652 



Members of the BPA Task Force 

 October 8. 1993 

 Page 3 



study. ^ The region already decided John Day studies should proceed, but apparently the 

 Corps listens to neither Congress nor the Council. 



Money is available, and the federal agencies should complete environmental review of the 

 John Day proposal immediately (as part of another supplement to the 1992 interim ilow 

 improvements EIS or through some other vehicle). 



Snake Water Bank. In response to the Chairman's question about Snake Water Bank rules 

 that discourage water transfers for salmon, Sherl Chapman stated that the purpose of the 

 upper Snake reservoirs is to provide water for agriculture. I disagree. Though agriculture 

 was once a primary purpose of those projects, some authorizations were conditioned on 

 fisheries mitigation' and more recent laws have altered the original purposes. In 1980, the 

 Power Act broadened the purposes of projects that generate hydropower (a definition that 

 includes most of the Bureau's upper Snake dams) to put fish on an equal footing with other 

 project purposes. The ESA applies to the Bureau's operations. Under the state Public 

 Trust doctrine, a balance must be reached between the public fishery values of water and 

 its consumptive use. NRDC believes a careful review of water bank rules and the law 

 governing interstate commerce will reveal no valid reason for the water bank's 

 discriminatory last-to-fill rule. 



Burden of Proof. Al Wright's testimony states that "there is no credible, scientific 

 information currently available that proves what water levels salmon require for their 

 migration through the Columbia River System. This is the first question that must be 

 answered." That statement incorrectly implies that fish agencies bear the burden of 

 proving that a given level of flow is required. On the contrary, the Council's Program 

 calls for implementation of drawdowns unless they are shown to be infeasible. Moreover, 

 the region's fish agencies and tribes have been in accord for years about the needed level 

 of flow or travel time. 



BPA's Calculation of its Salmon Costs . BPA estimates the cost of water budget increases 

 since the ESA listings (about 3 million acre feet) to be about $110 million per year. The 

 Bureau has an authorization for about 3 MAF in the Columbia that has not yet been 

 diverted for agricultural use. If the Bureau were to succeed in diverting that water, BPA 

 would accept the diversion as a fact of life in a multiple use system. It would make 

 appropriate adjustments to reduce the hydropower cost of the diversion, not broadcast the 

 cost at every opportunity as if the water belonged to BPA. Why should the cost of 



' Phone conversation with John Kranda, project and study manager for the Corps' John 

 Day studies, Oct. 12, 1993. 



' Before Congress authorized large upper Snake reservoirs such as Palisades, for example, 

 the Bureau promised to provide flows below diversion dams to mitigate impacts on fish. 

 See "The Columbia River, a Comprehensive Depanmenial Report on the Water Resources 

 of the Columbia River Basin," Bureau of Reclamation, 1947. 



