No more water over Bonneville....

River Ranger · 12-11-2003, 08:35 PM

Heard on the radio that the B.P.A. is considering not spilling water over the dam to help young salmon and steelhead smolts down river saying it costs to much almost 5 million per fish in lost power and revenue :shocked: Doubtful.Don't have the details just caught this fliping channels.Too bad I can see how it helps those fish find the ocean a little faster

R.R.

fishbait · 12-12-2003, 12:15 PM

http://www.ifish.net/ubb/ultimatebb....c;f=1;t=031531

River Ranger · 12-12-2003, 06:16 PM

Thanks Fishbait Everyone should be worried about this,Nothing will change unless the sportfisherman speak out.
R.R.

SlimPickens · 12-12-2003, 06:36 PM

This is bogus. saving fish vs. $$$---$$$ wins.

Cohoangler- thinking about wild coho fishery talk. All threatened salmon smolts above Bonneville Dam have to go through either the turbines or spillway. But this is called "incidental" take? This seems like the biggest "direct" take there can be. What do you think? Help me out.

Fast Action · 12-12-2003, 07:34 PM

I worked on the Columbia and the snake river on a cruise vessel for over a year. If it will make you all feel any better one of the mates quite to go work for a tug company who was contracted to run fish barges down below Bonneville then dump the smolts. What they do is as they are going down the river for sometimes two days is recycle the water as they go down river giving the fish familiarity. When we talked to him on the radio he would tell us he was escorting juveniles down river. Relieve any anger? They carry thousand and thousands of smolts all the way from the snake and below.

Oh yeah...You have to realize that Bonneville has to dump if there is allot of water shed. You have to realize that there are 7 more damns above Bonneville.

[ 12-12-2003, 08:37 PM: Message edited by: Fast Action ]

Uglygreen · 12-12-2003, 07:45 PM

There is so much misinformation on this board sometimes that I find it amazing.

Quote:

All threatened salmon smolts above Bonneville Dam have to go through either the turbines or spillway

Perhaps you all didnt know that BPA has spent over half a billion dollars dollars in the past 5 years building smolt bypass facilities at these dams?

You know, like the big concrete things that stick out into the center of the river below Bonneville?

Or like the just completed big ditch in the center of the northern most (name escapes me) island at Bonneville?

- the current "fish friendly" thinking is that we are losing more smolts to strandings from the changing water levels from the spills than we gain from moving the fish thru faster by spilling. Heres an idea. Maybe everything you hear on 30 second radio news story or read on ifish isnt the full story? Jury is still out on this one, and Im by no means an expert - but I know for a fact that the stuff presented in this thread thus far is just a little tiny bit of a great big story that a lot of really smart people are paid full time to think about and try to fix.

UG

Fast Action · 12-12-2003, 08:10 PM

Ugly,

You mean where the sprinklers are at the end of so the gulls keep away? I know where those are at

Uglygreen · 12-12-2003, 08:17 PM

You ever see the # of gulls below the spillway when they are doing a spill? Hundreds if not thousands compared to what - a couple dozen at the bypass? The lesser of two evils I guess?

UG

Of course a multimillion dollar smolt bypass would buy a lot of shotgun and rifle ammo...
[img]graemlins/idea.gif[/img]

Fast Action · 12-12-2003, 08:51 PM

I would see each spill way twice a week. Once going up to Lewiston transition and coming back down, You think the gulls are bad. You should see the Pelicans up at Ice Harbor Dam. They flow and sit right below the spill way and scoop them up.

Again, a tone of smolts get barged down. I am sure it helps, but again. When they have to dump to compensate for the other dams dumping they run the turbines. One of the benefits of working th eriver is you get to know how things really work just by talking to the lock masters.

Even had a few sea lions, otters, beavers and tons of salmon and steelhead. One time we went through Boneville and it was just rolling with Chinook and smolts. Kinda cool to see.

freespool · 12-12-2003, 09:11 PM

The BPA has spent more money and accomplished less than any publicly owned entity on the face of the earth. They shunt more money away from salmon recovery than everyone else combined. Pike minnow bounty springs to mind. And what happened 3 years ago when we had a drought? BPA shut off the water to fish and produced power.They have done studies on studies about studies. Congress mandated the BPA to install screens on their turbines,which they totally ignored for 12 years. Instead they did more studies.

free

STGRule · 12-12-2003, 09:31 PM

UG, as long as you understand that "smolt bypass facilities" were neither designed as nor ever meant to bypass smolt. They just changed the name of the ice/trash sluiceways to "smolt bypass". They were designed to break up and move ice and logs and sticks and garbage through the dam. Incredible velocities and 90 degree turns to keep the garbage from stacking up. If you ever saw them you would wonder that anything lives through it. They just happen to find that fewer fish died from going through there than over the spill or through the turbines. We are still talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of smolt dying at every dam. The money that gets spent is to guide the fish into and out of the ice/trash sluiceway. Thats all. Barging does nothing to improve returns. The fish moving over the spillways doesn't improve returns. Fish going through the turbines doesn't improve returns. What spill does is increase the velocity of water through the pools. Smolt migrate by going with the flow to the estuary. The biological process is to start the smoltification process and travel downriver toward the ocean. There is a time limit in which they can survive the transfer between fresh and salt water. Pre-dam that was just a few days. Now its weeks. The slowing kills fish that finally do make it to the estuary because they can no longer survive the transfer to salt along with all the death at each dam caused by passage. Then you have loss measured in each pool caused by slow, warm water filled with un-natural predation. Conservative estimates are 20% losses in every pool including dam passage. The solution so far has been to dump hatchery fish in to make up for the passage carnage. None of that works when we are trying to protect the wild fish.

So as far as I can tell, the failure to spill does a number of things. It makes money for BPA because they don't have to "waste" water for passage. More fish will die because of predation in lakes of almost still water in the pools. BPA can continue to barge smolts even though they know it doesn't increase returns. More fish will die at fresh/saltwater interface because of delay. Bottom line, they make more money and we lose more returns. Passage numbers don't mean squat without the returns.

Bottom line is they need to mitigate for salmon losses, not financial losses.

Cohoangler · 12-12-2003, 11:18 PM

RR - BPA is considering eliminating spill at McNary, John Day, The Dalles, and Bonneville Dams during July and August. The power market in California during the summer is just too high for them to resist. It has little to do with the numbers of fish. They deliberately discount the importance of this spill for the fish migrating downstream in the summer. Their primary interest is in $$'s from California.

No final decisions have been made but look for an announcement later this month. Also look for the tribes and commerical folks to express their concern. Sport fishing folks ought to do the same.

Ty · 12-12-2003, 11:27 PM

What BPA is considering is Illigal. Everyone on this board should be outraged!

We spend millions of tax dallors in hatchery smolts to let them die in the forbays and resevoirs instead of being swept downstream by the modest flushing of the Corps?

Milllions of dallors in fisheries research still being conducted today that all proves these fish must have flow to reach the ocean and BPA trys to pull this.

Not to mention the ESA listed upriver stocks. Common guys this is one of the greatest fleecing of the Northwest that BPA and the Corps had ever tryed to pull.

Wake up folks, they will do it with unless we put up a fight.

Fishfinder1 · 12-12-2003, 11:48 PM

I cant believe what I just read! Just the thought makes me feel sick!!

We have had record return of salmon and steelhead the last few years, endangered speices are gaining numbers, and the BPA can just decide to put the brakes on all of that? How can we stop the fed from destroying what we all have worked for, payed for.

Otolith · 12-13-2003, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Uglygreen:
There is so much misinformation on this board sometimes that I find it amazing.

<blockquote>quote:<hr /> All threatened salmon smolts above Bonneville Dam have to go through either the turbines or spillway

Perhaps you all didnt know that BPA has spent over half a billion dollars dollars in the past 5 years building smolt bypass facilities at these dams?

UG <hr /></blockquote>UG hits the nail on the head.

SlimPickens · 12-13-2003, 07:18 AM

Oh yeah, the smolt bypass, with the sprinklers on the end of it. I've seen it. And I've heard the "claims" of how high survival is through it...

If fishers don't stand up for fish, who will?

Uglygreen · 12-13-2003, 10:37 AM

Stgrule - appearently you missed the point. I wasnt defending BPA or spills or lack of spill or smolt bypass or barging or anything. I dont know enough about any of these things to have an really well informed opinion. I do know that most of the information presented in this thread - including your post - is a lot less than the whole picture.

The "big ditch" does serve the purpose of clearing the ice and trash past the dam, but it was also "designed" to bypass smolts. That is why it was built in the middle of an island with a gradient rather than built into the existing spillway as a 40' waterfall as orignally proposed. The other smolt bypass (the seagull feeder) has nothing at all to do with clearing Ice and logs past the dam. Its designed to feed salmon smolts to the seagulls and oversized sturgon.

Everything has tradeoffs - you spill water the smolts move downstream system faster, but you also lose a lot more to stranding. Some predation (********* walleye, etc) is decreased by spilling some (avian) is increased.

BPA (read ratepayers - you and me) pays a bunch of money all over the board for salmon issues. Most of it not even at the dams. When I was running stream survey / restoration for the USFS on the PCRD, BPA paid to purchase a bunch of the ripearian areas on the middle fork of the John Day river back from farmers and then paid to have crews do the work necessary to fence and restore these ripearian areas so they would support salmon spawning and rearing on the river. The river at that time was a cow devastated monoculture that had no protective vegitation and was 100 feet wide and 3 inches deep and hit over a 100 degrees in the summer at times. No salmon habitat there 10 years ago. Go look at the Middle Fork now and tell me that all the money was wasted. Similar projects continue to this day. I just read somwhere that the number of culverts replaced to reopen habitat cut off by roads was now over 10,000. That program was just starting when I worked over there.

To focus on one thing - like spills - that is just a piece of the bigger picture is short sighted. The entire system - from the smallest class 4 tribs high in the hills to ocean conditions in the equitorial Pacific plays a part in in the number of fish returning. Some say that spilling water does a lot to help, some say spilling water is a waste of time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere. I dont know the awnser and i'm skeptical that anyone on this thread does either.

For sure - pushing a political agenda with little pieces of the whole great big biological picture doesn't help anyone.

UG

[ 12-13-2003, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Uglygreen ]

freespool · 12-13-2003, 11:00 PM

Shadboy,I think what your referring to is known as the bird feeders.

free