152 



Mr. Hardy. Fair question. That did not happen this year. You 

 are right, we reached agreement with NMFS to pass all of that 

 water through, and that happened this year, and I would expect 

 that will probably happca in succeeding years. Why we held it in 



1992 basically related to the purpose of that water; it was to get 

 the juveniles down to the collection facilities at Lower Granite, and 

 not to be passed through the entire system. Now there are some 

 that are not collected, so there is a residual amount, and whether 

 it is 10 percent or 20 percent or how many we can debate about, 

 but the bulk of those juveniles are collected at Lower Granite and 

 at the other collection points. That is what the water was for, to 

 get them to collection points and then barged down below Bonne- 

 ville Dam. So we did not see that it made a lot of sense to continue 

 to flush that water through the system if the bulk of the fish were 

 already collected. That is a point of considerable contention and 

 dispute, centered I think primarily on your estimate of how many 

 of the juveniles do not get collected, and hence can use that addi- 

 tional water. And, when we came up against that question again 

 this year, we agreed to put the water through the system, in no 

 small measure as a result of the controversy that attended our de- 

 cision last year. We learned fi'om that and tried to do better. 



Mr. LaRocco. Is it still guess work on how many juveniles are 

 getting through the collection points? 



Mr. Hardy. It is all guess work as far as I can tell, Mr. Con- 

 gressman, We have got a lot of collection data, we have got mon- 

 itoring. The Corps is probably in a better position since they do 

 most of the monitoring, to answer the question than I, but I think 

 even the best estimates are pretty imprecise. We can tell about 

 mass movements, but much beyond that, our ability is limited. Al- 

 though I will be the first to admit, I am not the technical expert 

 and we do not have the staff to say they are or are not moving — 

 the Corps does. The Fish Passage Center created by the Council 

 are really the bodies that provide the information to us and to the 

 Corps, the Bureau and NMFS as to when the migrations are occur- 

 ring and when they need what flows. And, we have developed an 

 in-season management regime to try to do that on a real-time 

 basis, and every week during the migration season, there is a 

 Wednesday conference call that NMFS hosts, to discuss what is 

 happening now or who is migrating where, or where do we need 

 to provide flows. That is the kind of consultation vehicle that we 

 are trying to use to determine when we provide flows and when we 

 do not. 



Mr. LaRocco. What are the plans for 1994, and if we are going 

 to send this water downstream, are there any assurances for 1994 

 that this water will be used for velocity and flow for juveniles? 



Mr. Hardy. I think that it is imcertain, given that the 1994 con- 

 sultation is still in fi*ont of us. If the pattern of the 1992 to the 



1993 consultation is any indicator — ^you can ask Gary Smith this 

 later — NMFS will be looking for more flows, for a longer duration, 

 and I think that question will be largely moot. Probably the other 

 variable in this is we have yet to receive the recovery team's rec- 

 ommendations. How those will affect the process, I do not know. So 



1994 is still something of a question mark, but however it comes 

 out, I expect we, the Corps, and the Bureau wiU be continuing to 



