Savage Rapids Dam removal gets financial boost
By MARK FREEMAN
A state agency on Friday pledged $3 million toward removing Savage Rapids Dam from the Rogue River and replacing it with irrigation pumps, a move backers see as seed money to make the $20 million project a reality.
The Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board voted unanimously Friday to make the largest financial commitment so far toward removing the 81-year-old irrigation dam, which spans the Rogue near the Jackson-Josephine county line.
The dam, which is owned by the Grants Pass Irrigation District and feeds water to about 10,000 patrons, is widely viewed as one of the largest impediments to wild salmon restoration in the Rogue Basin.
Dam-removal advocates believe OWEB's grant of Oregon Lottery profits is sufficient seed money to leverage the remaining money from federal agencies, nonprofit foundations and some private sources to get the dam removed by 2006 as planned.
"It's sort of the down payment for getting the rest of the project funded," said Medford attorney Bob Hunter of WaterWatch of Oregon.
"This dam-removal/pumping project is no longer just hypothetical," Hunter said. "It's really moving along now."
After years of warring between GPID and wild-fish advocates about the dam's future, the factions signed an agreement in August to get the dam removed at no cost to the district.
The agreement, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, calls for installing pumps by 2005 to allow GPID to take water directly out of the Rogue, then for removing the antiquated dam.
The agreement hinges on getting the necessary financing for the project, which has been estimated to cost as high as $22.2 million.
The estimate includes $13.5 million to replace the dam with pumps, plus $3.7 million to buy the dam from GPID and $2.5 million each for fishery enhancement and developing recreation facilities at the site.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation is working on refining those various projects, and Hunter said he hopes the cost drops below $20 million.
The dam-removal project has been pitched as a cost-share between the federal government and the state, but funding has been sparse. The bureau has budgeted $500,000 for design work and the state's Fish Screen Task Force has pledged $100,000, but Friday's OWEB grant represents five times that previous total.
GPID Manager Dan Shepherd said Friday's grant will go a long way toward turning talk of dam-removal into action.
"When we had no money and would go talk to people, we'd have warm-fuzzy meetings and then nothing would happen," Shepherd said. "With the money comes credibility, and that will make the difference.
"Finally," he said, "something may be working in our favor."
Getting the OWEB commitment bodes well because now is the time to start lobbying Congress for financial commitments in the 2003 federal budget, Hunter said.
The OWEB grant calls for $1 million now and the remaining $2 million by June 2003.
Hunter, Shepherd and an Oregon Water Resources Department representative made their funding pitch Friday to OWEB in Seaside.
OWEB funnels lottery profits toward projects that benefit watershed improvements.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1970s estimated that Savage Rapids Dam results in 22 percent fewer salmon and steelhead in the Rogue than if the dam were gone.
On an average year, that translates into 43,620 fewer spring chinook, fall chinook, coho, summer steelhead and winter steelhead in the Rogue, according to ODFW computer estimates in 1994 and '95.
A 1995 Bureau of Reclamation study concluded that removing the dam is a better and cheaper fix for fish than altering the current dam.
Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com

that is great news i haven't fished the rogue since i was just a little fry but I remember all those golden trout I used to catch. They still fairin well?

Nope, in fact there is no legal trout fishihng in the Rogue anymore.
Used to be as a kid we would ride our bikes down to the railroad bridge at GP and catch trout till it got too hat and then swam the rest of the day.
Today a kid can't trout fish in Rogue River.
Also used to gross each other out messing with the lampreys...... no lampreys to speak of anymore. (tons of squawfish though.... none when you were here.)

Not the river it was when we were kids and probably never will be but know there are some working very hard to get it as close as we can.
Removing this dam will be a huge step in right direction.

My dad used to run the mail up on the sleds from Gold Beach back before they had ANY dams on that river. I guess it used to be an awesome river. He said there would always be a fishable run of fish in the river at any time of the year. Its not that way anymore. I guess the summer run of steelhead (half-pounders, I think they were called) was alot of fun to catch on the fly. Its good to see that they are trying to make some changes for the better finally.

[ 01-13-2002: Message edited by: Big Al ]

No legal trout fishing on the Rogue? I fish the Upper Rogue, i.e., Gold Ray to Cole Rivers Hatchery, many, many days a year, and the 2001 limit on trout was five. I haven't read the new regulations, but I'd be shocked to the point of coma if they'd changed in the least. I don't have the old regs handy, either, but I'm fairly certain that every stretch of the Rogue, plus many of the major tributaries, currently not only allow trout fishing, they have consumptive fisheries. Guess I'll have to read the regulations to be sure.

[ 01-13-2002: Message edited by: Bubzilla ]

speaking of damn breaching today in the sunday columbian they had an article about condit damn what mess this is going to turn out to be.
I agreee with the findings a blo and go method would reak havoc on all downstrem fish but there is methods to drain silt safely with minimal effects on fisheries.
we will lose northwestern resevoir wich has it's fair share of stocked trout that can get sizable but to get that river back in shape would be so great.
the whitesalmon use to be 1 of the top five steelhead in rivers in washington back when they started counting fish then along came the dam damns

Bubzilla,

You are right. I stand corrected and apologize for the error.

I checked the 2002 regs. and they are as you say.

The thing is though, at least in the middle Rogue, from Gold Rey Dam down they do not stock trout so the only legal 'trout' you could keep would be a fin clipped steelhead smolt between eight and 16 inches......... you say you're catching lots of these?

Hmm, interesting.

I screamed when they stopped stocking them and they said it wasn't cost effective because the fish would not carry over if they were not caught.

Straydog,

I don't fish the mainstem Rogue below Gold Ray all that much, so I can't speak with that much authority. I do know, however, that if you've caught smolt that were 8"-16" you should altert the media and Guiness. 6" is a large smolt on the Rogue; 8" would be a trophy!

What the Middle Rogue does have in the 8" to 16" class is a very healthy native/resident trout population and a sizable half-pounder run. Trout are available throughout the Middle Rogue. Although, as you state, there aren't any stocked fish, there is nonetheless a great fishery there.

Half-pounders are sexually immature steelhead that enter the river after one year in the salt for a short period of time--only to head back to the Pacific before returning as adults to spawn (as I'm sure you know). Lots of morons who don't realize or care that they are screwing themselves and others out of a future steelhead run kill these fish with reckless abandon. They are, however, the only clipped fish in the Middle Rogue that are between 8" and 16" that I'm aware of.

As for the Upper River, there are healthy populations of both Rainbow and Cutthroat Trout. Some pretty large fish too. In fact, not that many people are aware of it, but the state record Rainbow came out of the Upper Rogue--from the "Pump Hole" below Casey State Park to be exact.

I guess I don't get your "legal 'trout'" comment. Just because there's no consumptive fishery for trout on the Middle Rogue, as a practical matter, doesn't mean there isn't a fishery. A 15" trout on the Middle Rogue is still a trout--it's just one that a foresighted regulation makes everyone put back where it belongs.

[ 01-15-2002: Message edited by: Bubzilla ]

Bud,

The gist of my comments was to point out that there used to be a good put and take trout fishery on the Rogue and kid could ride his bike to the river and catch a few fish to proudly take home. You can not do that today.

I think we may have some conflicting info. as I was told by ODFW that there is no appreciable resident Rainbow trout in the Rogue.... a few yes, but no substanial numbers. That is why they refuse to try to build it because they do not have a solid natural population.

My guess is the record caught at Casey escaped from the Holy waters or is definately the exception not the rule. There is however a good population of cutthroat.

My opinions come from over 40 years on the river and the last 10 very involved in the fisheries.

I agree the catch and release is very smart as I witnessed hundreds of salmon smolt caught in the Shady Cove area and drug home as trout in the '70's and 80's.

The bottom line is it's a gem of a river and we should all remember that and help make it be all it can be.

Sounds like you get it!

(PS. Your right, I understand about the half pounders. )

Straydog,

Again, perhaps the Upper Rogue and Middle Rogue are just completely different. I'm mostly familiar with the river above Gold Ray. I don't have 40 years experience, like you, but I have fished it more than 100 days a year for the last fifteen years--generally drifting the river three or more times a week during peak fishing times. I mostly fish for steelhead--summer and winter run--with a fly.

The Upper Rogue has a native/resident rainbow population, in addition to cutthroat, large enough that several guides offer trout fishing excursions (day trips where only trout are targeted), and it is quite impossible to fish all day without hooking one--particularly during the fly-only season. There are undoubtedly not as many rainbows per mile as other rivers, e.g., McKenzie, Deschutes, but to say that there are none, or too few to notice, would be completely inaccurate.

Many of the Rogue's tributaries are filled with trout as well. The Applegate in particular. At the very least, those fish migrate, at times, into the mainstem.

As for the state record coming from the "Holy Water." Not only unlikely, impossible. The record fish was caught in '82--long before the "Holy Water" was anything but a glorified put-and-take trout pond. Additionally, the fish was a native. Testing revealed that the twenty-eight pound fish was a hermaphrodite--thus, like many truly oversized fish, it never sexually matured.

I don't know what else to say. I probably catch a couple hundred trout a year on the Upper Rogue--a mixed-bag of cutthroat and rainbows. No monsters, but lots of good sized trout in the 12" class. Some may in fact be residualized steelhead (probably are), but others are good ol' fashioned wild trout.

Obviously I can't speak to what ODFW has told you. I do know, however, that it has become their policy to discontinue stocking trout in most of Oregon's free-flowing waters--whether anadromous fish are present or not, and regardless of their prospects of successfully over-wintering. It's a good policy too. There are literally hundreds of lakes in the state stocked to the point of overflow with hatchery fish.

You're right that it's a gem of a river. And the news about Savage Rapids is long-overdue good news. Thanks for sharing it.

[ 01-15-2002: Message edited by: Bubzilla ]