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Supplement: Lowering John Day Pool — Page 2 



Since 1991, the Corps has operated John Day during the juvenile salmon migration season 

 below normal pool at a level known as "minimum irrigation pool" (MIP) below which irrigation 

 pumps cease to function. Taking into account the lower elevations in operating the project at MIP. 

 the Northwest Power Planning Council staff has calculated the flow augmentation requirement to 

 achieve the same water velocity as a John Day drawdown from MIP to MOP. This figure is 3.1 

 million acre-feet — or roughly the storage behind the Hungry Horse Dam in Montana (see chart). 



Drawdowns represent (1) avoided flow augmentation and therefore, (2) "new' storage (for 

 much the same reasons that conservation precludes the need to build new generating stations, and 

 thus provides new power supply). So it is accurate to describe the John Day lowering as the 

 installation of "new" storage equal to the avoided flow augmentation requirements. 



The Corps estimates that the one-time capital cost to mitigate all impacts trom operation of 

 John Day at MOP is $77 million. So in assessing the cost-effectiveness of the John Day drawdown 

 as new storage, we divide the capital cost by the acre-footage: 



Normal Pool to MOP: $77 million / 4.3 MAF = $18 per acre-foot 

 MIP to MOP: $77 million / 3.1 MAF = $25 per acre-foot 



Either of these figures represents a "fire sale." The Corps knows of no new storage project anywhere 

 in the Columbia watershed with this much storage capacity. Moreover, the agency knows of no new 

 storage project of any sire at such small unit prices. 



Corps Response 



In May, 1993, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released draft comments on environmen- 

 talists' briefing paper about the proposed John Day lowering. The agency revised those draft 

 comments in June. According to these papers, the Corps must "realistically concur that it would be 

 unlikely that a significant quantity of additional storage could be economically provided as an 

 alternative to lowering John Day to minimum operating pool." 



In the original May paper and in its June revision, the Corps estimated lower figures — 

 844,000 and 1 ,529,000 acre-feet respectively — for the flow augmentation equivalent to the John 

 Day lowering. Reviewing the comments, the Northwest Power Planning Council staff does not 

 concur with the methodology used by the Corps in its analyses. 



Moreover, the Corps made radically different assumptions in its calculations. The agency 

 counted travel time improvement across the entire salmon migration corridor — not just faster speeds 

 in the John Day pool and the Lower Columbia reach as had the Council staff. With this assumption, 

 the Corps ignores the benefit of overcoming the worst obstacle in the fish migration corridor, of 

 speeding up the longest, fattest, slowest, and thus most lethal of the eight mainstem reservoirs faced 

 by threatened and endangered salmon from the Snake River Basin. Furthermore, the Corps misses 

 the obvious point that John Day pool at MOP amplifies the water speed and the fish benefit of any 

 and all flow augmentation reaching the Lower Columbia. 



In any case, the Corps' calculations — flawed as they may be both in concept — illustrate 

 the high cost-effectiveness of the John Day lowering. In the original May, 1993 comments, the Corps 

 arrived at its 844,000 acre-feet figure by sending new acre-feet solely down the Snake drainage, and 

 accelerating all eight mainstem pools in the Lower Snake and Columbia. 



But in its November, 1992 report, the Corps identified one leading contender, if any, as a new 

 storage project which would boost fish flush in the Snake Basin — the Galloway Dam on the Weiser 

 River in southwestern Idaho. According to the Corps' own numbers, the Galloway project, if built. 



