News Meetings Dec 2003

Remarks of Bob Lohn, NOAA to the Council

December 11, 2003

[Bob Lohn attended the Council meeting to discuss the proposed federal approach to respond to the remand of the 2000 Biological Opinions for the Federal Columbia River Power System. This was an opportunity for the Council to discuss with Bob the scope of the analysis being conducted in the remand and the role of subbasin planning in any revisions to the Biological Opinions.]
 

Danielson: Welcome. We look forward to having a discussion. Mr. Walton said there would be a sighting today.

Lohn: Members of the Council, it truly is a privilege to be here today, and actually, all I can do in acknowledgement of my lateness is refer to that found of all wisdom, Ogden Nash, who in other circumstances remarked that to keep your marriage brimming with love from the loving cup, when you?re wrong admit it, and when you?re right, shut up. This morning I just want to admit that I misread my schedule and it's my fault alone and I appreciate your indulgence.

I wanted to talk to you because I understand the genesis of the request initially was to talk about where we would be or where the federal executives are in regard to the Council's proposal for a spill evaluation test. I can update you on that and then if there are other issues you?d like to generally discuss, it's fine to take those up, too.

On the spill proposal adopted by the Council, we have tried to sort of, and I hope we are reading it in the spirit it was given, to take it not, that is to take the notion that the Council was interested in seeing whether there were other alternatives that were biologically as effective or more effective than spill that could be offered at reduced cost. I think the general answer in this shouldn't be any surprise to the Council Members is that spill has biological value; we wouldn't have undertaken it without that value, and that I certainly don't foresee a future of no spill, nor did I understand the Council to be saying that. The question is sort of at the margins - are there places where spill could be reduced and you could in effect use the regional resources that are freed up because of that to produce other alternatives that are equally effective. So there are three parts to that inquiry and I appreciate the Council's assistance in getting things organized and sort of shepherding some of those parts.

The first part is what biological offsets are available to directly address the losses to listed stocks?  And as you know there has been a working group, again really the credit goes to the Council for convening it; it has had major success for CBFWA who has provided sort of offices and facilitation and certainly the attentions of their members to this. I've had staff participating as well as has Bonneville. That ad hoc group has identified a number of potential offsets. I've reviewed the list and I think it is an excellent starting point. I know there is further work in progress on it and I'm not trying to jump ahead and endorse specific alternatives there, but I think the working group has identified several activities, some relating to predation, some relating to other things that might be done that likely would produce tangible biological benefits. The next question in that analysis is what would be the relative scope or range of the benefits?  Having said that you could get some biological benefits, roughly how valuable would for example an increase in pike minnow or a reduction in pike minnow predation - what would that yield in terms of the currency we're talking about, either juvenile migrants saved or returning adults increased?  That analysis is just now starting. I really expect to see those results within the next two to three weeks and that certainly will be timely. Another part of that which I know would be foremost on your minds would be how are these vetted, funded and fitted into regional programs?  That is certainly part of the discussion I'll have Friday with my colleagues, the federal executives, but my sense is that because we are really dealing, if the decision to proceed is available, we're dealing with cost savings and I would expect those savings in part to be the source of funding for these offsets.

The second question is what will we learn or what can we measure from this?  You may already be well informed by the work that has been going on. There are two things that one could look to measure. One would be system survival, that is as fish pass down through the system what ultimately is the survival as the result of one regime vs. another?  The best estimates of system survival, well actually the working group as you perhaps know looked at what would it take to measure a survival difference for summer migrants on the order of three percent?  And the advice we've gotten is it is something that is scientifically doable; it would be expensive; you would need to tag one to two million juveniles with pit tags. That by itself would cost $4 to $5 million; you would then need to have a very substantial monitoring of them. And in order to detect this at an 80 percent confidence interval, you?d need to do this for more than one year. In fact, the best estimate would be you?d need to do it for between 500 and 600 years, which is a polite scientific way of telling us that we are unlikely to get systemwide survival data at that level of accuracy capable of measuring those nuances in a time that's going to be important for the decisions we need to make. There is a second way of measuring, however, survival, and it is one we have regularly used and it's basically the project-specific studies. The way that design proceeds is that small radio tags are placed in the bellies of juvenile fish. Those fish are released someplace above a project and they are tracked as they pass down through the project and tracked as they exit from the tailrace, and it gives you then a piece-by-piece snippet of what survival is and hopefully some indication of differences between different passage methods, if in fact those differences are present. There are some downsides to this. This is something we've regularly used; it also is expensive. Radio tags are not cheap. And the tagging and tracking program is expensive. But there are also some other scientific limitations to this. First of all, and our studies which we've done a number of them, we meaning the region generally; usually done by the Corps of Engineers with the assistance of other agencies - the assumptions inherent in it are that what happens to one of these radio-tagged fish in fact replicates what's happening to the rest of the fish. There are several reasons why those assumptions remain assumptions. I'm not ready to say that they are wrong; I'm ready to say that there is some uncertainty about that assumption, that it's a common experience. First of all the fish we tag have to be relatively large for juvenile migrants. As fall chinook are moving down the river, they enter the river depending on where they are coming from, almost at the size of fry. They could be relatively small fish, inch or inch and a half. In order to tag fish we need to see fish of at least 110 millimeters, so you are looking at fish that are in excess of four inches. So there may be a difference in effect between small fish and large fish. The things you see in a study like this, a project survival study, are what we would call instantaneous survival. That is, you capture the fish or at least determine that they were alive when last seen in the stretch. I shouldn't say captured because it really is with radio tags that you say they appear to be alive and swimming when they left this. It doesn't tell us much about subsequent mortality and in fact that would be hard to do because a fish with a radio tag in its stomach will not live to see the end of the river. It blocks digestion so this is a sacrificial study. Secondly, the studies that we have done with radio tags, because the warmer the water is, the harder it is to safely handle fish. In general there has been a practice among those who conduct these studies to not do studies in August because the mortality resulting from handling has been found to be high enough that it really confounds any results. So the second part of the assumption is that the information we would get from a study in July or earlier is representative of what would happen later on in the season. And there is one other assumption, I guess two more just to give you a sense. And I'm not here to trash radio tags; they are a valuable tool; I just want you to know why we would hesitate to say that these results provide us perfect information about what's happening. The two other elements that come from radio tag studies is that because the fish are released often at different points and we end up then assembling, at best we would have fish in tailrace of Dam A and measured in the tailrace of Dam B and we're able to say we estimate survival to be such and such. One of the assumptions we need to make is that really does replicate true survival through that stretch of ground, and that a series of those - if you did a study for Lower Granite Dam, Little Goose, Little Mo and so on down the system, you are basically doing a study for this project, a separate study for this project and so on down the system. But the sum of those pieces equals something like a system survival number.

We have some way of back correlating it. We believe that to be true. But it is again a caution. And finally, an assumption we have to make that no one feels comfortable about is that radio tags do not affect fish behavior or survival. In fact, we know that in long-term survival it does affect them, that in short-term behavior there is reason to believe that it shouldn't but we don't know for sure. I would mention also that the Corps of Engineers is designing a study to test all of those assumptions. This was part of the long-term study methodology for the region. And I think we will get more refined information.

What we can tell you now, however, is that these tags have been used regularly, that they do provide a good comparative index of survival. We may not know absolutely how many fish are surviving, but we have a pretty good idea that compared to one condition or another we are seeing a change in survival, positive or negative as a result of this. So we feel that there is enough information to indicate the relative direction or value of a change in system operations from this. So bottom line is we would look toward this study methodology to measure the difference simply because accepting its limitations it still provides valuable information and we believe is likely to provide us good guidance as to whether or not the changes are significant in a serious way or not. And that relative information will be good even while we may have doubts about what it is really telling us about absolute survival through those reaches. So that's study methodology.

The third point I wanted to address is the recognition of other effects and what I would say for lack of a better term are regional equities. Something that we've been looking at and discussing very directly in our discussions and certainly you'll see them reflected as we come back to you with a decision or proposal on how to move forward is this is not just about ESA-listed stocks. It is about the effect on other stocks of fish, large numbers of which numerically the greater part of the fish affected by these changes are not ESA-listed fish, such as the Hanford Reach fall chinook. The fact that those runs may be relatively abundant doesn't mean that we open by sort of saying therefore we can abuse the runs. We're not interested in doing that. So there is a similar concern about what it is that we should be doing to recognize any losses that might occur to those runs, either in terms of offsets or in terms of other forms of mitigation. Secondly, in terms of regional equities there is the larger sense of if there is a very substantial savings to the regional ratepayers, realizing that both the local economy is hard-hit and there are pressures to reduce rates, and that the fish and wildlife program is straining for funding as well. How do you balance the equities when there are savings made available?  Those are questions I simply wanted you to know that we recognize those are there; haven't formulated an answer to it; in each of these stages as we move forward I think there are points in which either at a staff level or more formally with the Council itself we?d like your advice and guidance on these.

As far as the next steps, we have one of our internal working meetings tomorrow and we'll talk through this information. There won't be any final decisions made, but in light of this is there enough to interest us in exploring this further and I'd have to say that my sense is there is interest in exploring it further and we'll want to move forward in this direction. Also as you  know we are affecting tribal, treaty and trust rights as we do this. We've already received a request for consultation, which we will honor. We respect our role with the tribes and we want to make sure we have talked this through as well, and we would not be reaching a final decision until we've had such a consultation.

As far as where things go from here, the next things that we are doing analytically are updating the SIMPAS Model. The SIMPAS Model is basically a kind of a spreadsheet model that is based upon the best available information we have of reach-by-reach survival and then it is balanced with whatever information we have of system survival under various conditions. You the Council Members have heard some results from an earlier version of the SIMPAS Model when Bruce Suzumoto presented to you estimates of the relative effects of for example curtailing spill in August. We believe that the model is good; we believe it can be made better, and so what we are doing is updating it with the last several years worth of information so we are looking at something that to some degree runs the same way, but has a better experience behind it, so we think it is yet more reliable. I don't have any indication whether that would substantially change the results or not - I don't want to get ahead of any of the changes. I doubt based on what we're seeing that the changes would clearly change the direction of the effects you've already seen. So we would use that to estimate relative changes in survival in a predictive sense, and of course we would be using that kind of analysis to determine the likely effects on fish populations and the magnitude of offsets that would be needed.

As far as decisions, recognizing that a large-scale pit-tag study really is unlikely to yield information, while it would be enormously interesting and from a philosophical and scientific point of view, I would love to see a good 500/600 year study, we're not relying on that to validate the results of this summer. We are making sure that the kinds of radio tags necessary to track this will be available on a schedule, but should there be a decision to conduct certain kinds of exercises, we would be in a position to measure those effects. We're conscious of that deadline and are making sure that the deadline won't preclude our ability to do something.

A final issue in this, however, and by no means trivial - I mean I've talked about the technical questions - there is another very large question of how does this fit with the current Biological Opinion and any future biological opinions. Our view of the current Biological Opinion is if we have something that sort of makes sense, is biologically equal or greater - I mean if you stand up squarely and say we're not reducing fish survival, and particularly if it carries substantial regional support, our view is that that is something we believe would be consistent with the opinion. However, you should also recognize that on the schedule we have committed to the court and it is a schedule to which we will hold, we will be delivering a new draft or a revised draft Biological Opinion to the court in March (2004), with a final opinion in place in June. So likely the outcome of this will be governed by a new opinion, not the current opinion. If so, it would be our intention within the new opinion to provide the same kind of accommodation we've described to you, that is the accommodation that when you can achieve results that are biologically equal or superior, where you have reasonable measurement in place to assure that you are in fact doing this, then that would be a practice that might be allowed under that opinion. So we're trying to leave room for that in the upcoming opinion. With that, Madame Chairman, I have said more than I know about the subject.

Danielson: Well, actually, Bob, we have found this very enlightening. I learned a lot about radio tags that I hadn't thought about but it makes sense. I know we have lots of questions, Bob. I hope that you have a little time for that. Larry.

Cassidy: Thank you, Madame Chair. Bob, how are you doing?  Were you in the same traffic I was in this morning?  First of all, I would just take a moment to applaud your comments that total elimination of spill is not an expectation. I would point out that the perception outside many of the fish advocates is that total elimination of spill is a likely occurrence, so for you to address it in the manner you have, I'm not saying you've committed to it, is very encouraging to me. And I would make one other comment about this particular issue. The Council I think has very responsibly tried to address this within the variety of interests we have in the four states we represent, and I know you commented about the Snake River issue and the Snake River migrants. But I know we don't spill in the summer in the Snake River in those projects, so essentially that spill is eliminated already. And I keep trying to focus the Council and other interested parties on what happens below McNary, because I know that there is no transportation assistance for those outbound migrants in the tributaries in Oregon and Washington in that way. But it seems to me, and I'm interested in your feedback, that this problem is maybe necessarily being shrouded in complexity. To me it seems that we have a summer spill cost factor in lost power that can be generated, and we know, at least I believe, we know we're hurting fish in the process in that period of time, whatever that it, whether it's the last half of August, whether it's all of August, whether it's a week in August, whatever it is. I'm assuming we are going to damage fish. The problem I keep finding is a fish advocate or someone to tell me how many fish are in the river during that period of time and if we could determine that, then we could mitigate for those fish in some manner or at least describe it or draft a mitigation plan, compare that to the economic savings and then you've got a decision you can make. And if it's $5 million to mitigate and $100 million in savings, then I think we as fish advocates look bad if we don't say we ought to do this. I'm not sure that's where the numbers fall. But that's what seems to be falling out of the cracks that no one seems to want to address in terms of that comparison.

Lohn: Madame Chair, member Cassidy, two points: first of all I would expect that the SIMPAS Model will give us that sense in a general sense, but in a general sense based upon I guess historic averages of which fish are present when. If that's not the right tool we'll certainly look at that because I agree that having a clear understanding of the extent and number of fish impacts is important before you make any decision, and it is our intention to have that. A caution I have - again this is the sort of field of unknowns - while we have good information about average years or historic fish passage, we did struggle in the course - I shouldn't say we, the region's technical folks in the agencies and tribes and some of my staff and perhaps from the Council, I don't know who was involved - struggled hard to see what we knew about the migratory patterns or the in-season ability to measure timing of a run. And it was one of those things that after it has occurred, we're pretty good at predicting it. But during the time we have general information we can tell fairly well when the bulk of the fish have passed. Can we tell exactly when 90 or 95 percent have passed?  That's much harder to do. It came back that it would be very difficult to do that reliably in season, so at best you have to enter this knowing that you can say much of the migration has passed, you can't say exactly this percentile has passed until after the fact. But with that kind of general information, yes, you can develop a pretty good sense of roughly how many fish are in the river at that time, how many are likely to be affected and I agree with you, Mr. Cassidy, that's an important piece of information before we talk about mitigation and offsets.

Cassidy: I made notes here and I missed one thing. I also applaud your commitment to the non-listed fish, the healthy runs, so we don't end up totally ESA oriented. I realize the ESA is very important, but keeping protection available for the healthy runs to me is paramount importance as well, so thank you for that.

Danielson: Because Larry is a fan of burbot.

Cassidy: Well I don't have anything against bourbon, but I don't know much about burbot.

Danielson: Are there other questions. John.

Hines: Thank you, Madame Chair. Welcome, Bob, good to see you. Just a couple of quick questions on the whole offset concept. You mentioned early on in your presentation that offsets would be funded potentially through savings. Would you also include monitoring and evaluation to be funded through a similar sort of mechanism? 

Lohn: Madame Chairman, member Hines, I don't have an answer at the moment because we haven't discussed it and I don't want to get out in front of my colleagues. I think in some instances studies already scheduled are under way and are going to provide us this information and I'm not interested in kind of defunding those and refunding them from another pot if they are already being paid for we'll use those. As far as additional studies, we just haven't discussed it. I don't know the answer. I don't want to speculate.

Hines: One more follow-up. On the concept of determining the potential impact and then providing offset, it seems to me that relying solely on the modeling may not be the best mechanism, and that you would have ongoing in-river analyses that would also feed into the ultimate offset and so there would be almost a rolling program if you will. Would you comment on that?

Lohn: Member Hines, your thinking frankly in advance of what we've done. I'd be interested in exploring how we could better recognize and address those. I would say in my limited backgrounding and briefing of this other than recognizing when the bulk of the migration passed, I mean we should be able to track that, we hadn't seen other good alternatives to provide real-time guidance. If you see some, we?d be very interested in knowing of them.

Danielson: Ed's next.

Bartlett: Thank you, Madame Chair. Bob, I don't want to divert you much from the summer spill discussion, but I think you know that the fish and wildlife committee and the Council have concentrated on two aspects of our mainstem amendments directed toward ?04, the other one being summer operations in and near the reservoirs at Libby and Hungry Horse. And your letter to our Chair indicated that the federal agencies are quite aware of that. What comments can you give us today on Libby and Hungry Horse?

Lohn: Madame Chairman, Mr. Bartlett, the number one issue for Libby and Hungry Horse turns on what effects flow augmentation have on migrating fish. And on that in the course of preparing a revised biological opinion as we did last time, I'm having our science center do a series of white papers, which are basically their advice to me and they are publicly open to the region for comment and I'm hoping that the Council, at least on papers of interest might make comments or allow their staff to make comments, but one of the major white papers will be on the subject of flow survival relationships, flow augmentation and so forth. And it really contains information, the last Biological Opinion as I recall, the white papers contained information that was for the most part through 1998 because to do a white paper then to begin an opinion that completed in 1999 or completed in 2000 there may have been a little bit of 1999 information, I don't recall. But it means we've got probably two to three years worth of completed data sets that tell us more about the effects of flow augmentation on migrating fish. And what I want to tell you is the following. First of all, those papers are due out sometime this month, and I'm hoping that they will be probably ten days to two weeks off although I don't have a current update, but I'm assured they are pretty close to schedule. That information and the comment on it is going to inform sort of what relative effects this might have and thus what we would need to look at. What I can tell you is based on the Council's request we take this as an active proposal, one in which we are obligated to make a decision, one in which currently we are as it were keeping the options open, that is making sure that we are not foreclosing this as we move ahead, and we're simply waiting to see what do we know about flow augmentation and thus what would be the relative effects of those changes. One key piece of information that is emerging from flow augmentation, I don't want to get ahead of the papers because they will say more definitively what is known, so I will simply say this is a personal observation and it may or may not be well reflected in these papers, but coming out of work we've been doing on the lower Snake River below the Hells Canyon projects and some very interesting measurements that have been conducted over the years on survival of Fall Chinook migrants out of that reach, the listed Snake River Fall Chinook, what we are seeing in that reach, well for years the confounding question about flow augmentation has been is it velocity, that is moving fish faster increases survival; is it turbidity because often high flows are associated with more opaque water which reduces predation and increases survival. Is it the temperature because typically periods of high run-off contain much cooler water, or is it the associated ocean conditions because those effects occur typically when there is a strong spring runoff often correlates with a kind of upwelling or downwelling, a churning in the ocean that produces a strong, rich pasture in the ocean, a strong food base. The answer of course is that it is all of those, but Billy Connor's work on the Lower Snake is suggesting that for that reach the most powerful effect by far is temperature, not velocity, not opacity. All of them help and often they don't occur independently, but as we look at that piece of information I just want to signal as that develops we will be looking more at what does flow augmentation do in that dimension and trying to get at the other side of the question is does adding more hot water help fish at all?  Those are questions that are beginning to open. But as for the Montana question, bottom line Mr. Bartlett is we're waiting for the white paper to give us some sense of the relative value and impact. If there is a significant effect on fish we would want to look at what mitigating actions we could take and how we would want to proceed. That's lagging a little bit waiting for the white papers, but still seriously under consideration.

Bartlett: We appreciate not only your comments on that, but the fact is that you?re making that effort. In your response, though, I'm not going to assume and I know you at the federal agencies won't assume that you'll forget the impacts in and near the reservoirs themselves. I hope that the federal agencies are aware that the Council is ready to proceed with evaluations in that regard.

Lohn: Madame Chairman, Mr. Bartlett, in sort of the part of my life that I live when you don't see me in the region, I am a member of a larger organization called NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, and as a larger organization we've been going through a sort of review of our mission and functions. The Number 1 thing which pops up that we are involved in and we need to focus on is ecosystem integrity, and it makes very little sense to be damaging one ecosystem to focus solely on benefits in another. And in this instance I know there are tradeoffs and it's not a clean, you can have everything you want every place, but it is something that I just want to say is part of our larger agency mission; it is something I take seriously. We will be looking at this and yes, as sort of this information develops about what do we understand about the impacts and how would we then think through a new structure, the advice of the Council would be extremely important because you will, we trust, take a sort of a regional perspective and to the extent you?re talking about balancing between different interests, we can tell you these are the ESA listed concerns we need to talk about, or these are the trust and treaty rights we need to take into account, but we will be looking to your advice as to where that balance would be.

Kempton: Good morning, Bob. Thank you for being here and thank you for the job you do at NOAA Fisheries. I won't say it's a pleasure to see you on the front line because I don't think that would necessarily reflect your attitude about it, but it is a good happenstance that you are there, you are on the front line, and you have had a presence on the Council. I think it helps us communicate more directly with you.

So I have a couple of questions. One, you mentioned an 80 percent confidence level. Where did that come from?

Lohn: Madame Chair, Mr. Kempton, the question we?d asked the technical group was simply what would it take to do a good study?  And they said well, okay, just for analyzing this we'll take a study of something to measure 3 percent, the difference may be less than that, may be more than that, and then their assumption of 80 percent was simply something they used in developing this. If we picked another number obviously the period would go.

Kempton: And we might move considerably away from a 500 to 600 year study?

Lohn: That's correct.

Kempton: And I just wished we could have even approached 80 percent confidence level at any point in the decisions that have been made in the past on spill. I mean we looked during the time that we were doing the mainstem amendment of R squared values less than 30 percent, and those were decision factors coming into the Council on spill issues. So I don't exactly understand where the 80 percent confidence level suddenly becomes best available science.

Lohn: Member Kempton, it wasn't intended to be that and if the Council would like an estimate for example of a confidence interval of 30 percent or 25 percent or any other, I'd be happy to get it. That number was just handed to me by illustration of what it would take.

Kempton: I understand, but what I'm suggesting is that we work with a lot of reasons to why not, and the Council, if we thought we needed to go as high as an 80 percent confidence level would have suggested that in the mainstem amendment. We didn't; we were simply looking for scientific groups to come up with reasonable science, best available science if you will, based on the capabilities that we have. We didn't discuss genetic marking as a part of this and how that might fit in, certainly the pit tag type of technology can accomplish certain things, but as you pointed out, is very limited in certainly reaching 80 percent confidence levels. I guess I had also a question - when the federal execs meet will they be in closed session or open session?

Lohn: On Friday we will be in closed session.

Kempton: And that was true last time?

Lohn: That's correct.

Kempton: why is that?

Lohn: Most of our meetings, Mr. Kempton, are to discuss our processing of the biological opinion on remand and because this is a matter in litigation and frankly, because what we're doing is talking through the next steps and how we deal with both the legal and procedural challenges, we would normally meet in closed session. We try to make sure, I mean one of the federal issues is how do you respond to this biological opinion and there's a good deal of just sort of working through issues amongst agencies. That does raise a question which I would be interested in the answer - I don't have permission to bring any commitments from my colleagues, but I would carry this back to them, is as we deal with these issues, these issues being other issues on the remand, what does the Council see as its role and what interest or what points of involvement will you be seeking on this?

Kempton: I was wondering, Bob, if as part of the federal execs procedure in this since it is of such interest to the region as a whole if the federal execs couldn't consider those aspects that relate directly to the BiOp and the remand of the BiOp and those issues that relate outside of that, say that would address some of the questions about spill testing and some of those things which are really research oriented, and operationally oriented, not necessarily related to the Biological Opinion or the remand.

Danielson: I wonder if I could interject here real quickly and that is General Grisoli will probably have a discussion with the federal execs on Friday about the involvement of the Council. I met with the General on Monday and he wanted to talk to the federal execs about Council involvement.

Kempton: Thank you, Madame Chairman, that's very handy to know. And Madame Chairman, I guess the only other things that I would add being a resident in an area where the flow augmentation through the Snake River above Hells Canyon has become very controversial, and I would agree that the temperature factor is a huge issue, and it was when we looked at the mainstem amendment. That certainly wasn't lost on the Council at that period of time. It is interesting that the Biological Opinion, the old one which we're replacing, sort of reversed the flow schedules on those and the emphasis for the effects that we're talking about. The primary concern was for temperature and yet the primary flow standards were for spring, and so I'm glad that those kinds of issues will be looked at in the new Biological Opinion. The issue of temperature control I think is much easier to address from the Hells Canyon region than is the issue of flow ultimately. So anyway, Bob, thanks again for being here, and the questions that I asked about meant to reflect an attitude that isn't suggesting that good work isn't being done. But I am very concerned about some of the things as they relate to the mainstem amendment and some of the issues that the Council looked at, and also the openness of the federal execs in a region that just frantically needs to have evidence of the thinking of federal leadership. And where the discussions may not directly involve court issues where they would be reasonably closed, I think it's just really important that those be open.

Lohn: Thank you Mr. Kempton.

Derfler: Bob, I guess I'm a little disappointed to hear the disclaimers you've just listed on the studies, saying that we really couldn't rely on them that much, and I guess when we get all through with this my concern will be that either side that isn't happy is going to say this is not a good study. I don't know if you can respond to that or not, but it just seems like we're going through all this study, but we're not sure this is going to give us good information.

Lohn: Madame Chairman, Mr. Derfler, I would share a sense of disappointment, that is I too would like to have sort of crisper information. What I want to, and actually before I lose the thought if I may pick up on Member Kempton's thought, is that in terms of study design and advice on structuring studies and what's measurable and how you can do it, we would really value the Council's involvement or even leadership on that. I think that's an important function and if you folks have a study design that we've missed or just a recommendation on how best to get there, we're more than willing to do it. Here's the problem, Mr. Derfler, as we would see it. If you would look at for example Mr. Suzumoto's work on August spill of last year, it would show that the difference in survival, one thing I want to emphasize is that the decision between spill and no spill is not a decision whether a large number of fish survive or not. It's a question of several differences between survival with one route passage and survival with another route. Sometimes those differences can be very small. The kinds of results that Bruce Suzumoto was talking about were on the order if I recall of less than 20 adult fish. When you are looking at the size of the river and the number of fish involved, juveniles and ultimately as returning adults, I can tell you that there simply are no study techniques that are accurate down to that level. So the smaller the difference the harder it is to measure. The very point I took from some of the Council's concerns as expressed last time is if the difference is so small, why are you spending resources here rather than there?  That is one of the things that drives us back into it. But you should realize the other side - if the difference is small, it is going to be really hard to measure. The kind of accuracy with which we measure events occurring in that time period, say late July or August, and we certainly don't even measure every stock very well, the kind of accuracy, we would feel lucky if we're plus or minus 6 percent. And that's not something we can dependably achieve. The kind of number Mr. Suzumoto was talking about if you accepted it as the right thing is well within the zone of plus or minus less than 1 percent. And we just don't have tools that are able to get down there. What we can do, and what I do want you to see is while I want to lay out all the uncertainties about tools, what we can do is we think with a reasonable level of confidence measure whether or not we've significantly affected things one way or another. So we may not be able to measure that 1 percent, but we can sure tell you that we haven't by whatever the zones of confidence are, we haven't violated those and made things noticeably worse. For example, a 50 percent reduction in survival if that was an adverse effect we would see that very quickly and very crisply. But I do want to come back to this point that sometimes as decision-makers we want to say I would like to see really accurate information before I make my decision and boy, I sure have that sense myself. Very often I have to recognize that the science is not yet to that point because the problem is very challenging and we don't have ways to get to that level of accuracy, and nonetheless we need to make a decision. So what I would recommend is we use our tools as best possible to narrow the uncertainty and gauge whether we've really gotten far off. But beyond that I think you need to move from a precise measurement into the best judgment you can offer, and that's where we would go and of course your advice on how to make that judgment is valuable.

Karier: Thanks, Madam Chair, and thanks, Bob, for coming today. I also appreciate your science-based approach to this and even though that seems like NOAA Fisheries job, in the past it wasn't always their approach in putting that science out there first. I think a lot of our discussion would be better informed probably by these white papers. I think some of the points you've made today are new points to me that I haven't heard before or haven't seen written down, and I'm hoping that the white papers will address all this. There are these very detailed studies in each of the projects that are indecipherable to a lot of us in the policy world, and I think what's really needed is a summary of the results of this. What do we know about spill and more importantly what don't we know?  What are the limits and how would we go about fitting that together. I think in the Council program that's what we turned over to the federal agencies. We don't know what the answers are to that, but the sooner that you can provide those kinds of summaries and if that's in the white paper, that would be great. The sooner you can provide that I think the more informed the debate would be in the region. There's a conspicuous absence of that kind of information right now. I think we need it on spill and we need it on turbine efficiency and some other areas that the Council addressed in its program.

Lohn: Madame Chairman, Dr. Karier, thank you Dr. Karier for your support of that approach. I do agree with you. I'm hoping that the white papers at least provide a pretty good sense of guidance. I can assure you that it won't satisfy all my interest in information; I suspect not yours either. The problem we consistently run up against on these things is even though we may be doing a good job measuring the effects of something in a particular year, those effects are always confounded by changing conditions, both in the river - water temperature, velocity, turbidity, all of those things - in the fish migration cycle - which group of fish is passing when; and in the configuration of the dams. At various times some for fish passage, some for other reasons, there will be something happening. And the difficulty in these studies is you need ideally to replicate an event under a series of conditions in which ideally you?d like to be changing one variable only and do this for five or six years, and we seldom get to do that. So what you have - on one hand we probably have more information about salmon than most any other species, non-domestic species on the face of the earth. There really has been nothing further studied than salmon in the Pacific Northwest. On the other hand, I think we persistently will come up short because there's yet another question we want to ask, but I think, Dr. Karier, your sense for example of looking at the value of project-by-project survivals - that's something that is beginning to emerge. We've used it for years, but it is beginning to give us I think a much crisper picture of this and that's valuable.

Karier: Just to follow up - we've heard a report from the Corps of Engineers about some of their tests at some of the various projects. For example, some of the findings at Ice Harbor were counter-intuitive; they were not what they expected; they found lower survival rates during spill at some times; higher survival at other times; and none of that information has really been involved in this debate very much, because I think it's known to the Corps of Engineers researchers but I think it's not very well known outside those circles. So it's that kind of information that you find from Witt Anderson and Rock Peters and Jim Ruff that they are a wealth of information, but it really needs to be consolidated. I think your agency has the capability to put that together.

Lohn: That's a very good suggestion. On some of this I have to confess that when you?re faced with a single project decision, such as at Ice Habor, I do the same thing that apparently you've been doing. I sit down with those who are most familiar with the project and its history, and we sort of go through the lore and practice and try to formulate a mental model about under these circumstances what's really happening. The idea of formalizing that in some way so it's not Justin the heads of those people is a good suggestion. Given workloads of course I don't know how it  happens, but it is one that I will take to heart. I appreciate that.

Cassidy: Thanks, Madame Chair. I do have a question and I'll switch gears on you a little bit, but I always like for the purpose of our audience, Bob, to point out that Suzumoto's work talking about 15 or 20 adults only related to threatened and endangered fish.

Lohn: That's correct.

Cassidy: If you take the non-listed fish, you?re talking at a minimum 6,000 and some tribal reports show as many as 25, 0000 adults and we don't know where that number is but it is a significantly greater number. We see too many headlines that say summer spill is only about 15 fish and it drives you nuts. But let me switch gears to subbasin planning. You know that process. You were here at the Council at the time we initiated it and it's proceeding along we think fairly well. You have made from my interpretation a significant commitment to the value of subbasin planning with regard to recovery and what role it will play in recovery plans for the region. But recently your TRTs have decided they need an additional assessment, particularly in view of the BiOp remand which has to be done by early June, about the time our subbasin plans come in and we're readily agreeable that you don't have time to use our plans for that purpose. But do you feel still that that commitment to subbasin planning is as strong as it was, and do you feel your people are integrating with using what assessment information has already been done rather than undertaking their own efforts?  We are really worried about in the field where the people are doing the work that there is a perception that here comes the federal government and they're going to duplicate the effort. I thought maybe you?d want to comment on that.

Lohn: Madame Chairman, Member Cassidy, let me be unequivocal up front. I am strongly, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, is strongly committed to subbasin planning as providing a foundation for recovery plans and the direction in which we will go, and I see no substitute and have no desire to slow that down or interfere with it. We really have bet the farm on subbasin planning, and I also want to sort of mention that we have committed a lot to it, but I am deeply appreciative to the Council and to the members individually for your support and energy in this. It wouldn't happen unless it were a regional effort. This is not something NMFS could do; we don't reach people the way we do; we don't know people the way we do; and frankly we're not equipped to do this. This is an absolutely vital effort and I want nothing to get in the way of it. I just want to be absolutely clear on that because I see subbasin planning as the place in which we not only identify the limiting factors, but identify those locally acceptable ways to address those limiting factors and get them to a recovery that isn't just theoretical but is practical and one that is going to happen. That's the thing we will base our plans on; that's what we will work with you to get funding support for; that's what I see frankly the future for the region is.

Now with that I want to give some context to what we were trying to do and actually at the time it was launched I didn't see any connection with subbasin planning. I'm glad you were astute enough to see it, but I hope we've avoided any adverse or competitive effects. Under the Biological Opinion the heart of this current Biological Opinion as will be for the future Biological Opinion is to recognize the operation of the hydro system causes a certain amount of injury and death to fish that migrate through it. So on one hand we sort of have the debit column over here. In order to make that work in terms of a biological opinion you need to have the credit column. Part of our job with the court is convincing them that there is enough things, even while we may not know precisely what projects will fit in the credit program and certainly long-term subbasin planning is the place where we go to say this, this and this are the things that go in the credit column for this group of fish if they are funded, if they are completed, this is what would offset that. That's where we get that. As an intermediate step, there is a legitimate question in this to say well are there even enough opportunities that a credit column big enough to offset the debits exists. And the inquiry that the science center set about was sort of a rough cut look using some sort of large-scale techniques to see is there enough room for improvement in the watersheds of the Northwest that we could long-term offset the damage being done by the hydro system?  Can we get it there even while we say we don't know yet, wait until the plans are done?  That was the function of that inquiry is to give us a sort of a scale kind of thing. I viewed that as I wouldn't quite say a throw away but a scoping exercise that told us generally there are these kinds of opportunities and it was done at a level you?d say it was credible, I mean you would be professionally confident to say there are these kinds of opportunities, but I didn't see it as something that went in and told people in an area so this is what you ought to be working on. Actually where the Council has taken this, and I appreciate your cooperation because this was a better outcome than any I had assumed was possible, is to take that information which we were really using as a statement for this opinion and just about a statement of potential, and integrate that in such a way that it provides something that's informative and relates to in some way subbasin planning. That's a better outcome than I would have envisioned. I saw it as just sort of a separate exercise; you see it as an integrated exercise. I am grateful to you for that. But if in the end it doesn't provide anything more than just a credible way of saying there's some potential here but wait, subbasin planning is where that potential will be identified and realized, that would be a satisfactory outcome.

Danielson: That's a good note to end on. Bob, we certainly appreciate seeing you. We don't get to see enough of you at your old stomping grounds here. We do miss you and it is very nice to get the word from the boss. Sometimes translations get lost, and so we appreciate your time.

Lohn: Madame Chairman, I remain an admirer of the Council. I am grateful to you the members. And I just want to thank you again on subbasin planning. There have been so many local challenges and I know for many of you, for all of you, you've reached out and sort of put your personal time and credibility and relationships out there to say no, this really needs to work, here's why we're supporting it. We wouldn't have made any kind of progress without you, and the region's recovery depends on this. I'm grateful to you.

The other thing I would say; I don't want to wear out my welcome here, either, but if there are moments in which to explain something or just to be accountable to you, you feel I need to come and talk with you, even if it is a conversation where you have some hard things to say, let me know and unless there's something firmly committed that I can't move on that day, I will be here. I stand at your calling. Thank you.

Danielson: Thank you, Bob. We appreciate that very much. And we will be calling you, you can count on it.

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