As a PSE customer way down south in Thurston County, I'm also paying for the Baker fisheries mitigation and enhancement. And all the buildings I've been in, including houses, on the Swinomish and Upper Skagit reservations also had electric service. So I suppose they're also paying like any other PSE customer for the Baker mitigation and enhancement. Plus, the Upper Skagit Tribe was instrumental in securing a significant piece of the sockeye enhancement that is in the FERC license for PSE's Baker project. So even though the treaty tribes are entitled to half of the harvest whether they do anything or not, yeah, they must not do anything, and you guys who think you do it all, do what besides pay your electric bill?

SteelieDrew,

A sockeye hatchery on the Skagit wouldn't make any sense given that significant sockeye production is dependent on lakes for juvenile sockeye to rear in prior to their seaward migration. True, there are riverine sockeye in the Skagit. Populations of less than 100 adults spawn in a tributary of the upper Skagit and the Sauk Rivers, but that isn't a fishery of anything more than ecological interest. A sockeye hatchery on the Skagit without a lake system would be a greater liability than a benefit to fisheries.

Jermz,

I suspect that you mean that your buddy works for the contractor who is building the new juvenile fishway for Lake Shannon at Lower Baker Dam. This will increase total Baker sockeye and coho production by having both Baker Lake and Lake Shannon (roughly 5,000 and 2,500 acres respectively) in the Baker salmon production loop. Yes, and paid for by PSE's customers, whether they are white, Indian, Mexican, black, anyone who buys their electricity from PSE.

Sg

PS: and if the runsize pans out, I'll be up there in a few weeks for a slice of pie myself.