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4. What can be done to facilitate water conservation and other changes in 

 regional water management to provide increased flows for power production 

 and salmon recovery? 



In the Columbia. BPA refuses to provide more fish flow augmentation from 

 Canadian storage reservoirs, particularly the Mica project, under the 

 Columbia River Treaty or the so-called Non -Treaty Storage Agreements. All 

 releases from Canadian storage go exclusively to power production. 



In the Snake, reservoir drawdowns in the salmon migration corridor would 

 result in larger summer flows (a) by concentrating the "water budget." and 

 (b) by positioning irrigators to rent more acre-feet at lower prices. 



Throughout the Columbia /Snake Basin, mandatory conservation measiu-es, 

 marketing arrangements such as "water banks," and cancellation of EPA's 

 irrigation discount would facilitate better fish flows. However, to gain 

 maximum benefit from new flow augmentation, the hydropower operators 

 must fix the dams for better salmon migration passage. 



5. Are existing institutions and institutional arrangements at the state and 

 federal level adequate to implement salmon recovery plans? What 

 improvements should be made to ensure better regional coordination among 

 the many federal state, tribal and private entities that must work together 

 to achieve salmon restoration? 



No. the BPA and the Corps of Engineers refuse to implement key provisions 

 in any successful salmon recovery plan. Both agencies should implement the 

 Council's fish and wildlife program "to the maximum extent practicable." 

 and should apply a Reduction in Force to their top-level management and 

 their fish and wildlife staffs. If the agencies fall to do so, the Congress 

 should impose these reforms. 



The Sierra Club applauds the effort of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to 

 convene a roundtable of the federal agencies, the states, and the Native 

 American Tttbes to coordinate salmon recovery actions in the Columbia 

 Basin and across the Pacific coast. 



In particular, the following alternatives have been suggested for better 

 implementing salmon restoration plans. Please comment on each: 



a) Providing additional pubUc involvement in existing federal processes, 

 including review of annual operations: 



In total secrecy, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Bonneville Power 

 Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bureau of 

 Reclamation conduct their consultation on annual hydropower operations 

 under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act. Similarly the signatories to 



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