Tug posted in the WB thread:

"Salmo, et al,

Tacoma Light should have an obligation for summer steelhead, because there were, indeed, in significant numbers of summer runs in the Cowlitz prior to Mayfield. I researched this in the early 2000's by talking with old timers from the Mossyrock area. Bob Shaner, now deceased, confirmed the summer run's existence because he caught them way back then. Prior to the dam being put in, the Cowlitz, especially in the summer, was a milky, glacial stream, so surveys, such as they were back then, would have been nearly impossible for accuracy if they even happened at all. (And I'm referring to Shaner's fishing in the 1950-60 era.) Of course Tacoma doesn't want to mitigate for any fish losses. They don't care about fish, just money, and they will weasel out of any obligations that they can. What has happened to the cutthroat program?

Keep up the good work, Salmo, I respect your postings."

I don't have them here at home now, but during the Cowlitz relicensing I collected all the WDF and WDG fish data for the fish trap they operated near the Mayfield dam site. The trap was operated for 2 or 3 years before the dam was finished, and those were the fish numbers used to develop Tacoma's mitigation obligations for the Cowlitz River. Steelhead were not recorded as being either winter or summer run, and some steelhead were trapped during the months that summer steelhead normally run. However, those numbers that might have been summer runs, including late winter run or spawned out kelts, were very low in number, although they were included in the total. So the mitigation number for steelhead was 12,000, this being the average number that returned during the years sampled before dam construction was finished.

It's worth noting that WDFW did not want the steelhead mitigation number included in the new license that FERC issued in 2002. The reason is that the Department believed they could, based on prior hatchery performance, get returns well above 12,000 (winter and summer runs combined) with releases of around one million hatchery steelhead smolts or more. And that was true, in the 1980s and 1990s when SAR (smolt to adult returns) were higher. But ocean survival rates have declined since then, not just for the Cowlitz River, but for all Columbia River tributaries, north coast, Puget Sound, and Salish Sea tributary rivers.

Tacoma's goal during relicensing was to minimize its financial exposure, which is typical of every power company and utility. Nonetheless, TP's hatchery costs increased compared to its first license period, which included major upgrades at the salmon hatchery, and its fish passage costs skyrocketed since they had been minimal during the first license. I don't know how much TP spent on the new juvenile fishway at Cowlitz Falls Dam, but I'd estimate it at well north of $50 million.

Last I heard the cutthroat program was halved, from 150,000 smolts to 75,000 because the USFWS representative was influenced by a report describing trout predation on juvenile Chinook. That was from CA's Klamath River if I recall correctly, and I don't think it's applicable to the Cowlitz, but mine wasn't the only vote on the fish committee. I don't know if any other changes have been made with respect to the SRC program. It would be easy enough to check with the Red Book.