Max,

Perchance I owe you an apology. I’m not a patient person. I’m fairly tolerant, but even that tolerance wears thin eventually, and I react a bit, shall I say, forcefully to the uninformed attributes of “gutless” and “mismanagement.”

In answer to your question, I think the Cowlitz will, on average, not provide the kind of fishing it did during its hatchery heydays of extremely large numbers of smolt production combined with high ocean survival. I think that means the future of the Cowlitz is somewhere between toast and burnt toast, to use your and CFM’s terms. I do expect that the Cowlitz will, on average, return the number of salmon and steelhead that are expected to result from the new FERC license, which meets Tacoma’s mitigation requirements. That’s not great for me personally as a sport angler, but I’m OK with it as long as Tacoma fully mitigates its project impacts on the public fish resources. What some folks are really upset about is that Tacoma agreed to mitigation levels in its previous license that were higher than the estimated project impact (meaning Tacoma agreed to support coho and chinook runs that were higher than the average run sizes the dams wiped out). Tacoma saw that they are not required to support that level of mitigation and made it clear to us that they would not repeat such an agreement. Some parties seem to be upset that some of the agencies did not try to extract mitigation levels greater than what the law requires. The direction from my agency was to follow the Federal Power Act (as amended), the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and maybe some I’m not recalling at the moment, but you get the idea. The upshot is that I was not directed to seek mitigation significantly greater than project impacts, and I was directed to attempt to recover species listed under the ESA.

The INSIDE TRACK. Well, personally, I don’t know. I no longer work on the Cowlitz project. I am working with an engineer and consultant to develop the next generation of juvenile fish attraction, collection, and passage facility for storage reservoirs behind high-head dams. As this facility concept develops, I’ll probably be recommending that my co-worker promote (through a legally mandated prescription) the same, or equivalent, facility for Riffe Lake, just downstream of Cowlitz Falls Dam. I don’t think the utilities will ever reach the FCE (fish collection efficiency) at Cowlitz Falls necessary to sustain large natural production populations of salmon and steelhead. Fortunately, turbine survival at Cowlitz Falls is high (>90%, Kaplan turbines), and these smolts can be collected at the upper end of Riffe Lake. My present schedule is to have the proto-type facility installed and running at another project in 2008. If it is even close to the expected performance, I would anticipate having one at Riffe within a year or two following. Or, maybe sooner.

The key to restoring natural anadromous fish production upstream of the dams is effective downstream juvenile passage. If that is not successful, nothing else about restoration is relevant. Upstream passage is presently done by trucking fish around the dams, and that will not change for a while. A fish ladder at Mayfield is planned up to 15 years out. A ladder was determined not technically feasible at Mossyrock, so trucking will be the long term method there. I’m not aware of any discussion about upstream passage in the last couple years.

There you have it, as much as I know about the inside track.

Oh, my position is quite different from the State’s position. The State’s position, as best I could understand it, appears to be: maximizing the transfer of revenue from Tacoma to WDFW, maximizing and maintaining FTEs (employee jobs) at the Cowlitz hatchery complex, maximizing hatchery production irrespective of hydro project impacts, maximizing harvest of salmon and steelhead, and lastly, restoring natural production of salmon and steelhead in the Cowlitz basin to the extent it doesn’t interfere with the preceeding objectives of money, jobs, production, and harvest. As you can see, my position is very different.

CFM,

Buddy, you wear me out. However, I’m here to serve, or at least try to. I have “gurnards” huh? That’s a good thing, right?

First, previous mitigation agreements and license obligation are obsolete, extinct, and irrelevant unless they are included in the new FERC license. You may cling to the old, but it has no legal effect on the future of the project.

The original hatchery facilities (salmon and trout) were not designed to produce 900,000+ pounds of fish. WDFW chose to overload them to achieve that level of production. Again, that is old news and not relevant here. So whether Tacoma met its former mitigation obligation is irrelevant here. The mitigation number for the new license are different and measured differently (except steelhead, I think) than before, and 650,000 pounds is anticipated to be adequate to satisfy the hatchery production need. What is relevant is that Tacoma satisfy its mitigation obligations under the new license. We won’t begin to know until after the salmon hatchery is renovated and begun production under new and improved conditions. BTW, the tonnage refers to the combined salmon and trout hatchery production for all salmon and steelhead. The 50,000 pound resident trout requirement is a temporary one in the new license, to be evaluated by the relevant fisheries management agencies and FTC, too, I think. As you know, resident trout were not my responsibility. Anyway, what you seem to be missing here is that you seem to be thinking that the previous agreements and obligations might still be in effect. Let me be perfectly clear: they are not in effect, and they are irrelevant from the new license date forward unless FERC or other parties modify the license.

The FTC may have had 3 long years to do the tasks spelled out in the Settlement Agreement, but as I’ve explained to you and others before, Tacoma was not required to do anything under the new agreement until the new license was in effect. Tacoma decided what to implement early, so most of the FTC tasks have not begun. The FTC just began meeting again a couple months ago according to my coworker who is on the committee.

My agency cannot issue BOs before signing settlement agreements. Settlement agreements are go into the creation of FERC’s proposed license orders. We consult on and write BOs for proposed federal actions. Until FERC has a final EA or EIS and a proposed license order, there is no proposed federal action to consult on and write a BO for. Because of this, we sign settlement agreements that include the potential to modify license conditions if necessary for ESA compliance. This is what the attorneys tell me, and I let the lawyers explain legalities to me.

“The FTC shall be responsible for making recommendations on actions to maximize the effectiveness of fisheries mitigation, protection, and enhancement measures.” The upshot is that instead of Tacoma and one, or maybe two, agencies deciding how to fulfill a particular license article, all the agencies that signed the SA, plus a tribal and a public representative on the FTC will be reviewing and approving. Plus, because of your input to FERC, Tacoma is required to add an additional public input process. Now this may not satisfy you, but I’ve worked on a lot of FERC licenses over the years, and this sets a new high for agency and public involvement in post-licensing implementation. I’m not judging it as good or bad; just saying that it is more than I’ve previously seen in any license.

The FTC makes recommendations to Tacoma, not to itself. I don’t know that the FTC violates FACA. I would expect my attorney to approve agreements that comply with all applicable laws, including FACA.

I don’t know what the survival rates are for spring or fall chinook at Mayfield. Since they are either smaller or up to about the same size as coho, I expect their turbine survival to be about the same as coho, 87 or 97%, depending on which turbine they go through. Louver survival should be high, but not as high as for coho because spring chinook smolts are more sensitive to screens and handling, etc. What is not clear at this time is the passage rate through Mayfield Lake. That has not been tested recently for any salmon.

The deal now is that spring chinook smolts from upstream of Cowlitz Falls Dam have been passing through those turbines into Riffe Lake, where large numbers have reared and passed through the Mossyrock turbines (and survived!) and migrated through Mayfield Lake, entered the Louver bypass and been censused at the Mayfield counting house. For two years, the number of spring chinook smolts passed at Mayfield has been greater than the number collected at Cowlitz Falls. This says more about the need for improvements at CF and Riffe than Mayfield, however. Nonetheless, there appears to be a future for chinook in the upper basin, but it’s too early to say what the most effective strategy or strategies will be.

It’s highly misleading to relate the large numbers of adult coho trucked to the upper basin to the numbers of coho smolts subsequently produced, collected, or passed downstream. I think you know that spawning escapement over and above that necessary to seed the habitat doesn’t result in any additional smolts being produced. The escapement of naturally produced coho to seed the upper basin is far less than the number hauled. Thousands of excess coho were trucked to the upper basin for at least 3 reasons:
1) to enhance recreational fishing in the upper river;
2) to provide nutrient enrichment for juvenile rearing;
3) surplus hatchery coho are not expected to know where to spawn in the natural environment. It doesn’t appear to hurt to have extra to help ensure that the combination of naturally produced and hatchery coho would penetrate and fully utilize all suitable coho spawning and rearing habitat. A much smaller number of “natural” coho could fully seed all suitable habitat, but then we’d forego the extra fishing and nutrient opportunities.

The 75,000 coho smolts collected at Mayfield, plus the uncounted ones passing through the turbines (16,463 * 97% = 15,969) yields 90,969 coho smolts from the Tilton basin, which just might be the production capacity of the Tilton. What’s so bad about that? That’s over 4,000 adult coho in an average year.

Terms like wild, native, natural production, and hatchery production are often misused, partly because not everyone agrees to the same meaning for each term. Me included. Yes, juvenile coho from hatchery fry outplants, naturally produced adults spawning naturally, hatchery produced adults spawning naturally, etc. all contribute to the coho smolt population resulting from natural rearing in the upper Cowlitz and Tilton basins. I erred in referring to the whole juvenile population as wild. Jeeze mineez, big deal. It’s technically incorrect, but the natural production of the upper basin is very significant, and when juvenile passage is improved, there’s gonna’ be a naturally self-sustaining run of coho and probably steelhead in the upper basin. And possibly spring chinook, too. Only you, good buddy, could find something to complain about that.

You’re probably right, tho. The Cowlitz is burnt toast. It’s a matter of perception. Each person’s perception equals his or her reality. Your reality is burnt toast. Mine is full mitigation of project impacts. The number of steelhead caught in 1986/87 is not relevant to my obligatory yardstick of mitigation proportionate to project impacts.

Sincerely,

your humble servant, Salmo g.