Is this the first time the Skagit has been closed for chum? I've been around here for a long time and I can't remember it ever being closed before.
Here is an old article about the Baker dry up.
NW Fishletter
.nSKAGIT Chums, Chinook Take Possible Hit
Concern over another chum stock made the news recently, after hydro operations on the Baker River, a tributary of the Skagit in northwest Washington, inadvertently dewatered several hundred chum and chinook redds near the town of Concrete. Flows in the river slowed to a trickle after Puget Sound Energy began refilling a reservoir over the Thanksgiving holiday when power demands were down. Redds near the confluence of the Baker and Skagit Rivers and some length downriver were possibly affected.
The state Department of Ecology told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that mostly chums were affected, but a DOE spokesman said more than 220 ESA-listed chinook redds were de-watered as well. Biologists were not able to tell whether the eggs were destroyed. Environmentalists have threatened to sue over the issue, saying that PSE had "previously exhausted its reservoir to take advantage of high power rates in California."
PSE spokesman Roger Thompson said the notion that high market prices are the reason for the lack of water is not accurate. "The region has been faced with a serious lack of rain," said Thompson, who noted that streams in the Skagit Basin have been at half to one-third of their average flows. The Baker River only normally contributes about 15 percent of the flow to the Skagit below the town of Concrete, Thompson said.
Since PSE has only enough generating capacity for about 20 percent of its customers, he said it's not fair to characterize his company as profiting from the problems in California. "We have a commitment to keeping the lights on for our own customers first," he said.
Thompson said PSE and Seattle City Light have been pulsing water from their projects in an attempt to keep redds wet and confer on an almost daily basis with fish management agencies on their operation. He also noted that PSE will defer project maintenance at the Baker facility that would have cut flows even further until March.
WDFW biologist Pete Castle told NW Fishletter that one-quarter to one-half of the redds below Concrete could be lost, but he said about 85 percent of the salmon spawn above the town. He also noted that a "mostly tribal" fishery harvested about 15,000 chums bound for the Skagit last fall. "In hindsight," Castle said, "maybe they should not have fished." B.R.
3:02/01. Ferc to Consider Strteamlining Dam Licensing, Hydro Industry Pushing to Eliminate fish Protections: In accordance with directions from the 106th Congress, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) - the U.S. agency responsible for regulating all private hydropower dams - will hold a series of public meetings around the country, from 8-18 January, as it prepares a report to Congress outlining ways to reduce the cost and time of obtaining a hydropower dam license. The vast majority of the nation hydropower dams, many of them highly destructive of river resources, must be relicensed by FERC within the next two decades. The hydropower industry has long chaffed at current requirements that fish and wildlife needs require equal consideration with power production, and in fact helped draft bills in the 106th Congress (H.R. 2335 and S. 740) that would have streamlined the licensing process at the expense of fish and wildlife protections. The industry and some members of Congress have also sought to eliminate the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) and US Fish & Wildlife Service's (USFWS) independent review authority over dam relicensing when a dam affects species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). One industry "streamlining" proposal has long been to carve out ESA exemptions for relicensing by stripping ESA trustee agencies of that ESA co-jurisdiction. FERC's report is expected to play a role in the incoming Bush Administration's efforts to craft a national energy policy and to influence Congress in that debate.
The only west coast FERC meetings will be: 17 January in Portland (Airport Holiday Inn, 8439 N.E. Columbia, Portland, OR (503)256- 5000) and; 18 January in Sacramento (Vagabond Executive Inn, 2030 Arden Way, Sacramento, CA (916)929-5600), both meetings commencing at 0900. FERC will also be accepting written comments until 1 February 2001.
For more information on this process see:
http://www.ferc.fed.us/hydro/docs/section603.htm. For more information on the FERC relicensing process generally and the need for fish and wildlife protections in that process contact:
Matt Sicchio, Coordinator, Hydropower Reform Coalition, American Rivers, msicchio@amrivers.org, (202)347-7550 x3021
Brett Swift, Associate Director of NW Hydropower Programs, bswift@amrivers.org
The morning TIDE the top ten links from Tidepool for February 05, 2001
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