Todd,
Re: your comments,
"I hate to keep coming back to SCL and dam operations, by the hydrology and biology of the Skagit has changed, and it's changed a lot...and at the same time the spawning population has crashed.
There is a tremendous growth of "river snot"...the algae Didymo...coating the bottom in most of the formerly productive spawning stretches. Not surprisingly, this crap is only found around here on rivers with dams on them...the Cowlitz, the Lewis, and the Skagit...and it's only been in profusion on the Skagit for a very short time.
This can't be good for anything, not redd production, not bug production...and it's kind of hard to have fish without both of those.
There are far, far less invertebrates growing in the Skagit, compared to the Sauk...an evening hatch on the Skagit might find you a bug or two, while even the Sauk is buried in bugs.
The dam is operated on river cycles to promote optimum energy production at optimum times...period.
Yeah, I know they are trying to protect all the fish in there (three stocks of which are recently added to the ESA rolls; Bull Trout, Chinook, and Steelhead), but we all know that at the very best it is an attempt to accomodate fish while producing as much power in the most financially efficient way, not the other way around.
Chums have nosedived in the Skagit, it hasn't even opened for pinks a few times in the past several years, and the steelhead fishery is all but a memory.
Breaks my heart.
Blaming it all on "marine conditions" is starting to sound more and more to me like "let's blame it on something we have no control over"...and I'd accept that, if we were at least also fixing the things we DO have control over...but we're not, even when we know exactly what it would take to recover those fish populations.
Our history proves that every time we choose to "manage" a basin, meaning use it to make money first, then fish as an afterthought, we end up spending far more money than we can ever make off the river just to try and hold on to remnants of wild runs that no one can fish for, anyway.
As I said in the other thread, the number one threat to fish recovery in the PNW, for any salmon or steelhead run, is the lack of political or institutional will to do exactly what we already know will help..."
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I guess I'm gonna' be the "dam whore" here, but it's one thing to point a finger at the hydropower operations, accusing it of the deleterious effects on steelhead and salmon, and quite another to draw logical analytical conclusions that dam operations are indeed the cause.
There have been major hydropower dam operations significantly affecting Skagit River flow fluctuations since the early 1950s, following completion of Ross, the third and uppermost Skagit dam which contains more than 90% of the water storage capacity. Steelhead populations have been contemporarily high, low, high, and now low again in this 50+ year era of hydropower flow fluctuations. The steelhead population crashed in the 1970s, and there were significant flow fluctuations from the dams. Were the Skagit dams responsible for that population crash? The steelhead population rebounded to contemporary high levels in the 1980s, and there were significant flow fluctuations from the dams. Were the Skagit dams responsible for that population resurgence? The steelhead population declined in the 1990s and most recently have crashed to a level even lower than observes in the 1970s, and flows from the Skagit dams have been more carefully restricted specifically to extend protection to salmon and steelhead. Does that mean that even better flow management is responsible for the 1990s decline and the current crash? Clearly a more carefully detailed analysis is necessary to support any conclusion regarding dam operations as the proximate cause for either high or low steelhead populations.
As for the algae didymo, dams don't cause it. According to DOE it's an alien invasive species. I don't know if the source has been identified. If it gains a better foothold in dammed rivers, it likely due to reduced flood flows that keep it scoured away in the undammed rivers. If devestating floods are necessary to control didymo, we have a new and different problem since our salmonids co-evolved with a specific frequency of flooding. I'll probably be reading up on didymo, as I don't know whether it compromises spawning success or benthic invertabrate production. Speaking of which, benthic invertebrate production in the shallow, flow fluctuation zone of the Skagit is lower than in the Sauk, documented also in the 1970s, and it is due to hydropower fluctuations.
Your conclusion that the Skagit dams are operated for energy benefits solely is incorrect. If it were true, you would observe significantly greater flow fluctuations on a daily basis, with more rapid downramping, chronic fry stranding, chronic redd dewatering, with greater daily and seasonal amplitudes. You don't observe that, and the reason you don't is because SCL's operatiing license, issued in 1995, is more restrictive for streamflow operations than was the previous license, which generally saw larger steelhead populations.
Pink and chum populations have generally been larger since the mid 1970s than the decades immediately prior. Years of low pink or chum abundance have almost a 1:1 correlation with significant floods occuring in the brood year. Logical analysis concludes that floods are the proximate cause of pink and chum population depressions, not the Skagit dams (where BTW, egg to fry survival is highest in the river reach from Newhalem to Marblemount because of less flooding), not didymo, not even the hated gillnets, nor sea lice. Floods.
If you believe marine conditions are not the proximate cause for the current steelhead population collapse, and you also believe we aren't doing anything or much or enough about the things we DO have control over, I have some encouraging news for you. If you think the Skagit dams are the problem for our beloved steelhead population, and you can help me PROVE it, then I will do something about it. It just so happens that the Skagit dams license has never consulted under the ESA for listed bull trout, chinook salmon, or steelhead. And it is about to, opening a window of opportunity. So if there are "reasonable and prudent measures" necessary to promote recovery of the listed species that are not already in the current license, we have a shot at license modifications. Of course these reasonable and prudent measures must be supported by the "best available science;" actually the ESA reads, "best scientific and commercial data," but it means roughly the same thing. The upshot is that your charge that dam operations are harming steelhead must be supported by better evidence than your casual observations.
This could be fun!
Sincerely,
Salmo g.
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