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Incorporating salmon recovery measures into the Pacific Northwest 

 Coordinating Agreement (PNCA) also is an extremely important 

 issue because development and operation of the storage and run- 

 of-river projects, which is planned through the PNCA, is the 

 single most significant factor affecting the salmon populations 

 of the Columbia Basin. The PNCA is a planing tool for hydropower 

 production and allocation of coordinated hydropower resources. 

 Although there is flexibility to purchase additional resources 

 and supplement hydro with thermal resources, the annual 

 regulation developed under the PNCA is clearly a driver for 

 system operations. Incorporation of fishery flow requirements 

 would improve the ability to consistently meet these 

 requirements. It also would seem that planning to meet these 

 requirements is the best way to minimize their affect on other 

 system uses. NMFS fully supports the inclusion of flow and other 

 fish requirements in the PNCA process. 



NMFS believes that transferring a lump sum in fish and wildlife 

 funds from BFA to fish and wildlife agencies (and presumably to 

 tribes) could be separately administered by them with savings in 

 overhead and coordination costs. It would, however, require 

 flexibility of BPA to respond to changes in priorities of the 

 Council's program. It also would not address the problem of 

 compliance by federal agencies with the implementation of the 

 Council's fish and wildlife program. 



