581 



is renewed. The PNCA has a provision that allows agencies to 

 meet non-power requirements without penalty. Yet Bonneville has 

 opposed adequate flow objectives in the past in part because 

 existing PNCA provisions make it expensive for Bonneville to meet 

 such objectives. If objectives were set as a precondition of 

 PNCA renewal, Bonneville would have an incentive to negotiate new 

 provisions that ease the financial burden of the current 

 contract. The PNCA could continue to be a power maximization 

 agreement, but fish flow needs would be met. 



Flow or travel-time objectives (set on a sliding scale to provide 

 higher flows during higher water years) would yield a number of 

 other benefits for fish. They would encourage Bonneville to 

 concentrate on the role of finding the least expensive means to 

 implement designated objectives rather than trying to do the 

 Council's job and set objectives itself. If legitimate technical 

 difficulties arise with the current plans for drawdowns, 

 alternative combinations of flow and drawdown could be tried. 

 Flow objectives would also encourage Bonneville to modify the 

 power system to harmonize it with a river regime that protects 

 fish, thereby reducing the long-term costs of salmon measures. 

 Most importantly, such objectives could put some teeth into the 

 Council's Salmon Strategy. 



Alternatively, the purposes of the PNCA could be broadened to 

 include fish, and the fish agencies and tribes could be made 

 parties. The Agreement could have to be redesigned to optimize 

 flows for fish and power, rather than maximizing power revenues. 

 Adequate flow objectives would address the problems of the 

 current PNCA more decisively. But if satisfactory flow 

 objectives are not set as hard constraints on the PNCA prior to 

 its renegotiation, its purposes and parties should be broadened. 



Transferring funds to the fish and wildlife agencies. Such a 

 transfer could achieve several positive goals. The Salmon 

 Strategy suffers now from Bonneville's tendency to remake policy 

 decisions already made by the Council, and to take on the role of 

 a fish and wildlife agency. A second layer of decision-making 

 occurs at the implementation stage, either through the PNCA 

 process for planning river operations or through designating 

 projects and a budget to implement the Council's Fish and 

 Wildlife Program. Transferring responsibilities for funding and 

 preparing a detailed implementation plan to a fish agency could 

 could help eliminate Bonneville's duplicative planning role and 

 facilitate straightforward implementation of projects funded by 

 Bonneville. If managed well, it could help control costs. 



^^See Lazar, Jim, Electric Power Resource Evaluation for Improved 

 Fish Migration, 1991. 



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