475 



Now I hate to characterize anyone's position on these issues, but 

 Mr, Wright, if you do not mind, I am going to characterize you a 

 Uttle bit — ^you can disagree if you want, but it seems that you, pret- 

 ty much, from reading your testimony and hearing your testimony, 

 have sort of adopted what I would consider a middle-of-the-road po- 

 sition here. I have Mr. Baker and Mr, Chaney firmly convinced 

 that we need to move as immediately as possible to enhanced 

 flows, drawdowns. Mr. Lovelin says that that would be a disaster 

 and questions the current programs entirely. He says we have 

 wasted a bUlion dollars; ssdmon are worse off and that proves that 

 the flows do not work. And it seems that what you are saying is 

 you think the current position of the Council and their plan is rea- 

 sonable, but we have already done a tremendous amount to in- 

 crease flows and it is time to evaluate, you know, whether or not 

 more flows are going to work, what those flows did actually accom- 

 pUsh and then you make your point for accountabiUty, Is that a 

 fairly accurate characterization? 



Mr. Wright. Well, you will never get me arguing that my posi- 

 tion is a middle-of-the-road position, but I think that is an accurate 

 account of what we are saying. As I said, we have moved a long 

 ways, and it is not status quo. We have suppUed a lot of water for 

 fish that in normal drought conditions in the 1970s would not have 

 been suppUed. 



We do not know what the effects of that are. We did not do a 

 good job of laying out a monitoring program before we did it. Be- 

 cause the fish could not wait, we just did it. Now it is time to take 

 account of that and see what we are doing. And if in the course 

 of that in the next few years, we show that water particle travel 

 time and velocities infinitely increasing have infinite fish benefits. 

 Then I am going to be a lot more interested in talking about 

 drawdowns and the $1 biUion or $5 bilHon or $10 bilUon or 14 

 years or whatever the numbers are than I am at this point in time, 

 when I do not know that the existing level of flows may be exceed- 

 ing what the fish actually need. I am convinced that the fish do re- 

 spond to certeiin thresholds of conditions. We have proved in 1977. 

 Tlie flows got low enough, we had residual problems with fish mi- 

 grating, it took 60 days and 60 days was too long. Now we are 

 down in the less-than-30-day category and in some cases less-than- 

 20-daySo Now what does a day m&e. And I do not know an answer 

 to that. 



Mr. DeFazio. I guess what you are saying is you do not think 

 that we should go forward at the moment with the flow augmenta- 

 tion or drawdown parts of the Coimcil's plan. Where do you stand 

 on the other parts of the plan implementation? 



Mr. Wright. I do not even disagree with what the Council says 

 in its plan on drawdown as far as it says you must go out and 

 eveduate both the consequences and the benefits of drawdown be- 

 fore you move ahead. That is what the Council's plan says and I 

 do not disagree with that. But somehow that has got converted, 

 particularly in the case of John Day, to just do it. And that is not 

 what the Council's plan calls for. 



Mr. DeFazio. What about the discussions we had earlier about 

 the concerns about the time line on which the Council wanted to 

 see the drawdowns on John Day? 



