Glowball

I found the story that you were talking about, so I will post it for every one to read:

"Changing face of the Cowlitz

BOB MOTTRAM; The News Tribune

Some big changes are in store for anglers on the popular Cowlitz River in southwestern Washington, where fish managers are shifting from production of hatchery fish to production of wild fish.

It probably will mean less time on the river for anglers. But it won't happen soon.

"A lot of people don't realize how complicated fishery projects are on the Cowlitz," said Mark LaRiviere, senior fisheries biologist for Tacoma Power.

"You're dealing with four dams in the midbasin area, and populations of anadromous fish above and below the dams," he said. "The upper dam (Cowlitz Falls) belongs to the Lewis County Public Utility District. The three lower dams - Mayfield, Mossyrock and the barrier dam - belong to Tacoma Power."

All of the structures except the barrier dam, which prevents migrating fish from swimming upstream past the Cowlitz Salmon Hatchery, produce hydroelectric power.

In exchange for the privilege of producing that power, the utilities must mitigate for damage their dams have caused to fish and wildlife.

As a part of the mitigation program, the utilities truck more adult fish around dams than does any other transportation program in the state.

The efforts of Tacoma Power and the Lewis County PUD are "additive," LaRiviere said. Their goal is to restore naturally spawning stocks of anadromous fish to the 240 miles of spawning habitat available in the upper Cowlitz River Basin, which includes all waters upstream of Mayfield Dam.

Aiding that effort is the fact that most of the fish already in the basin derived originally from local stocks, and only such fish are trucked above the dams.

When outmigrating smolts produced by those adults move toward the sea, workers capture them at two collection sites, one at Cowlitz Falls, a few miles above Riffe Lake, and the other at Mayfield Dam, at the lower end of Mayfield Lake.

Mayfield primarily collects smolts coming out of the Tilton drainage, which joins the Cowlitz near the upper end of Mayfield Lake, and Cowlitz Falls collects those from the Cowlitz drainage above Riffe Lake. Tacoma Power transports them downstream past the barrier dam to "stress-relief" ponds at the Cowlitz Salmon Hatchery.

The PUD is trying to improve the efficiency of its collection facility at Cowlitz Falls, said Mike Kohn, a biologist who works for the utility and for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). The BPA built the facility under an agreement with Lewis County at a cost of $18 million, completing it in 1997.

"A lot of the smolts we don't collect go through the turbines and end up in Riffe Lake and (become) landlocked," he said. "Our highest collection was 434,000 (of all species), in 2001. Had we collected 100 percent, it would have been over a million fish."

The utilities mark some of the outmigrating juveniles so when they return as adults, managers can determine whether they are hatchery fish and what to do with them.

"At the barrier dam, all returning adults are routed up the ladder into the (hatchery) separator," LaRiviere said. "Every single returning adult has to be examined and a decision has to be made what to do with that individual fish."

Each fish is returned to its area of origin.

"It's a huge amount of work," LaRiviere said, "in a year like last year, when we had a 125,000-fish return."

Tacoma Power began federal relicensing efforts in the mid-1990s, and reached a settlement agreement in 2000 with Lewis County, state and federal fisheries agencies, private fish-conservation groups and the Yakama Indian Tribe. The agreement wrought some fundamental goal shifts.

"The settlement agreement recognizes harvest as an important component on the Cowlitz," LaRiviere said. "It's just not the major goal. And therein lies the challenge for the future, because it's such a change from the past."

Formerly, production was primarily for harvest.

The agreement also establishes other goals, such as habitat and wildlife protection and a flow regime that accommodates recreational boaters, although those are not stated as explicitly as the goals of fish restoration and harvest, LaRiviere said.

As a part of an evolving fish-management philosophy, Tacoma Power plans to honor "the spirit of reform" in Washington hatchery management, he said, by incorporating new rearing methods for a part of its production. Those will include lower densities of fish in the hatcheries and efforts to mimic the size and timing of naturally produced smolts.

The utilities also intend to foster what LaRiviere calls "volitional passage" of fish upstream and down.

The licensing agreement requires Tacoma Power to determine whether fish can "self-sort" correctly to the Cowlitz, to the Tilton and to the hatchery for spawning.

If they can, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will decide at year 14 of the license whether to require the utility to spend the $15 million it was required to set aside for enhancing fish passage at the barrier dam and Mayfield Dam.

Enhancements would consist of constructing a fish ladder at Mayfield and building a fish ladder at the barrier dam or removing the barrier dam. Fish would be able to swim upstream unassisted as far as Mossyrock Dam, which would continue to be impassable.

"This would allow fish to pass the hatcheries, pass over Mayfield and go up the Tilton if they chose," LaRiviere said. "If they chose not to, they would go up the Cowlitz arm and end up at the base of Mossyrock Dam. There's no way to construct a way over that. So it would be a repeat of the upstream transportation program for fish headed for the upper basin" of the Cowlitz.

The result?

"All this work is hopefully going to increase the naturally produced fish in the Cowlitz River," LaRiviere said. "Concurrent with that, there will be a reduction in fish produced out of the hatcheries.

"The goal would be no net reduction in total numbers of fish," he said, "but we recognize they would be a different kind of fish. If we're producing natural or wild fish out of the Cowlitz River Basin, those fish won't be available for harvest. So that's where lies a very large change."

Selective fishing for hatchery fish would allow some angling, LaRiviere said, and if managers can develop a strong enough run of natural fish, some of those also could be harvested.

"But in order to get to that point it might take some pretty severe harvest restrictions," he said".

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Like I had said earlier; you ain't seen nothing yet! Now maybe our board will listen when I tell them the facts about the Cowlitz!

Two groups signed away your future fishery and you have American Rivers and TU to thank for that!

Salmo G. may like the Settlement Agreement, but sport fishermen will not!

Salmo also told you that it "would be different" but this artical tells you just "how different" the future will really be.

Not a pretty story, but its a true one.


Cowlitzfisherman