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Northwest Power Planning Council. It was created by the Council in Phase 

 in amendments to the Fish and Wildlife Program. The Fish Passage 

 Center, a regional entity also created by the Council and funded by BPA, 

 provides smolt monitoring information and advice to both the Fish 

 Operations Executive Committee and the 4A Team. 



BPA is committed to making existing processes fonction better in 

 administering river operations. We see opportunity for improvement in the 

 following areas: complete executive-level participation in the Fish 

 Operations Executive Committee; real-time data accessibility and transfer; 

 biological criteria for decision-making; and monitoring and evaluation of 

 specific river operations, such as flow augmentation, assessed by measuring 

 fish survival. 



Answer 6e: Transferring a lump sum in fish and wildlife fiinds fi-om BPA to fish and 

 wildlife agencies to be administered separately by those agencies for 

 salmon recovery, while providing accountability for the resuhs of the work 

 fiinded. 



BPA is willing to consider a lump sum transfer of fiinds to the fish and 

 wildlife agencies, but in the form of a Fish Trust modeled on the Wildlife 

 Trust currently in place with Montana and the Dworshak Trust with Idaho. 

 Integral to such a trust would be a "hold harmless' clause, providing BPA 

 with proper mitigation accounting and indemnifying the Agency fi-om 

 further claims. BPA recognizes an ongoing responsibility under the ESA, 

 independent of a Trust. In the wildlife area, these agreements have greatly 

 simplified the identification of projects for implemenution, as well as, 

 provided assured long term fiinding. Considerable moneys have been 

 saved that can go to the resources rather than being spent on overheads 



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