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TESTIMONY OF THE IDAHO WATER USERS ASSOCIATION. INC. 

 September 24, 1993 

 Page 2 



force habitat restoration or to impede grazing on Forest Service and BLM 

 lands, those agencies are using tlie Council's plan as a tool to restrict 

 the use of federal lands for grazing and to deny special use permits for 

 water diversions under the guise of salmon protection. The Council's plan 

 should refocus it's efforts in areas that will benefit the salmon rather 

 than spending it's time and money to analyze a non-issue. 



Weaknesses in the Strategy for Salmon are apparent throughout. To us, 

 however, the basic weakness is the lack of adequate evaluation of existing 

 science. It appears that a significant body of science is available to 

 allow the Council to determine that in-river velocity and lack of passage 

 of smolts downstream is the primary culprit in the decline of the salmon. 

 The Council appears to pick and choose it's scientific bases for the plan 

 and focus on areas of weakest political adversity rather than attacking 

 the problem head on. The Council is vulnerable to regional politics which 

 has lead to inaction in many areas. This inaction has allowed the time 

 frame for drawdown studies and implementation of a drawdown program on the 

 lower Snake River to slip past the point of reasonableness. The drawdown 

 test is of extreme importance to our water users. 



Concurrent with the apparent slippage in time frames and lack of 

 commitment by the Council to addressing real problems is the Bonneville 

 Power Administration waffling on funding and commitment to anything 

 significant besides squaw fish bounties and flow augmentation. Certainly 

 the BPA does incur wide swings in revenue available for it's programs, 

 however, given the impact of Uie federal Columbia River hydropower system 

 on the salmon, this issue should receive a high priority and funds should 

 be dedicated specifically to recovery of salmon each year before using 

 money for other, more discretionary programs. While many of BPA's 

 programs are beneficial to industry, municipalities and irrigators, salmon 

 recovery is a mandate which they cannot escape and given BPA's role in the 

 decline of the salmon, they should be the primary player in funding of 

 recovery plans. There may, in fact, be large swings in BPA revenues but 

 fish and wildlife programs cost less than 4% of BPA's budget. We cannot 

 believe that such a small percentage creates a major revenue problem with 

 the agency. 



One of the paramount issues in this debate is the issue of drawdown 

 versus flow augmentation. Idaho interests have long contended, with the 

 support of a great deal of science , that one of the major impacts to 

 salmon has been the installation of the four federal dams on the lower 

 Snake River. It is apparent from nearly every correlative factor that, 

 with the completion of each dam on the lower Snake River, returning salmon 

 have declined more and more. While certainly the lack of downstream 

 passage facilities has contributed significantly to this decline, it is 

 our belief that the reduction in river velocity and the corresponding 

 decline in water particle travel time between the free flowing Snake River 

 below Hells Canyon Dam and the main stem Columbia River has been equally 



