WDFW would like nothing more than to pump out hatchery fish. Whole lot easier to manage and. like Salmo says, it brings in lots and lots of money.

The desire to "restore" wild fish above the Cowlitz dams is entirely a response to ESA and the fear that more areas would be required. There is the belief that the existing habitat above the Cowlitz dams is the best available for recovery, especially Spring Chinook.

Asa long as they are working on the solution(s) they really don't actually have to do much. Cheaper to study than to implement.

One of the neater concepts of recovery is that the hatcheries there are mitigation for lost production above the dams. To pick a number, let's say that the mitigation is for a run of 10,000 springs, 10,000 steelhead, etc. If they install the necessary passage and they get those numbers back as wild fish then the hatcheries need no longer be funded by Tacoma because they have mitigated.

When I was involved, WDFW wanted Tacoma to keep funding the hatchery even if the wild production achieved mitigation.