Columbia River water management may enter the 21st Century if the Secretary of State John Kerry is willing to listen and advocate for saving salmon in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. (and the Pacific Southwest of Canada).  On Friday, September 20, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) issued a draft set of recommendations for modernizing the Columbia River Treaty.

Two recommendations of interest:

 

First, the agencies propose that a modernized Treaty include ecosystem-based function” (aka environmental restoration) as an explicit purpose of the Treaty, on equal par with hydropower generation and flood control. 

 

Second, the agencies recommend that the U.S. work with Canada to figure out fish passage at Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams so that salmon can return to the upper Columbia River in Canada.  

 

You can link here to the draft recommendations and cover letter.   BPA and ACE are accepting comments on this draft proposal until October 25th.  (More info will be posted here in early October for readers interested in submitting comments).

 

The recommendations are not perfect, and there are other elements that need improvement.  But this is BIG movement on restoring salmon health to the Columbia, healing a century-plus of damage to tribal and public interests, and addressing the impacts of climate change.  

Update August 30:  Eighteen conservation and good government groups sent letters to the U.S. Entity asking that an updated Columbia River Treaty include ecosystem restoration as a third and co-equal purpose (along with hydropower and flood control).  Here are a few salient excerpts, followed by the letters:

Dr. Mindy Smith, Citizens for a Clean Columbia:

It is time to establish true watershed management for this area, in consideration of past damages and climate change, and include the perspectives of those of us who live along the Upper Columbia River. In closing, the CCC board members urge the US entity to continue to make this process transparent and allow public review of supporting deliberative documentation, including technical appendices.

Pat Ford & Joseph Bogaard, Save Our wild Salmon Coalition and Sara Patton, Northwest Energy Coalition:

Save Our wild Salmon’s fishing, fishing business and conservation groups, whose combined members include some 6 million Americans, seek to restore Columbia and Snake Basin salmon for use by people and ecosystems.  NW Energy Coalition, with more than 110 member groups spanning environmental, civic and human-service organizations, progressive utilities and businesses in ID, MT, WA, OR and BC, promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy, consumer and low-income protections, and restoration of fish and wildlife affected by Northwest power production.

The Working Draft recommendation falls short of the changes needed to modernize the Columbia River Treaty so it helps ensure ecosystem health, public health, and economic health for Northwest people for the coming decades.  The 1964 Treaty is insufficient to the challenges of the Basin’s next 50 years, and the Working Draft’s thrust to largely ratify the outdated “two uses only” focus [hydropower and flood control] of the old Treaty, and to emphasize financial over substantive changes, is not in our region’s, or the Columbia Basin’s, interest.

Debrah Marriott, Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership:

Broader dialog with more diverse interests needs to be added to have the discussion and decisions reflect regional values and needs, including conservation, alternative energy, fish passage through upper dams, coordinated storage in Canada, no-structural flood management, the economy, tourism and recreation, strategic levee modification, navigation, commerce, industry, agricultural and cultural impacts.

Click on the group’s name to access its letter.

American Rivers

Aqua Permanenté

Center for Environmental Law & Policy

Citizens for a Clean Columbia

Columbia Institute for Water Policy

Columbia Land Trust

Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs

Idaho Rivers United

League of Women Voters of Idaho

League of Women Voters of Oregon

League of Women Voters of Washington

Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership

Northwest Energy Coalition

Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association

Pacific Rivers Council

Save Our Wild Salmon

Sierra Club

WaterWatch of Oregon

The Columbia River Treaty is in motion.  While U.S. and Canadian diplomats won’t start talking until 2014, U.S. agencies are asking citizens what they want to see in a new treaty.  And the resounding response is: ecosystem restoration, fish passage, clean energy, and fair and transparent governance.

In response to an August 16 deadline, more than 3,200 members of Sierra Club, Save Our Wild Salmon, Oregon WaterWatch, Idaho Rivers United, and the Center for Environmental Law & Policy weighed in.  They  offered their opinions to Bonneville Power and the Corps of Engineers that a modernized treaty must prioritize ecosystem restoration as a new and co-equal purpose for Columbia River dams.  And, it is time to work toward fish passage to restore salmon to the upper Columbia River in the U.S. (e.g., the Spokane River) and British Columbia.

The U.S. agencies will be refining recommendations for a new round of public comment starting around September 19.  Stay tuned and get ready.

However, let us not be deceived.  The electric utilities and water users are demanding more out of the river, including that there be no further efforts or money spent to restore salmon and ecosystem function.  Look for our upcoming post on “Power Politics.”

Meanwhile, here are a few excerpts from the many inspiring comments:

From Judge Mary Pearson:

I’m not a scientist, nor a hydroelectric engineer, but I know that the dams have decimated the salmon and that this has been an ongoing fact.  Some of the dams need to be breached.  Others need to at least install modern, workable, and reliable bypasses for the returning salmon as well as devising a faster, easier, and safer way to get the smolts to the ocean.  If a pneumatic tube can be created to transport man from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a few minutes, it can do the same for the salmon.

From Ms./Mr. Finley:

“No man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man,” (Heraclitus, circa 535-475 BC.)

I submit that the Columbia is not the same river it was back in 1964, when global warming and climate change were interesting if debatable theories, fracking was not exactly a household word, and residents of the Pacific Northwest gloried in our land’s cheap electricity, its beauty and seemingly forever adequate natural resources. We are not the same people as we were in the ’60’s. Hopefully new concerns of which we were barely aware in 1964 will be addressed and experience and education will give us wisdom to make protection of the environment our top priority. Thank you for the opportunity to submit a comment.

From Prof. Barbara Cosens of the University of Idaho, on behalf of the Universities Consortium on Columbia River Governance:

 The following comments are based on issues raised by stakeholders either in interviews done by students or in symposia held by the UCCRG. . . .

(2) Although the draft mentions possible attention to a program to reconnect areas of floodplain to the river, this does not go nearly as far as comments by stakeholders suggest it should. Model runs indicate that flood control at 450 cfs primarily through use of a limited list of dams is the major constraint on the system and makes it difficult to balance tradeoffs between power and fish. Stakeholders have raised that serious consideration should be given to raising the target risk level, doing a cost/benefit analysis of potential flood damage to determine what that higher risk should be, spreading flood control implementation to all federal dams in the system – not just those with current flood control authorization, and serious study of non-structural measures for flood risk management.

And, from Kayla L. Godowa-Tufti, member of the Warm Springs Tribe:

Hydropower, to those who have fished and lived along our river since time immemorial, has come at the expense of our entire unique cultural identities. When the dams were constructed our villages, thousand year old fishing sites and burial sites were drowned by the closing of the iron gates.

Currently, as has been reported, many of these dams are now outdated, leaking contaminants into the river and at high risk for breakage. In this critical age of climate change, in the event of a flood, could these dams withstand the pressure from these waters?

I have also been made aware of the current state of the largest environmental clean up project in the world, Hanford, and its leakage of high level radioactive waste into the soil and river. Radioactive waste leakage, floods, along with the out dated dams and their risk of breakage, these accumulative factors could be fatal. I cannot help but think of Fukushima. I do not want my home to be uninhabitable. So, I am challenging our nation, the United States, to honor our treaties and prioritize salmon and river health.

A collective vision is developing for upcoming change on the Columbia River.

Columbia Plateau Seasonal Round, from Prof. Eugene Hunn (Em.), Univ. of Washington

Fifteen Native American Tribes inhabit, own reservations, exercise treaty and executive order rights, and manage natural resources in the Columbia River watershed in the United States.  The Tribes understood the opportunities presented by upcoming changes to the Columbia River Treaty.  In response, they adopted a consensus statement of goals and sought and obtained equal participation as part of the U.S. Entity’s Sovereign Review Team, which is tasked with making recommendations to the U.S. Department of State regarding modernizing the Treaty.  Reporter Jack McNeel’s July 25, 2013 Indian Country Today article describes the role of the Tribes in this process.

One of the chief goals of the Tribes is to update the Treaty by adding a third purpose:  ecosystem-based function.  This goal goes far beyond simply operating the Columbia hydropower system to meet Endangered Species Act requirements.  More than a dozen major environmental, clean energy and good government groups endorsed these concepts in comments submitted to the U.S. Entity last week.  See post of August 14 (updated Aug. 18) “Conservation Groups Weigh In.”

With permission, the Columbia River Tribes’ definition of “ecosystem-based function” is re-printed here.  This statement gives insight into just how badly the Columbia River ecosystem is damaged, and what is needed to bring it back to health.  Actions such as improved instream flows, flood plain reconnection and fish passage are essential to achieve river restoration.  (Each of these activities is a big topic in its own right, and will be addressed in detail in future Naiads posts.)

Columbia Basin Tribes’ Definition of Ecosystem-based Function

Since time immemorial, the rivers of the Columbia Basin have been, and continue to be, the life blood of the Columbia Basin tribes.  Columbia Basin Tribes view ecosystem-based function of the Columbia Basin watershed as its ability to provide, protect and nurture cultural resources, traditions, values and landscapes throughout its length and breadth.  Clean and abundant water that is sufficient to sustain healthy populations of fish, wildlife, and plants is vital to holistic ecosystem-based function and life itself.  A restored, resilient and healthy watershed will include ecosystem-based function such as:

• Increased spring and summer flows resulting in a more natural hydrograph;
• Higher and more stable headwater reservoir levels;
• Restoring and maintaining fish passage to historical habitats;
• Higher river flows during dry years;
• Lower late summer water temperature;
• Reconnected floodplains throughout the river including a reconnected lower river estuary ecosystem as well as reduced salt water intrusion during summer and fall;
• Columbia River plume and near shore ocean enhanced through higher spring and summer flows and lessened duration of hypoxia;
• An adaptive and flexible suite of river operations responsive to a great variety of changing environmental conditions, such as climate change.

Improved ecosystem-based function in the Columbia Basin Watershed is expected to result in at least:

• Increased recognition, protection and preservation of tribal first foods and cultural/sacred sites and activities.  First foods includes water, salmon, other fish, wildlife, berries, roots, and other native medicinal plants.
• An estuary with an enhanced food web and increased juvenile fish survival;
• Increases in juvenile and adult salmon survival;
• Decreased mainstem travel time for migrating juvenile salmon;
• Increased resident fish productivity that provides stable, resilient populations;
• Increased wildlife productivity that provides stable, resilient populations;
• Salmon and other juvenile and adult fish passage to historical habitats in the Upper Columbia and Snake River basins, and into other currently blocked parts of the Columbia River Basin.

From “Initial Perspectives of the Columbia Basin Tribes for the Recommendations to the Department of State Regarding the Columbia River Treaty Review,” Appendix A, May 29, 2013