T, 



his is not a new idea. Since our first fish 

 and wildlife program was adopted, the U.S. 

 Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army 

 Corps of Engineers, which operate the federal 

 dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, have 

 been boosting flows to speed salmon migra- 

 tions. A specified amount of water is held 

 behind upriver storage dams during winter 

 and then released in the spring. 



Our salmon strategy substantially in- 

 creases the amount of water stored for these 

 annual salmon flows. 



Except in the lowest water years, we want 

 to achieve a Snake River speed that is equiva- 

 lent to a flow of at least 85,000 cubic feet per 

 second during the migration period. This fig- 

 ure should be used for planning purposes 

 only. It is a minimum, not a maximum. To 

 reach this speed, reservoirs should be low- 

 ered behind John Day Dam and the four 

 dams on the lower Snake River to the lowest 

 level at which navigation locks and irrigation 

 pumps can still operate. The Corps of Engi- 

 neers is providing additional water to the 

 Snake from Dworshak Dam, which is located 

 upstream on the North Fork Clearwater 

 River, and Idaho Power Company and the 

 Bureau of Reclamation are providing some 

 water from the upper Snake River. 



Flows in the Columbia will be increased, 

 too. Our program calls on river operators to 

 provide up to 3 million additional acre-feet of 

 water to aid juvenile salmon migration in the 



spring and early summer, and to evaluate 

 spring and summer flows. 



Our strategy also addresses the plight of 

 adult fish migrating upstream. Releases of 

 cool water from storage reservoirs should 

 help these fish. We've asked the Idaho Power 

 Company and the Bureau of Reclamation to 

 release additional water from Snake River 

 reservoirs to assist migrating adult salmon. In 

 addition, Idaho Power, which owns and oper- 

 ates Brownlee Dam, makes water available to 

 keep fall chinook redds (nests of eggs) wet. 



Intermediate measures 



In preparing this strategy, we recognized 

 that actions the region can take immediately 

 are not sufficient to rebuild some weak popu- 

 lations of salmon or meet the Council's 

 targets. So we identified a set of intermediate 

 measures that will be needed, but which re- 

 quire further planning before they can begin. 

 Some of these measures are controversial, 

 and there is disagreement about their cost and 

 effectiveness. 



One intermediate measure involves mov- 

 ing water more quickly.past the dams. By 

 lowering water levels in the four lower Snake 

 River reservoirs even more than in previous 

 measures, the river channel narrows, causing 

 water to rush more quickly. 



Because this degree of drawdown will 

 take the water below the levels where 



1880 



Mining, logging and livestock production, by now in prac- 

 tice about 30 years, begin to have a noticeable effect on 

 soil and water quality in parts of ttie Columbia Basin. 



