scale with forceps to confirm the sockeye's age, clipped off a hunk of fin for DNA analysis, crunched a hole in its dorsal fin with a hole punch to snug on a zip-tie tag, and injected the fish with a hypodermic full of antibiotics plunged in its side.

A technician dropped the last, limp fish in a holding tank full of water dosed with disinfectant. From here, some of the fish would be trucked back to Stanley, and returned to spawn in Redfish Lake.

But for the rest, this was the end of the road: new genes for the captive brood.

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or . On Twitter @lyndavmapes.