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1994 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program |
| Council document 94-55 | |
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1.2 Historical Perspective
1.2A Key Principles from the Northwest Power Act
Mainstem river survival improvements, habitat and production measures, and harvest regulations all must work toward rebuilding healthy fish and wildlife populations. Drawing a blueprint for these changes ultimately requires a judicious consideration of all the standards of the Northwest Power Act. Within this framework, however, several points deserve emphasis:
- System approach: In developing the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, the Council must deal with the Columbia River and its tributaries as a system. This system touches a broad range of human activities: hydropower production, navigation, flood control, agriculture, recreation and many other land and water development activities. Opportunities for improved coordination and cooperation, as well as for increased conflict, are enormous. Building a fish and wildlife program that properly accounts for these activities requires the broadest possible involvement of the public and affected interests.
- Regional power supply: While the fish and wildlife program must ?protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the development, operation and management? of Columbia River Basin hydropower facilities, it must do so in a way that ensures the region ?an adequate, efficient, economical and reliable power supply.? This concept is discussed further in Section 1.8. The Council has called for aggressive exploration of structural changes to the hydropower system, such as reservoir drawdown strategies, as well as non-structural changes, such as innovations in system operations, seasonal power exchanges, water use efficiencies and the like. These non-structural innovations in particular will require careful integration of power system, fish and wildlife, and other water needs.
- Federal responsibilities: The Northwest Power Act explicitly gives Bonneville the authority and responsibility to use its legal and financial resources ?to protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and wildlife to the extent affected by the development and operation of any hydroelectric project of the Columbia River and its tributaries in a manner consistent with ... the program adopted by the Council ... and the purposes of this Act.? The Act further requires Bonneville and the federal hydropower project operators and regulators to take the program into account to the fullest extent practicable at each relevant stage of their decision-making processes.
- Public involvement: The Council is required to consult with a variety of groups in the Northwest and to maintain comprehensive programs for public participation. This program reflects those requirements.
- Fishery management: The region's fish and wildlife agencies and Indian tribes (often described collectively in this program as the ?fishery managers?) play a special role in the program. The program must complement the agencies? and tribes? existing and future activities, and also must be consistent with the legal rights of Columbia Basin tribes.
- Best available scientific knowledge: In considering fish and wildlife recommendations, the Act requires the Council to rely on the best available scientific knowledge. Because that knowledge often is incomplete, future research, particularly regarding salmon, should focus on critical uncertainties. The region must take pains to monitor actions and make adjustments where advisable.
- Lowest cost alternatives: Where equally effective means of achieving the same sound biological objective exist, the Council chooses the alternative with the lower economic cost. The Council is committed to finding ways to do such analysis. In addition, the Council expects that Bonneville will do additional work on cost-effectiveness in its implementation of habitat measures.
- River flows: The Act specifically recognizes that salmon depend on ?suitable environmental conditions substantially obtainable from the management and operation? of power generating facilities of the Columbia River Basin. The Council is directed to adopt measures to ?provide flows of sufficient quality and quantity between such facilities to improve production, migration and survival of such fish as necessary to meet sound biological objectives.?
- Equitable treatment: The Act requires federal implementing agencies to manage and operate hydropower facilities to provide ?equitable treatment for fish and wildlife with the other purposes for which such system and facilities are managed and operated.? Therefore, the Council's determinations regarding salmon and fish and wildlife survival in the main bodies of the Columbia and Snake rivers, where the major federal dams are located, aim to meet the needs of salmon with a level of certainty comparable to that accorded the other operational purposes.
1.2B Program Development
The Council adopted its first Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program in 1982. The program was amended in 1984, 1987, 1991-1993 and 1994. The 1994 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program supersedes previous versions of the program and includes some measures from previous programs that were not completed, but remain relevant.
The Northwest Power Act directed the Council to develop this program and make periodic major revisions by first requesting recommendations from the region's federal and state fish and wildlife agencies, appropriate Indian tribes (those within the basin) and other interested parties. These recommendations are to include measures that Bonneville and other federal agencies can implement to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by hydroelectric dams; objectives for developing and operating hydroelectric dams in a way designed to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife; and coordination of fish and wildlife management, research and development (including funding).
From the beginning, the level of public participation has far exceeded the Council's expectations. The quantity and quality of the comments are evidence that the Council, the fish and wildlife agencies, Indian tribes, Bonneville, federal project operators and regulators, utilities and the public are committed to solving the basin's fish and wildlife problems permanently. The interest in this program and the amount of thought, time and effort put into this process have been exceptional.
1.2C Role of the Council and Other Agencies
In adopting the Northwest Power Act, Congress expected to overcome the harm to fish and wildlife caused by Columbia River hydroelectric dams. To that end, the Act anticipates that the Council and the federal implementing agencies will cooperate to achieve the goals set by Congress, as well as respect the role each has to play. Fish and wildlife protection, mitigation and enhancement will never occur if each agency tries to substitute its individual judgment for the scientific knowledge, expertise and judgment of those who went before.
The Council is a planning, policy-making and reviewing body. It develops and monitors implementation of this fish and wildlife program, which is implemented by the Bonneville Power Administration, the Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and its licensees.
In the case of program measures involving non-federal projects, the processes of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must be respected. Under the Federal Power Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must review a program measure and the license of the affected hydroelectric project to determine if the license can and should be amended.
In developing and amending the fish and wildlife program, the Council incorporates into a draft amendment document qualifying recommendations or modifications of recommendations received from outside parties, along with proposals the Council initiates on its own.
When the Council issues draft amendments, an extensive public comment period is initiated, which includes public hearings in each of the four states and consultations with interested parties. During the development of the initial program and the subsequent amendment proceedings, public comments resulted in thousands of pages of testimony from groups and individuals. After closing the comment period and following a review and deliberation period, the Council adopts final program measures.
Adoption of the amended program must occur within a year of the deadline for receiving recommendations for amendments. When the Council declines to adopt any recommendation, it must explain, as part of the program, why the recommendation is less effective than the existing program measures or why it is inconsistent with the standards for program measures set up by the Act.
The Council is calling on the parties identified as program implementors to report to the Council on their progress. If the measures are not being implemented, the parties should explain why. For its part, the Council is committed to monitoring and evaluating implementation of this program much more aggressively than in the past. It will do so through audits -- shared regionally and with the National Marine Fisheries Service -- and through oversight activities associated with Council meetings.
The Council has not attempted to distinguish between those measures where the Council believes it has direct authority and those measures where that authority belongs to others. Ultimately, the successful recovery of salmon, steelhead, resident fish and wildlife populations depends less on legal authority than on cooperation. Only through the committed and enthusiastic participation of all affected parties will a full recovery be achieved.
Bonneville
1.2C.1 As part of the effort to remain competitive and avoid conflicts of interest, and to minimize duplicative implementation efforts under the fish and wildlife program, explore the potential for improving program implementation through an agreement transferring the administration of Bonneville's fish and wildlife program funding functions to an entity created by the Columbia Basin's federal and state fish and wildlife agencies and Indian tribes, or in the absence of such an entity, to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In these discussions, consider the need for rebuilding targets, and the means to secure a commitment on the part of the implementing entity to carry out the Council's fish and wildlife program. The discussions should also consider mechanisms to hold the implementing entity or agency accountable for results, perhaps through the use of independent audits. The discussions should also explore an implementation work plan development process, which identifies measures to be funded, and an implementation budget and planning target covering a three-to five-year period. Report to the Council by December 31, 1995, on the status of the discussions and the provisions of any tentative agreement that may be reached. If approved by the Council, implement the agreement. If an agreement has not been reached, report on the status of negotiations and the issues under discussion.
1.2D Lessons of the Past Decade
Today, the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program is not quite 13 years old, about the age of three generations of salmon. Unfortunately, the problems for the basin's fish have been more than a century in the making. Human activities ranging from fishing to agriculture to power production took a toll, and so did natural events such as drought, floods and ocean conditions.
If 13 years have not been enough time to arrest the salmon's decline, it has been time to teach the region some important lessons. Any approach to fisheries recovery will require contributions from all who benefit from the river. And a rebuilding plan must be comprehensive. Piecemeal efforts simply have not been effective.
The challenge is best illustrated by the salmon's extensive environment, an environment defined by migratory habits that recognize no governmental boundaries. Salmon hatch in inland headwaters and travel downstream to mature in the ocean. Depending on the species, after one to five years, usually three to five, they return to the river. Thanks to an extraordinary homing instinct, they make their way to their home tributary where they will spawn and die. This wide-ranging environment, sometimes encompassing thousands of miles, became the arena for salmon recovery efforts in the 1980s.
During that decade, for the first time, the region looked at a coordinated approach involving the salmon's habitat; their passage down the rivers, particularly the mainstems of the Columbia and Snake; their harvest; and their production (both natural and artificially aided). This coordination echoes pleas to take an ecosystem approach to recovery under the Endangered Species Act, and it remains the foundation for a recovery plan in the 1990s.
While the foundation laid in the past decade for a systemwide approach was sound, the focus of the 1980s proved too narrow. The fish and wildlife program's interim goal was to double runs, but not at the expense of genetic diversity. Overall runs ranged between about 1.5 million and 4 million in the 1980s. However, some weaker runs continued to decline, thereby threatening genetic diversity and fitness. It became more apparent that the diversity of the runs, not just the number of fish, was an important consideration.
Despite some gains made in the early 1980s, overall salmon and steelhead populations are about a fifth of their pre-development run size, and only about 20 percent of the remaining fish spawn in the rivers. (See Figure 1-3.) Most wild and naturally spawning stocks are declining. (See Figures 1-4, 1-5 and 1-6 [not available in HTML version]).
The Council is concerned about all weak stocks of fish and wildlife in the basin. The program gives highest priority to ratepayer-financed mitigation for weak, but recoverable, native fish populations injured by the hydropower system. The Council prefers to rebuild native species in native habitats, where feasible, but recognizes that this must be done carefully to avoid impacts on existing populations.
The Council continues to support increasing resident fish populations where salmon runs cannot be rebuilt. Such substitutions have been part of the fish and wildlife program since the early 1980s. Under the program's direction, and in consultation with state agencies and Indian tribes, hatcheries have been built to raise and release resident fish.
1.2E Expanded Focus
The endangered species listings for Snake River salmon dramatically underscored the need to make preserving diversity of salmon runs a higher priority. This renewed focus also affected the Council's own role. Previously, the Council's fish and wildlife program had addressed primarily the effects of the hydropower system on salmon and steelhead.
With the endangered species listings, it became clear that a realistic recovery effort had to be broader, involving all river uses: power production, flood control, agriculture, navigation, water supply, recreation, land development practices and fishing. When the Northwest Governors, Congressional delegation and the National Marine Fisheries Service looked to the Council to produce a comprehensive recovery plan, they also asked the Council to assume this broader role. The Council has done so. It developed an integrated plan that seeks contributions from all river users.