Oregon Water Online
© Oregon Water CoalitionArchive for July, 2008
Agreement could open up new water rights for WA irrigators
A landmark agreement was signed last week that opens the possibility that the first new water rights in decades could be granted to Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association members while assuring that flows for salmon and steelhead aren’t diminished.
The first “voluntary regional agreement,” approved by Washington’s Department of Ecology and signed by the CSRIA July 18, focuses on conserving water. The association is developing proposals for three pilot projects that will test how much water can be saved in irrigation processes.
The savings would allow the issuance of drought permits to existing interruptible water right holders and new permanent water rights on the Columbia River and lower Snake River for like volumes.
Those new water rights cannot reduce or negatively impact Columbia stream flows in the months of July and August, a time when the river is at its low ebb. The new withdrawals cannot reduce Snake River flows during the April through August period.
To meet that standard of protection, the state agency and CSRIA will pursue conservation, storage, acquisition and other opportunities to provide new water to offset new withdrawals during the summer months.
The agreement stems from 2006 state legislation directing the agency to aggressively pursue development of Columbia basin water supplies to benefit both in-stream and out-of-stream uses through storage, conservation and voluntary regional water management agreements.
The bill also created a Columbia River Basin development account and authorized the issuance of up to $200 million in general obligation bonds to support enactment of the Columbia River water development and management program.
“The issuance of water rights would be based on the success of the program,” said Joye Redfield-Wilder of the WDOE. Water savings would be logged as credits that could be transferred to participating interruptible water rights holders in drought years when their water supply would be cut off and allow expansion of senior water rights. The state has a backlog of several hundred water rights applications.
The state took a precautionary approach when beleaguered salmon and steelhead stocks began garnering Endangered Species Act protections in the 1990s. A moratorium on new water rights was imposed in the late 1990s to preserve existing in-stream flows for fish. That moratorium was later lifted but only a few new rights have been issued for projects that “show substantial environmental benefit,” Redfield-Wilder said.
“We’re finally done with it,” CSRIA board representative Darryll Olsen said of the organization’s long push for increased water rights. That fight included litigation that led to a settlement agreement and ultimately to the legislative mandate.
“We’re breaking a past history of contention and litigation,” Redfield-Wilder said of the new VRA.
“We’ve identified some conservation projects that we think will work pretty well,” Olsen said.
The strategy expected to yield the first benefits is conservation operations and maintenance. There are ongoing projects by CSRIA members that involve fine tuning their irrigation scheduling and monitoring.
“There’s a demonstrated savings of 10 to 15 percent,” Olsen said. Those projects, funded by the Bonneville Power Administration, could qualify for extra water rations.
“It goes back to the idea of awarding the efficient,” Olsen said.
Other projects being considered include converting open diversion canals to piped, pressurized systems. Creating a small reservoir on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is also being explored, Olsen said.
In addition, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire announced two other Tri-City area water projects.
“Nowhere is water more essential to the environmental and economic welfare of a region than here,” Gregoire said during a stop in Kennewick. “These projects will help protect an agriculture economy that generates $3.1 billion every year for the region. They will provide water that’s absolutely essential for growth and development. These projects also ensure that we will have more water in the river for our endangered salmon during the driest months. This is a triple win for Eastern Washington families, businesses and the environment.”
The projects approved will:
- Allow early work on a major pump exchange project to bring water to Red Mountain and eventually double the flows in the lower Yakima River;
- Test and pilot ways to store millions of gallons of Columbia River water in underground aquifers to be reallocated when communities and fish need it the most.
The Kennewick Irrigation District received $95,000 from the state to study the feasibility of bringing new water to Red Mountain, which has been identified as a highly productive grape-growing area. This is the first installment of a $15 million state investment the district will receive.
The KID project will test the possibility of moving KID’s withdrawal point from the Yakima River to the Columbia River, supporting the lower Yakima River stream flows and fisheries and eventually increasing irrigated acreage.
“Bringing water to Red Mountain will open up one of the state’s prime viticultural areas and exponentially contribute to the state’s already successful wine industry,” said John Jaksch, KID board president. “In addition, the exchange of Yakima River for Columbia River irrigation water will materially increase in-stream flows in the lower Yakima, benefiting endangered salmon and steelhead runs in the river.”
The city of Kennewick received more than $1 million to explore ways to capture water during the winter and store it in an underground aquifer, then reuse the water during the summer months. At least one-third of any stored water would be used to support stream flows for fish migration and spawning.
“An aquifer storage system provides the flexibility to meet the interests of both the city and state—to supply water to citizens and fish—particularly during critical flow periods on the Columbia River,” said Kennewick City Manager Bob Hammond. “It also provides an important alternative water source on the west side of our city.”
Feds defend sea lion decision; take could be 22% of steelhead
“Congress entrusted NMFS with determining when impacts reach the level of ‘significant’” in deciding whether lethal removal should be used to reduce sea lion predation on salmon and steelhead stocks that are listed under the Endangered Species Act, according to documents filed by the federal government in U.S. District.
And the agency used its expertise appropriately in deciding that California sea lions should be removed from below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam, the documents say.
The U.S. Justice Department filings rebut arguments presented earlier this month by the Humane Society of the United States. The July 3 motion for summary judgment says that NOAA’s March decision to allow lethal removal is arbitrary and capricious under the federal Administrative Procedures Act and contrary to the MMPA and the National Environmental Policy Act.
The HSUS motion asks the court to set aside NOAA’s decision.
The federal reply filed this week says NOAA followed all the rules in granting 5-year authorization for the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington to lethally remove California sea lions.
“The Plaintiffs object to the exercise of this ‘lethal take’ authority on principle,” according to the federal filing. “They believe that it should never be used, except as a last resort.
“But that argument has been rejected by Congress, which has weighed the protection of sea lions under the MMPA against the protection of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead under the ESA, and found that the protection of sea lions must yield under these circumstances.
“While Plaintiffs undoubtedly disagree with this policy, the fact is that NMFS complied with applicable procedures, used its expertise, and reasonably concluded that all of the relevant statutory factors were met. This decision was further supported by virtually every other expert that reviewed the issue,” the federal briefs say.
The HSUS arguments focus in great part on MMPA’s permitting language that says that lethal removals are allowed only of “individually identifiable pinnipeds which are having a significant negative impact on the decline or recovery of salmonid fishery stocks…” The organization says that NOAA did not prove that the sea lions’ impact was significant and didn’t properly quantify what sort of impact would be deemed significant.
The federal attorneys say NMFS analyzed three principle factors in deciding whether impacts are significant: (1) whether the sea lion predation is “measurable, growing, and could continue to increase if not addressed,” (2) whether the adult salmonid mortality is sufficiently large to have a measurable effect on the numbers of listed adult salmon and steelhead contributing to affect the productivity of the populations; and (3) whether the “mortality rate for listed salmonids [caused by sea lion predation] is comparable to mortality rates from other sources that have led to corrective action under the ESA.”
“Applying these factors, the record amply supports NMFS’s conclusion that sea lion predation is having a “significant” negative impact under the MMPA,” a federal memorandum in support of its motion says.
While the actual observed predation immediately below the dam has reached only as high as 4 percent of the upriver spring chinook salmon run in any given year, the actual level of take is likely much higher.
“Based on the bioenergetic needs of the species, actual take may be as high as 12.6 percent of listed spring Chinook and 22.1 percent of listed steelhead,” the memorandum says. In addition, pinniped scarring rates of adult salmon and sea lions rose from 11 percent in 2002 to 37 percent in 2005.
“This level of impact is sufficiently large enough to have a measurable effect on adult salmonid productivity.”
That level of impact is “comparable to impacts NMFS has sought to decrease under the ESA. For example, NMFS has reduced the harvest allowed for tribal and commercial fisheries. NMFS has also recommended a series of steps to reduce the impact of the Columbia River power system by incremental improvements,” according to the memorandum.
“Plaintiffs repeatedly argue that the impacts of predation are ‘at most’ 4.2 percent. This is incorrect.
“In addition, Plaintiffs argue that other decisions made by NMFS under NEPA and the ESA make this decision unreasonable. This argument fails because NEPA and the ESA are different statutory schemes with different standards, definitions, and purposes and also because the specific circumstances underlying those decisions make simple comparisons inapt,” according to the federal filing.
The HSUS contends that NOAA “reached a conclusion that flies in the face of more than a decade of past administrative decisions concerning the relative significance of those ‘other reasons for the decline’ of salmonids” as compared to sea lion predation.
But federal attorneys argued HSUS’s numbers deliberately downplayed sea lion impact and poorly characterized other sources of mortality. The 17 percent spring chinook impact allowed in tribal and non-tribal fisheries is a maximum and is only permitted in years of abundant returns. And sea lion impacts are more than 4 percent and almost certainly more than the 12.6 percent estimated via the bioenergetics modeling, the federal filing says.
The law requires NMFS to consider those other impacts, which it says it did.
“However, NMFS was not required to eliminate or minimize the impacts of other actions before finding that impacts of California sea lion predation are significant under Section 120 of the MMPA and accordingly, Plaintiffs’ argument lacks merit,” federal attorneys say.
The states of Oregon and Washington last week both filed motions in support of NOAA, urging that its decision be left in place.
“The threat to the salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River is current and it is significant. The loss of salmonids to CSLs at Bonneville Dam is new and growing. The exercise of this authority poses no threat to the CSL population,” according to Oregon’s memorandum.
“WDFW agrees with and joins in the motions filed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), and the arguments in support of those motions,” according to the memorandum filed by Washington’s Attorney General’s office.
“Recovery planning and other efforts to reduce impacts to salmon in the Columbia Basin have been guided by the principle that all manageable sources of salmon mortality should be addressed. This approach is based on recognition that the decline in salmonid populations has many causes, and there is no single action that will restore these fish,” the Washington filing says.
“California sea lion predation is currently the only measurable, potentially manageable and yet increasing source of salmon mortality in the Columbia Basin.”
Both states stressed that extensive non-lethal deterrence has been attempted, to no avail.
The sea lions typically begin arriving at the dam in the Columbia in winter with their numbers peaking in April and May, the same time that the annual spring chinook salmon spawning run is building.
The federal filings noted that few of the pinnipeds made the 146-mile, inland foray in recent decades past. But their numbers began to swell in 2002, peaking at about 100 in 2004 and 2005.
NOAA in March approved an application via section 120 of the Marine Animal Protection Act that would allow the removal of up to 85 California each year for five years. In its decision NOAA said says it is unlikely that more than 30 could be removed annually.
The decision says that the removals would not harm the health of the sea lion population overall and would reduce mortality of the listed fish.
The plaintiffs now have until Aug. 8 to file their opposition to the federal and state briefs and reply in support of their own request for summary judgment. The briefing in district court would be complete by Aug. 22 when the federal government and states file their replies. Oral arguments are scheduled for Sept. 3.
The district court process was scheduled to allow the judge to render an opinion this fall and thus leave time over the winter for an appeal or appeals to be argued and completed before the sea lions return in force in the late spring.
Reclamation reveals plan for Water for America Initiative
The Bureau of Reclamation has made available its portion of the proposed Water for America Initiative Implementation Plan for review and comment. Beginning in October, Reclamation will partner with the United States Geological Survey to implement the Water for America Initiative.
“This initiative is aimed at addressing 21st century water challenges and ensuring secure water supplies for the future,” said Commissioner Robert Johnson. “We encourage our stakeholders and the public to review the plan and provide any comments they may have.”
The Water for America Initiative is a multi-agency, U.S. Department of the Interior initiative that will help communities meet increasing demands on limited water supplies through collaborative projects, water conservation technologies, and expanded information sharing.
Reclamation will focus its efforts on two of the three strategies: (1) Plan for Our Nation’s Water Future, and (2) Expand, Protect, and Conserve Our Nation’s Water Resources. The third strategy, Enhance our Nation’s Water Knowledge, will be undertaken by the USGS.
The strategy to Plan for Our Nation’s Water Future includes Reclamation’s long-standing Investigations Program and a new Basin Studies Program which will focus on comprehensive water supply and demand studies to assess the impact of increased water demands.
The second strategy, Expand, Protect, and Conserve our Nation’s Water Resources, will include two existing programs, the Challenge Grant Program (formerly part of Water 2025) and the Water Conservation Field Services Program. Through another component of this strategy, Reclamation will accelerate Endangered Species Act compliance activities to maintain and improve existing populations of listed or proposed species and critical habitat affected by Reclamation’s projects and programs.
To learn more about the Water for America Initiative or to provide a comment on the Initiative, please visit the Water for America website at www.usbr.gov/wfa. You may also mail your comments to Bureau of Reclamation; Policy and Program Services; Attn: Avra Morgan; PO Box 25007; Denver, CO, 80225-0007. To make your comments most useful and effective for Reclamation, please submit them by August 18.
If you have any questions about Water for America, please contact Avra Morgan at 303-445-2906 or wfa@do.usbr.gov.
Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western States. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at www.usbr.gov.
Litigation only delays recovery, increases carbon footprint
Northwest River Partners on June 17, 2008 said that renewed efforts by environmental groups to prolong litigation over federal and tribal plans for salmon recovery in the Columbia and Snake Rivers demonstrate a failure to look beyond their narrow interest of dam removal at a time of worldwide concern over climate change.
In commenting on the new complaint, Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest RiverParners said, “once again the litigants are rejecting fair- reaching science-based benefits for salmon in the Columbia-Snake River system.”
Flores said, “Unfortunately, this continuing campaign to remove the dams has diverted significant time and resources from further salmon recovery efforts that our region has agreed to implement.”
The federal government recently issued a new salmon plan, developed in collaborate with the tribes, the Northwest states—except for Oregon—and other stakeholders. The plan proposes spending over $8 billion—paid by the regions electricity consume over the next 10 years to provide a path for recovery of listed salmon and steelhead.
“This plan addresses all of the issues Judge Jim Redden has raised in the courtroom. It includes an unprecedented, rigorous science analyses, has strong support in the region and major funding commitments,” Flores said.
The litigants appear to be the only ones not looking out for the fish with their single-minded focus on dam removal,” Flores said. “ In the midst of the world seeking remedies for climate change, they persist in demanding removal of the lower Snake Rivers dams, a renewable source of clean electric power.”
The four lower Snake River dams produce more than 1,020 megawatts of renewable, carbon free energy that can meet the electricity needs of a city the size of Seattle
An analysis by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council has found that the most likely replacement resource for the proposed loss of the renewable hydropower would be gas-fired combustion turbines that would cause the release of 5.4 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.
“It makes no sense to remove renewable, non-polluting power generation from the Snake River and replace it with fossil-fired power plants that accelerate global climate change, Flores said,
The members of Northwest RiverPartners support science-based, accountable improvements in salmon recovery and protection of other benefits of the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
