March 2001 issue

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Bi-Op 101

Class is in session. For those of you well versed in the complexities and language of salmon recovery in the Columbia River Basin, you are excused. Those who are asking themselves, "What's a Bi-Op?" - keep reading. We're here to help you sort it out.

In December, the National Marine Fisheries Service released its final biological opinion, a document to guide the operations of the 29 federally owned dams in the Columbia River Basin for salmon and steelhead recovery. The "Bi-Op," as it is referred to colloquially, is actually one part of the federal government's comprehensive, long-term strategy to restore threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead throughout the Columbia River Basin of the Pacific Northwest.

Along with a document called the "Basin-Wide Salmon Recovery Strategy," formerly known as the "All-H Paper," the strategy incorporates requirements of the biological opinion, along with other measures to improve hatcheries, limit salmon harvest, and restore salmon habitat. Both documents together detail the federal government's plan to prevent extinction and foster the recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin.

One important aspect of the strategy is what it leaves out of the mix-namely, the issue of breaching the four Lower Snake River dams: "The science suggests that we place priorities on those improvements that will afford the greatest benefits and points to improvements in the tributaries and the estuary as holding real promise." With this controversial option removed, at least for the next three years, from its set of proposed actions, the strategy "places the highest priority on actions with the best chance of providing solid, predictable benefits for the broadest range of species." While the approach maintains breaching as a future option, it focuses on a variety of actions directed toward improving habitat, hatchery operations, harvest practices, and fish passage through the hydropower system to address recovery.

The success of these efforts will be assessed through the use of scientifically based performance standards. Progress will be measured against those standards in three-, five-and eight-year intervals to determine if more aggressive recovery efforts-including the breaching of the four lower Snake River dams-will be necessary.

In a change from the draft Bi-Op released last July, the final version stipulates that studies to implement breaching won't be started unless the prescribed measures receive a failure report at the scheduled performance review. The draft had called for first-year breaching studies. Another change from the draft document involves 10 Bureau of Reclamation projects on the upper Snake River. The final version excludes those projects at least until spring. The reasons for their exclusion is because of a mediation process connected to a long-standing Snake River water rights court case over the allocation of water resources in Idaho. The National Marine Fisheries Service plans to address those projects in a supplemental biological opinion.

The Bi-Op is expected to add an additional $100 million to the current $252 million that the Bonneville Power Administration allocates each year for fish and wildlife mitigation. The estimated annual cost of the entire federal program is approximately $500 million. In terms of generating power, Bonneville estimates the plan reduces federal generation by 60 average megawatts. In addition to the costs to generation from the 1995 Bi-Op, the cumulative impact is a 982-aMW loss. The "cost" refers to the fact that the water that would have been used to generate electricity through the dams, is held back to support fish migration.

The proposed actions address the four areas in which human activities have affected listed fish, the so-called "four Hs" of salmon recovery. The following is a general outline of the strategy's efforts:

Habitat: Habitat efforts will focus on tributary streams, the estuary and the mainstem rivers. Immediate actions have been identified to restore streamflows, remove passage barriers, improve water quality and rebuild the health of buffers along streams, and to screen irrigation diversions. In the estuary, federal agencies will support the rapid implementation of the Lower Columbia River Estuary Program, a partnership between the Environmental Protection Agency and state and local governments and citizens. This includes the restoration and acquisition of important habitat areas, as well as predator control. In the mainstem of the Columbia and Snake rivers, federal agencies will work to restore shoreline habitats for migrating salmon and continue to protect the Hanford Reach in Washington state. The completion of subbasin assessments and plans will also help to prioritize longer-term actions.

Hatcheries: The strategy proposes reforms of federally funded hatcheries to minimize harm to wild salmon and improve survival rates of hatchery stocks. In addition, hatcheries will use conservation and supplementation programs to prevent the extinction of weak stocks, and establish a research program to evaluate its success and quantify hatchery impacts over time.

Harvest: The federal agencies, working with the states and tribes, will cap harvest of protected species at current levels. There may be further reductions of harvest levels, where practical, through more selective fishing techniques, license buyouts or other approaches.

Hydropower: The federal agencies will maximize survival of juvenile and adult salmon throughout the hydropower system by improving water management and quality, increasing spill, and continuing improvements in the dams themselves to pass more fish safely. The agencies will also seek to complete the necessary analysis on removal of the Snake River dams should program efforts fall short and removal becomes necessary to avoid extinction of Snake River fish. Along with engineering studies, economic analyses to develop strategies to reduce the impacts on communities and industries would also be done to ensure that any breaching proposal is fair and affordable.

The Northwest Power Planning Council's Role

The strategy requires coordination and collaboration across the board from local, state, tribal and regional entities engaged in recovery efforts. The importance of subbasin planning in the strategy-that is to say, programming that is local and grassroots-correlates directly with the Council's work: "The Plan also calls for coordinated subbasin assessments and plans, as proposed by the Northwest Power Planning Council." And in the future, the subbasin and recovery plans will then create the priorities for federal actions and funding.

Additionally, many of the Bi-Op's actions require support from the Council for Bonneville Power Administration off-site mitigation projects, i.e., those projects that involve actions affecting habitat, hatcheries, and harvest. In fact, a preliminary comparison between the Bi-Op's proposed actions and ongoing Council fish and wildlife projects shows that many existing efforts already address the Bi-Op's goals. In the case of goals for hatcheries, the strategy requires that any agency operating a hatchery develop a management plan for production that is modeled on the Council's 1999 Artificial Production Review.

Through the creation of one- and five-year plans which the Bi-Op requires of the action agencies (the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the BPA), there is an opportunity to integrate those plans with the Council's provincial review, its review process for proposed fish and wildlife projects. The one- and five-year plans help to provide a planning process to collectively identify where progress has been made, set regional priorities, connect hydropower-operations to off-site mitigation efforts, and overall, develop a comprehensive framework to support funding requests.

Next Steps

While Council staff and Bonneville will continue to inventory and compare existing projects to the Bi-Op initiatives, the Council will also be working with the action agencies to define the content of the five-year implementation plan.

Other issues relating to funding and the decision-making process have also been identified by the Council and will be presented to Congress.

For more information about the federal government's salmon recovery plan, please visit the Federal Caucus Web site.