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STATEMENT OF WILL STELLE, DIRECTOR, NORTHWEST RE- 

 GION, NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE, ACCOM- 

 PANIED BY MICHAEL SCHIEWE, DIVISION DIRECTOR, COAST- 

 AL ZONE AND ESTUARINE STUDIES 



Mr, Stelle. Thank you, Mr, Chairman, and I appreciate the op- 

 portunity to appear here today. 



I have a written statement which Fd like to submit to the sub- 

 committee for its record. 



Senator Kempthorne. It will be made a part of the record. 



Mr. Stelle. I'd like to concentrate on several summary com- 

 ments. 



First of all, the goal of the National Marine Fisheries Service in 

 this effort is to develop a scientifically-sound and legally-defensible 

 recovery effort for salmon. That is our touchstone, that will remain 

 our touchstone, and we will adhere to it as we proceed. It's veir 

 important for us to use that as our reference point throughout all 

 of these proceedings. 



To the issue of spill, the issue of this morning's hearing, first, to 

 echo an earlier witness, spill is not new. Spill has been occurring 

 voluntarily and involuntarily in the basin for decades. To give you 

 a brief summary of that history, the fish and wildlife program of 

 the Northwest Power Planning Council, the 1982 program, em- 

 braced voluntary spill at the Federal hydropower projects; there 

 was a 1989 MOA between Bonneville and the State and tribal fish- 

 ery agencies which again embraced and called for a spill program; 

 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in a set of proceedings 

 both in the 1980's and as late as last year, ordered the mid-Colum- 

 bia PUD projects, four of them, to institute a spill at their projects 

 in order to pass fish safely around them. The States of Oregon, 

 Washington, and Idaho, and the lower river tribes have rec- 

 ommended to us the institution of a spill program and spill was 

 called for at all downstream collector and noncollector projects by 

 the 1994 amendments in the Salmon Strategy of the Northwest 

 Power Planning Council. So the first point would be, spill is not a 

 new thing by any means. 



The second point is that to understand the function of the spill 

 program, one needs to reference the larger recovery effort that is 

 directed at improving mainstem survivals. It's only in that larger 

 effort that one can understand spill. 



As you well know, our objective is to identify the best method to 

 improve survivals in the mainstem, period. As you know, Senator, 

 there is a sharp disagreement within the region on how to do that. 

 There are those who believe that the best technique for improving 

 survivals is the transportation system where you collect juvenile 

 smolts and you move tnem around the projects. The reason for that 

 is fairly simple, it boils down to arithmetic in my view. It is that 

 you've got eight mainstem dams through which these juveniles 

 nave to pass on their way to the sea and those dams are not fish 

 friendly. So the transportation system is based on the idea of let's 

 pick them up and move them around them, not through them one 

 by one. 



On the other hand, there are also those who feel very strongly 

 that transportation is a failed policy and that the best way to pro- 



