NEWS FLASH!  NEWS FLASH!  NEWS FLASH!

Please watch for this ad in the paper, learn something new, and share it with your friends, neighbors and relatives.  The message is a call-out to Senator Murray and Governor Inslee of Washington State informing our elected officials of the crisis situation surrounding the critically endangered Southern Resident orcas.  It asks them to support breaching the four Lower Snake River Dams.  It will help the public understand why breaching is important, how it can be done and that the lack of political will is the only thing standing in the way. This is one of the top issues for our region and for our time.  Without action, salmon and resident orca species are headed for near-term extinction.  Be the first to see it HERE!

Over 23,000 people have signed the petition and you can too!  Click HERE

December 14, 2017

According to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, in the 1950s and 1960s, 40,000 B-run steelhead crossed the Washington Waterpower dam near the former Potlatch mill at Lewiston. Sawmill workers were known to catch steelhead on their lunch breaks. That was before the four lower Snake River dams existed. After dam construction, steelhead numbers plunged. In 1997, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared these fish in jeopardy of extinction. In 2017, fewer than 1,000 wild B-run steelhead will pass Lower Granite dam and head up the Clearwater River, a decline of 98 percent.

During the past 20 years, electricity rate payers have provided Bonneville Power Administration billions of dollars to help Snake River salmon and steelhead runs recover. Recently, BPA raised its electricity rates another 5.4 percent for a total of 33 percent over the past few years. The agency states that 33 percent of its cost of production is mitigation for the damage the hydro system does to fish and wildlife. Our local electrical providers pass this cost on to us.

None of the four threatened or endangered Snake River salmon or steelhead species is on a path to recovery. Just 159 Snake River sockeye salmon returned to Idaho in 2017.

Since BPA is not getting our money illegally, perhaps this is technically not a case of fraud, though it feels like we are being defrauded. The word scam refers to “a dishonest scheme” or a “swindle.”

We are all being scammed.

Bonnie Schonefeld            Kooskia, Idaho

Audit: Port of Lewiston’s annual operating loss tops $134,000

Entity’s net position rose to $24.8 million in fiscal year 2017

Lewiston Morning Tribune at lmtribune.com

December 14, 2017

• BY ELAINE WILLIAMS

Tax dollars continue to be a key component of the Port of Lewiston’s budget.

The port had an operating loss of $134,220 in the fiscal year that ended June 30 for its dock, rental properties and warehouse, but a net income of $478,620 counting revenue from property and sales tax that totaled more than half a million dollars for the same time period.

The figures come from an audit that was released at a port meeting Wednesday.

The port has experienced operating losses since fiscal year 2013, when the loss was $92,435. Losses peaked last year at $501,234. The last time the port’s dock, rental properties and warehouse showed earnings was in fiscal year 2012 when they reached $280,509, largely because of revenue from megaloads.

Among the largest expenses in the calculation always is depreciation, which was about $400,000 in fiscal year 2017. Depreciation has to be deducted as infrastructure ages, but it doesn’t represent actual dollars going out the door.

The port has faced a number of financial challenges in recent years after container shipments between Lewiston and Portland halted. Shipments of cargo such as dried peas and lentils had been a significant source of income.

The port’s operating loss was smaller in fiscal year 2017, though it still did relatively little business at its dock. The port spent less on property development and received a refund from the city of Lewiston on the 18th Street North road project.

It sold rock that had been intended for a Regence expansion planned for more than a decade ago that eventually happened on the insurance provider’s existing Lewiston site.

Overall, the port’s net position climbed from $24.3 million in fiscal year 2016 to $24.8 million in fiscal year 2017. Those numbers include the port’s savings and capital assets.

In other business, port commissioners:

• Heard a report from manager David Doeringsfeld about railroad repairs. The port spent $59,000 to fix its train tracks in recent months, compared with the $5,000 to $6,000 that was budgeted. The money went to replacing ties on at least one tight corner as well as rehabilitating a bridge and a railroad crossing. The port anticipates the amount it spends on railroad maintenance will be higher in the next several years, partly to accommodate higher volume. Trains, for instance, are transporting products of a dried pea and lentil processing operation.
• Heard an update on the removal of an uninhabited homeless camp on port land in North Lewiston. The demolition cost $4,300, with the expenses being split about equally between a contractor that took out makeshift shelters and disposed of trash.

The project eliminated a fire hazard, said Commission President Mike Thomason.

The contractor contoured the dirt to blend with the terrain, and grass will be planted in the spring, Doeringsfeld said.

“By this time next year, you won’t know it happened.”

NOAA recommends focusing on habitat and hatcheries; dam breaching possible future strategy

Lewiston Morning Tribune at lmtribune.com

December 13, 2017

• By ERIC BARKER

The federal government released in-depth recovery plans for Snake River spring and summer chinook, fall chinook and steelhead Tuesday – the first such plans completed since the fish were placed under Endangered Species Act protections more than 20 years ago.

The documents are blueprints that lay out the types of actions needed to increase the abundance and productivity of the ocean-going fish to the point they are self-sustaining in the wild without the need of federal protection. It is likely to take decades, perhaps more, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars above and beyond what is already being spent, according to the documents.

“We definitely have a ways to go,” said Ken Troyer, Northern Snake River Branch chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at Boise. “I’m confident these recovery plans will get us there.”

Dam breaching is discussed as a possible future action that could help juvenile and adult salmon and steelhead survive their journey to and from the ocean, but it is not listed as a key strategy. Instead, the plans rely on things like continuing efforts to improve spawning and rearing habitat, reforming hatchery and harvest practices, reducing predators and taking actions to mitigate habitat degradation because of climate change.

The actions are largely voluntary.

“The recovery plan by its very nature is the best advice and guidance by my agency on all the sorts of things that need to be done to recover the species,” said Ritchie Graves, chief of hydropower division for NOAA Fisheries at Portland. “The (ESA) requires us to advise and lay out a road map. It doesn’t give us statutory authority to compel recovery.”

The plans say survival and abundance of the fish has increased as a result of several steps the region has already taken over the last two decades, including habitat work, the installation of weirs at the dams that allow juvenile fish to more easily find their way downstream and a host of other actions. But in the case of steelhead and spring and summer chinook, it says much more work is needed.

“The challenge is greater to recover spring and summer chinook and steelhead,” Troyer said. “They spawn farther up in the tributaries and they are vulnerable to habitat damage and climate change.

Fall chinook are closer to recovery. The government said it likely will follow a recovery strategy that doesn’t require the species to be re-established above the Hells Canyon Complex of dams.

Thanks largely to efforts by the Nez Perce Tribe to boost wild numbers with hatchery releases, fall chinook returns have increased from less than 100 at the time they were listed to returns of wild fish in recent years that have numbered more than 10,000.

“It demonstrates we are really on track to recover that species,” Troyer said.

However, federal fisheries officials say too many hatchery fall chinook are spawning with wild fish, and the places hatchery fish are released likely will have to be altered. Tom Cooney, a research biologist with the NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center at Portland, said hatchery fish should be excluded from the Snake River upstream of its confluence of the Salmon River in Hells Canyon.

“The idea is to have hatchery fish come back to some place else other than upper Snake reach so we have really high percent of natural fish there.”

Though the plan will focus on recovery of fall chinook without reintroduction above Hells Canyon, an alternative that would require restoring fish above the Idaho Power dams is being retained.

While dams are identified as a key limiting factor for the fish, Graves said dam removal is not outlined as a concrete action because too much scientific uncertainty exists as to its effectiveness. About 50 percent of juvenile fish survive their journey through the eight-dam hydropower system now. But he said removing the dams may or may not boost survival to a significant degree.

He pointed to taking actions aimed at reducing the effects of climate changes as a better strategy. For example, he said adult spring and summer chinook that return to the Snake River basin must survive in tributary streams through the hottest part of summer before spawning. Their offspring also have to survive in the same streams. Habitat work like reconnecting streams to floodplains and increasing shade through the planting of riparian trees and shrubs can help mitigate higher water temperatures brought on by climate change.

Graves said if you increase survival at the dams through breaching or additional spill, it won’t pay dividends if spawning streams are overheated.

Others see it the opposite way. Michelle DeHart, director of the federal Fish Passage Center at Portland, said it’s clear that juvenile fish that pass the dams through turbines or bypass systems rather than going over spillways survive and return at lower rates. Sometimes they die at the dams, but studies conducted at the center indicate the fish often succumb later – known as delayed mortality – as a result of stress and injuries while passing the dams.

While habitat work is important and may lead to more juvenile fish leaving Idaho, she said they still face major challenges at the dams.

“It’s like a retirement portfolio. If you have one bad investment that is so negative it’s eating up all the profits from your other investments in your portfolio, you are not going to get anywhere.”

The recovery plans are broader in scope than biological opinions that look at federal actions – such as operating the hydropower system on the Snake and Columbia Rivers – to determine if they threaten the existence or habitat of protected species. Federal biological opinions on Snake and Columbia river dams have received intense scrutiny over the past two decades and have been the subject of successful lawsuits filed by the Nez Perce Tribe, state of Oregon and salmon advocates that forced the government back to the drawing board.

Last year, District Court Judge Michael Simon at Portland overturned the government’s latest biological opinion and required the agencies that operate the dams to conduct an exhaustive environmental impact statement outlining their effects on the fish. That separate process is scheduled to wrap up in 2021.

 

 

In 2017 the fish returns at Lower Granite dam are down for all categories compared to both the 10 year average and 2016. A total of 142,527 salmon and steelhead returned to Lower Granite Dam in 2017, a 35% reduction from 2016, which followed a 33% reduction from 2015 to 2016. These precipitous declines should come as no surprise. They were predicted in the 2015 Salmon White Paper which was distributed to Pacific NW state representatives as well as federal agency representatives.
Five-year reviews by NOAA show minimal improvement in the risk-status of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead despite a billion taxpayer dollars being spent on system improvements. Current NOAA recovery plans are predicted to NOT achieve fish recovery. Pacific NW state fisheries reports show that smolt-to-adult ratios have not improved either and still show Snake River fish returns are not meeting criteria for species survival.

Printable PDF

2017 Fish Returns	Vs. 10-yr average	Vs. 2016 returns
Spring Chinook	-56%	-56%
Summer Chinook	-48%	-26%
Fall Chinook	-28%	-28%
Sockeye	-79%	-72%
Steelhead	-54%	-23%
Wild Steelhead	-66%	-38%

Data from the Fish Passage Center, fpc.org

Snake River wild steelhead are on a decline to levels not seen in 20 years.  Adult returns in 2017 will mark the second steepest 5-year trend since the 2009-2013 trend.  The third worst 5-year trend will be from 2002-2006 adult counts.  This recent 5 year trend is so low that it will hit a trigger point in the 2014 biological opinion.  The BiOp states that the agencies must implement a solution within 12 months.  However, the downward trend is not the only problem; the actual number of wild steelhead is now so low that the only solution or recovery action that can be implemented quick enough to prevent virtual extinction is the breaching alternative in the existing EIS for the 4 Lower Snake River dams.  Run declines of other species point to 2018 breaching as well.

From the 2016 and 2017 NOAA Recovery Plan for Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook Salmon & Snake River Steelhead, National Marine Fisheries Service, West Coast Region
“Over $1 billion has been invested since the mid-1990s in baseline research, development, and testing of prototype improvements, and construction of new facilities and upgrades.”
“NMFS estimates that recovery of the Snake River spring/summer Chinook salmon ESU and steelhead DPS, like recovery for most of the ESA-listed Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead, could take 50 to 100 years.” But further states:  “This recovery plan contains an extensive list of actions to move the ESU and DPS towards viable status; however, the actions will not get us to recovery.”

From the 2016 Comparative Survival Study SAR Patterns: Snake and Mid-Columbia
SAR (smolt to adult return ratio) is a measure of fish survival, or the % of smolts that return as spawning adults. The Northwest Power & Conservation Council’s goals are 2% for mere survival of the species and 6% for recovery of the species. Overall, Snake River Chinook and steelhead SARs have only been above 2% in 5 of 20 years in recent history (and never above 6%). These results are in spite of increased spill and barging around the dams. In contrast, Mid-Columbia Chinook and steelhead are generally meeting the NPCC SAR goals and have SAR ratios 2.3X – 3.4X greater than Snake River wild SARs. Keep in mind that Snake River salmon and steelhead pass over 8 dams… 4 on the Columbia and 4 on the Snake. Mid-Columbia fish only pass 1- 4 lower Columbia dams. If the 4 lower Snake River dams were removed, Snake River salmon and steelhead would have very similar migration and spawning conditions, which should lead to fish recovery.  See charts below for trend of SAR’s below 1. 

From the Draft Comparative Survival Study 2017 Annual Report by the Fish Passage Center
“If the lower four Snake River dams are breached and the remaining four Columbia dams operate at BiOp spill levels, we predict approximately a 2-3 fold increase in abundance above that predicted at BiOp spill levels in an impounded system, and up to a 4 fold increase if spill is increased to the 125% TDG limit. This analysis predicts that higher SARs and long-term abundances can be achieved by reducing powerhouse passage and water transit time*, both of which are reduced by increasing spill, and reduced further when the lower four Snake River dams are breached.”

*At the dams, river transit time unaffected.

 

John Twa

2017.12.14

Lewiston Morning Tribune

Letter to the Editor

12-10-17

A Huge Price to Pay

Cole Riggers, responding to your recent letter in the Lewiston Tribune, are you blind to the costs you and other “captive shippers” impose on your neighbors, other Northwest citizens and federal taxpayers so you can barge wheat on the Snake River?

Taxpayers spend millions annually subsidizing grain shipments by barge.

Home and business owners across the Northwest pay higher electricity rates to cover the costs of required fish mitigation so you can ship wheat by barge.

The owners of hotels, grocery stores, gas stations and sporting goods stores lose business because the lower Snake River dams and reservoirs damage fish runs. Entire communities, like Riggins, suffer economically.

Loggers, truck drivers and mill workers experience lost timber sales because Idaho salmon and steelhead remain in jeopardy of extinction.

Lower Snake River farmers, ranchers and recreationists lost 20,000 acres drowned by reservoirs.

Your Nez Perce neighbors lost much more.

The resident orcas in Puget Sound are starving and threatened with extinction.

With 140 miles of Snake River riverine habitat destroyed, 85,000 songbirds and 110,000 game birds disappeared.

Janice Inghram’s letter suggests two interesting questions. If one or more locks on the lower Snake became permanently inoperable, would you stop growing wheat? Secondly, if “captive shippers” had to pay even a third of the subsidies required to operate and maintain Snake River barging, would they stop growing wheat?

Like Inghram, I suspect “captive shippers” would instead invest in rail, like Palouse Prairie farmers did with their cooperatively financed McCoy Unit Loader.

 

Linwood Laughy

Moscow, ID

Lewiston Morning Tribune

Letter to the Editor

November 28th, 2017

Farmers don’t need dams

I often read barging wheat on the lower Snake River is critically important to maintaining wheat production in eastern Washington and north central Idaho. Without Snake River barging, so I’m told, wheat farmers couldn’t survive.

I’m puzzled. Farmers in the Inland Northwest grew wheat for 100 years before the lower Snake River dams were completed. Many wheat farmers on the Palouse ship by rail while others truck their wheat to barges on the Columbia. Wheat growers in Montana don’t barge any wheat, but they remain in business.

With the loss of container shipping on the lower Snake, garbanzos and lentils and peas (pulse) are now transported by truck and rail. I haven’t read any newspaper articles about pulse processors closing shop. I have read that area farmers are expanding their production of pulse crops.

If one of the dams or locks on the lower Snake suffered irreparable damage or the cost of repair was well beyond any possible economic justification, do you think the wheat farmers who still use the barge system would stop growing wheat?

Almost 90 percent of all freight shipped on the lower Snake River is grain. What if the farmers who still ship grain by barge had to pay even a third of the $10 million annual direct taxpayer cost of lock operations, and/or the $10 million spent on the last dredging project to keep the navigation channel open to the Port of Lewiston? How long do you think barging would last on the lower Snake?

Janice Inghram
Grangeville, ID

Overall Chinook Returns as of 9/29/17:

2017:  53,044

2016:  103,355

10 year average:  106,942

 

 

Spring Chinook Returns

2017:  27,357

2016:  62,050

10 year average:  62,403

 

 

Summer Chinook Returns

2017:  8,952

2016:  12,110

10 year average:  17,232

 

 

Fall Chinook Returns (as of 9/29/17, run is still going)

2017:  16,733

2016:  29,195

10 year average:  27,307

 

 

 

Steelhead Returns (as of 9/29/17, run is still going)

2017:  21,047

2016:  40,517

10 year average:  82,660

 

 

Sockeye Returns

2017:  228 to Lower Granite Dam, 157 of those made it back to Red Fish Lake.

2016:  815 to Lower Granite Dam, 595 of those made it back to Red Fish Lake.

10 year average:  1,062 to Lower Granite Dam, 690  of those make it back to Red Fish Lake.

 

 

If you are tired of fishing season closures, Southern Resident orca deaths, and your power bill going up, give your local elected officials a call.  They need to know that you want change.  Let them know that the ONLY solution to these problems is to mothball the 4 lower Snake River dams.

August 30, 2017

 

Tragedy of the Snake River Commons

The law locks up both man and woman

Who steals a goose from off the commons

But let’s the greater felon loose

Who steals the commons from the goose.

                                                                                                                                    Old English Proverb

 

A Tragedy Unfolding

In his 2005 bestseller Collapse, Jared Diamond describes how civilizations can quickly end when natural resources have been pushed to the limit, and then disaster—like a prolonged drought—sweeps across the land. For threatened and endangered salmon on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, 2015 was a disaster. An estimated 250,000 Columbia and Snake River adult sockeye salmon died before reaching spawning grounds due principally to high water temperatures. Only 56 Idaho sockeye reached the Sawtooth Basin, while 35 more were trucked from the lower Snake to the hatchery in Eagle, Idaho.  Was 2015 a perfect storm of low water volume and high ambient temperatures, or are sockeye and other Snake River salmon and steelhead species now on an irreversible path to extinction?

Snake River Sockeye

In 2015 the survival rate for juvenile Snake River sockeye from Lower Granite Dam to Bonneville Dam was just 32%.  In 2016 that rate fell to 12%.  Those survival rates do not include further losses below Bonneville Dam due to avian predation and delayed mortality. During 2015 and 2016 a total of 44 wild sockeye returned to Stanley Basin. This year only 227 adult sockeye passed Lower Granite Dam, and as of August 16 a total of 53 sockeye had returned to Stanley Basin fish traps, only 8 of which were wild fish.

Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook

As noted above, 2015 was a disastrous year for spring and summer Chinook in the Columbia Basin. In 2016 the number of these fish that reached the Snake River at Ice Harbor Dam totaled 116,282.  With the 2017 Chinook run over, as of August 29th that number is 44,762, a decline of 62%.

In late July 2017 the Idaho Department of Fish and Game reported adult spring Chinook numbers in Idaho would necessitate extraordinary measures to provide required brood stock to fill Idaho’s hatcheries.

Snake River Steelhead

In 2016 the return of Snake River A-run steelhead was accurately described as dismal, with just 3,400 of these one-salt (one year in ocean) fish having crossed Lower Granite Dam by August 11^th compared to a 10-year average of around 5,100 fish. By August 11, 2017, the number of A-run fish that had crossed Lower Granite was 393.  As reported by Eric Barker of the Lewiston Morning Tribune on August 16, 2017,  “the run is amongst the lowest on record at Bonneville, and the lowest ever at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River.”

Snake River B-run steelhead typically spend two years in the ocean, and due to poor 2015 river and ocean conditions, 2017 was predicted to be a poor year for these steelies. While these fish are just beginning to move up the Columbia, run size predictions are worse than dismal. The number of the once famous wild B-run fish to pass Lower Granite dam is pegged at 770 fish. That prediction may need a downward adjustment.

The Pacific Northwest is currently experiencing a record-breaking heat wave that is impacting river temperatures. The Environmental Protection Agency prescribes a maximum water temperature of 68° F for salmon migration routes, but notes that rivers with “significant hydrologic alterations [like dams and reservoirs] may present additional problems even at 68°.” According to the EPA, multiple scientific studies have concluded water temperature of 70° “can result in severe infections and catastrophic outbreaks” in salmonids. A thermal block to migration begins forming at 71.6°. Water temperatures in the 72°–73.5° range characterize a lethal threshold when fish begin to die.

On August 10, 2017 seven of the eight dams on the lower Snake and lower Columbia had average daily forebay temperatures exceeding 70° F. Water temperatures at two dams were 73.5° F, and at one dam, 74.0° F.  With a thermal block in place, at 73° F the term “poached salmon” takes on an entirely new meaning.

Collapse

When Jared Diamond studied the collapse of entire societies, he learned that societies sometimes fail to perceive a problem “when it takes the form of a slow trend concealed by wide up-and-down fluctuations” sometimes referred to as “creeping normalcy” or, in salmon management, “shifting baselines.” The comparison of a current fish run with the preceding 10-year average provides an example of a shifting baseline that can camouflage a downward trend.

However, even when a significant problem is perceived, a society “often fails even to attempt to solve the problem” stated Diamond, frequently due to clashes of interest among people and special interest groups. “This is particularly the case when a small minority highly motivated by the prospect of profit—and often supported by government subsidies—competes with the majority who individually stand to suffer a relatively small loss insufficient to motivate them to protect their common interest.”  This phenomenon is known as the tragedy of the commons, first described by Garrett Hardin in Science in 1968, wherein the parties who share a common resource find it in their individual best interest to exploit the resource until at some point the resource itself collapses.

In the present context, consider the Snake and Columbia Rivers and their tributaries and the fish therein as a giant, publicly owned commons, which in fact it is. Disaster struck the fish in 2015.  In 2017 the combination of ocean and river conditions has created a fish run collapse. A collapse, says author and passionate salmon advocate David James Duncan, is simply extinction in slow motion.

Simultaneously, the plight of endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales that rely heavily on Columbia Basin salmon for survival share the salmon’s fate.

Who Will Save Idaho’s Threatened and Endangered Salmon and Steelhead?

Despite her tenacity, the Little Red Hen isn’t going to save the Snake River’s wild salmon and steelhead.

State Fish and Game Departments aren’t going to save our salmon and steelhead. These organizations are focused on hatchery production and setting seasons that keep sports anglers buying fishing licenses. In Idaho this year, with as few as 20 wild Clearwater steelhead available for “incidental take,” Idaho Department of Fish and Game is allowing a catch-and-release steelhead season.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) is not going to save our salmon and steelhead.  The Corps builds, operates, maintains and defends dams. For at least the past 20 years this federal agency has done everything possible to maintain the status quo on the lower Snake River. The Walla Walla District prominently highlights on its website the “Outstanding Value to the Nation” of the lower Snake River dams despite being confronted by 10 state and national conservation organizations calling out the Corps’ blatant misinformation in this propaganda piece. Under federal court order, the COE will spend the next 5 years and an estimated $70 million studying dam operations on the lower Snake and Columbia Rivers. The Corps is the agency that will decide whether the Lower Snake River dams should be breached. As was the case in the Corps’ 2002 Snake River Juvenile Salmon Migration Feasibility Study, the fix is already in.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries won’t save our threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead. This agency has produced twenty years of biological opinions (BiOps) that govern the operation of federal dams on the Columbia and lower Snake Rivers. Three federal judges over the same time period have declared NOAA’s Bi-Ops illegal, in part because NOAA Fisheries has ignored best science and protects the LSR dams at all costs.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council won’t save our salmon and steelhead.  This agency was created in major part to ensure the protection of anadromous fish in the Columbia River and its tributaries impacted by hydropower dams. The Council is supposed to “consider protection, mitigation, and enhancement of fish and wildlife and related spawning grounds and habitat, including sufficient quantities and qualities of flows for successful migration, survival and propagation of anadromous fish.” While Council members perhaps do “consider” fish protection, their actions make clear the production of hydropower has priority. The Council’s stated vision for its fish and wildlife program tells the tale.  “The vision (an abundance, productive and diverse community of fish and wildlife) will be accomplished by protecting and restoring the natural ecological functions, habitats and biological diversity of the Columbia River System. Where impacts have irrevocably changed the ecosystem, the program will protect and enhance habitat and species assemblages compatible with the altered ecosystem.” (Emphasis added)

The US Fish and Wildlife Service won’t save our wild salmon and steelhead.  This agency “provides a broad and flexible framework to facilitate conservation with a variety of stakeholders.” Thus USFWS lists and delists species and makes recommendations on what should be done to protect T & E species. However, the results are dependent on the actions of a myriad of other state and federal agencies, leaving the USFWS ultimately unaccountable for actual species recovery. Year after year the Smolt-to-Adult Return ratio (SAR) for wild Snake River salmon and steelhead remains below the level required for species maintenance, let alone to avoid extinction. Based on the past 20+ years, the USFWS will “facilitate conservation” until the last Lonesome Larry disappears.

The Bonneville Power Administration won’t save our salmon and steelhead. With a surplus of power in the Pacific Northwest projected well into the future and BPA requesting a rate increase due to the lack of demand for its electricity, the agency continues to support the lower Snake River dams. BPA’s wholesale power price is now $33.75 per megawatt hour, while the price for the same power on the Northwest spot market is under $20. BPA’s financial reserves in 2007 stood at $917 million, and in 2017, just $21 million. Fifteen of the twenty-four turbines in the lower Snake River dams have exceeded their life expectancies, and rehabilitation of just the first three turbines has cost over $100 million to date. Northwest wind energy now produces nearly three times the electricity of all four Lower Snake River dams.  Fully one-third of BPA’s price for power in 2016 is attributable to fish and game mitigation, supporting a failing program. Nevertheless, the agency’s support of the lower Snake River dams remains unwavering.

The Environmental Protection Agency won’t save Snake River salmon and steelhead. This federal agency is responsible for controlling pollution in the nation’s waterways, and temperature is a major pollutant.  In 2003 the EPA completed a draft TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) study on the lower Snake River that demonstrated the single significant source of increased water temperature on the river is the solar radiation collected by the reservoirs behind the four dams, with each reservoir raising water temperature by up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit.  Such a finding was anathema to the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the Bonneville Power Administration and the special interest groups that dominate the political support for the dams.  The result was that the draft TMDL was soon buried. Today, fourteen years later, the EPA claims the completion of a final, actionable TMDL for the Snake and Columbia Rivers would be a difficult task requiring several additional years.

Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers and five of her House colleagues won’t save the Snake River’s salmon and steelhead. These Northwest politicians and their political supporters can’t even get past their belief that our salmon and steelhead are achieving record-breaking runs.  McMorris and her colleagues hope to mute the orders of a federal judge, stop any additional spill of water over the dams to help juvenile fish migrate to the sea, and halt any further alteration of any kind to the LSR dams without Congressional approval. They are betting the public can be duped by propaganda or won’t pay attention to the growing salmon crisis.

The Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association has proposed a solution to the collapse of our wild salmon and steelhead —let them all die. They propose removing these fish from the protection of the Endangered Species Act and allowing wild fish to become extinct.  Only one dam on the lower Snake, Ice Harbor, provides irrigation, and to fewer than 20 farms.

A comment about ocean conditions is appropriate here. Ocean conditions will emerge on the websites of the agencies and special interest groups that support the continued existence of the lower Snake River Dams as the shorthand explanation for 2017’s collapsing Snake River fish runs. On August 24, 2017 Idaho Department of Fish and Game Clearwater Fisheries Regional Manager Joe Dupont published an analysis lending credence to this position. Dupont included an important caveat to his analysis. “However, I need to emphasize that continued improvements to spawning and rearing habitat and the migratory corridor can make a difference in salmon and steelhead returns. In fact, I would argue that in years like this, if we had better spawning, rearing, and migratory conditions, it could buffer the poor ocean conditions to the point that we could still provide harvest fisheries in Idaho, and wild fish would not be threatened of going extinct.” (Emphasis added) The reader should be aware that Idaho rivers and streams include over 5000 miles of salmon and steelhead spawning and rearing habitat, much of it in pristine condition, leaving the migratory corridor the principal issue. Also noteworthy is the fact the State of Idaho is a co-defendant in the latest legal challenge to the Biological Opinion (BiOp) governing the operation of the dams on the Columbia and lower Snake Rivers.  Idaho is thus defending the status quo on dam operations, which federal Judge Michael H. Simon acknowledged, and the record clearly demonstrates, are imperiling threatened and endangered Idaho salmon and steelhead.

Will anyone save our wild Snake River salmon and steelhead and the orcas of the Salish Sea?

In Collapse, Diamond identifies three approaches that have proven successful in the past to preserve a commons resource.  First, a government can step in to enforce harvest quotas and take other actions necessary to preserve the resource. In the case of Snake River salmon and steelhead, a host of government agencies have spent 20+ years and billions of dollars on the recovery of Snake River threatened and endangered fish. All species continue to decline. The Southern Resident Killer Whales are likewise an endangered species, suffering from a lack of a major portion of their diet, Columbia Basin Chinook salmon.  As noted above, government agencies have devoted much time and treasure to maintaining the status quo on the lower Snake River and continue to do so today.

Privatization of a commons resource is a second possible solution, based on the hope that private owners would take a long-term perspective and be good stewards of the resource in order to protect their own interests. This solution is not possible, however, when the resource cannot be divided, which is the case with migratory fish and game.

A third possible solution, which Diamond acknowledged as the most difficult, requires that consumers of the resource recognize their common interests and actively intercede.  According to Diamond, “That is likely to happen only if a whole series of conditions is met: the consumers form a homogeneous group; they have learned to trust and communicate with each other; they expect to share a common future and to pass on the resource to their heirs; they are capable of and permitted to organize and police themselves; and the boundaries of the resource and of its pool of consumers are well defined.”

If Diamond’s analysis is correct, saving Snake River wild salmon and steelhead requires an aggressive mass movement, most likely originating in the Pacific Northwest, of people who refuse to see our river and ocean commons stripped of the iconic species that help define who we are and where we live. While the removal of the lower Snake River dams is a critical element in Snake River Basin fish recovery and can provide a focus for civil action, returning the lower Snake to a more natural flow will not be sufficient. Needed is an entirely new salmon management effort based not on the failed industrialization of salmon production in concrete tanks but the stitching together of the ecological requirements of salmon and steelhead life cycles.

Meanwhile, the great fisheries commons we call the waters of the lower Snake, the Grande Ronde, the Imnaha, the Clearwater, even the namesake Salmon River itself, is disappearing. The scientific community advises that the warming of the planet will continue to make this situation worse.

Whatever individuals and organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest who care about Snake River salmon and steelhead are now doing is not enough. Whatever supporters of Southern Resident Killer Whales are doing now to protect a critical food source for these orcas is not enough.  Concern without anger is insufficient to save our wild Snake River salmon and steelhead; anger without outrage belittles the truth; outrage without action is a sure path to species extinction.

 

Linwood Laughy       Kooskia, Idaho 83539          lochsalaughy@yahoo.com