Savage Rapids Dam removal gets financial boost
By MARK FREEMAN
A state agency on Friday pledged $3 million toward removing Savage Rapids Dam from the Rogue River and replacing it with irrigation pumps, a move backers see as seed money to make the $20 million project a reality.
The Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board voted unanimously Friday to make the largest financial commitment so far toward removing the 81-year-old irrigation dam, which spans the Rogue near the Jackson-Josephine county line.
The dam, which is owned by the Grants Pass Irrigation District and feeds water to about 10,000 patrons, is widely viewed as one of the largest impediments to wild salmon restoration in the Rogue Basin.
Dam-removal advocates believe OWEB's grant of Oregon Lottery profits is sufficient seed money to leverage the remaining money from federal agencies, nonprofit foundations and some private sources to get the dam removed by 2006 as planned.
"It's sort of the down payment for getting the rest of the project funded," said Medford attorney Bob Hunter of WaterWatch of Oregon.
"This dam-removal/pumping project is no longer just hypothetical," Hunter said. "It's really moving along now."
After years of warring between GPID and wild-fish advocates about the dam's future, the factions signed an agreement in August to get the dam removed at no cost to the district.
The agreement, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, calls for installing pumps by 2005 to allow GPID to take water directly out of the Rogue, then for removing the antiquated dam.
The agreement hinges on getting the necessary financing for the project, which has been estimated to cost as high as $22.2 million.
The estimate includes $13.5 million to replace the dam with pumps, plus $3.7 million to buy the dam from GPID and $2.5 million each for fishery enhancement and developing recreation facilities at the site.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation is working on refining those various projects, and Hunter said he hopes the cost drops below $20 million.
The dam-removal project has been pitched as a cost-share between the federal government and the state, but funding has been sparse. The bureau has budgeted $500,000 for design work and the state's Fish Screen Task Force has pledged $100,000, but Friday's OWEB grant represents five times that previous total.
GPID Manager Dan Shepherd said Friday's grant will go a long way toward turning talk of dam-removal into action.
"When we had no money and would go talk to people, we'd have warm-fuzzy meetings and then nothing would happen," Shepherd said. "With the money comes credibility, and that will make the difference.
"Finally," he said, "something may be working in our favor."
Getting the OWEB commitment bodes well because now is the time to start lobbying Congress for financial commitments in the 2003 federal budget, Hunter said.
The OWEB grant calls for $1 million now and the remaining $2 million by June 2003.
Hunter, Shepherd and an Oregon Water Resources Department representative made their funding pitch Friday to OWEB in Seaside.
OWEB funnels lottery profits toward projects that benefit watershed improvements.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1970s estimated that Savage Rapids Dam results in 22 percent fewer salmon and steelhead in the Rogue than if the dam were gone.
On an average year, that translates into 43,620 fewer spring chinook, fall chinook, coho, summer steelhead and winter steelhead in the Rogue, according to ODFW computer estimates in 1994 and '95.
A 1995 Bureau of Reclamation study concluded that removing the dam is a better and cheaper fix for fish than altering the current dam.
Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com