150 



PREPARED STATEMENT 



This kind of study will benefit not just the tribe, but all of the 

 people living in the region. I also request for permission to submit 

 additional information for the record of this hearing. 



Senator Hatfield. We will be very happy to receive it, Mr. 

 Seyler. 



[The statement follows:] 



Prepared Statement of Warren Seyler 



Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, it is an honor for me to appear 

 before you today. My name is Warren Seyler and I am Chairman of the Spokane 

 Tribe which is located in Eastern Washington. The Tribe has over 2,000 members 

 and the Reservation is 156,000 acres. The Spokane was historically a fishing tribe 

 and, while we now rely primarily on timber for tribal income, fishmg is a primary 

 concern, for both its cultural and economic value. 



The Spokane Tribe is one of four Tribes located on the headwaters of the Colum- 

 bia River above Lake Roosevelt in the States of Washington and Idaho. The Tribes 

 make up the Upper Columbia United Tribes (UCUT) organization which in turn 

 contracts with the Department of the Interior for many of the mitigation programs 

 necessary to protect resident fish populations. As you know. Lake Roosevelt was cre- 

 ated by the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, one of the largest dams in the 

 world. The Dam flooded many hydropower sites on the Spokane River, as well as 

 tribal fisheries that had been in use by the Tribe for centuries. 



Funding provided by the Bonneville Power Administration has been helpful to the 

 UCUT trices in establishing mitigation programs. The BPA, as part of the Federal 

 government, has a trust responsibility to the Indian nations to preserve our natural 

 resources, particularly the fisheries. We have heard rumors of a possible privatiza- 

 tion of BPA and would oppose such a move. In our view, a private power company 

 could not be chartered with a trust mandate to Indian people and would have no 

 incentive to participate in mitigation. 



Beginning in 1939, the Grand Coulee Dam blocked salmon runs into Spokane ter- 

 ritory. The Tribe received no mitigation for this loss until a hatchery was con- 

 structed on the Reservation by BPA as partial mitigation for salmon losses under 

 the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program, developed by the Northwest 

 Power Planning Council under the auspices of the Northwest Power Planning and 

 Conservation Act of 1980. The Tribe is now stocking kokanee salmon and rainbow 

 trout from the hatchery into Lake Roosevelt and is also managing a wild population 

 of walleye pike in the Lake. We are not at all sure whether our resident fish will 

 survive the efforts to save endangered salmon. 



Recent events threaten the habitat of our resident fish. In addition to blocking 

 former spawning areas, hydroelectric dams kill juvenile salmon migrating towards 

 the Ocean. Some of the fish are killed outright as they pass through turbines. Oth- 

 ers have trouble finding their way through the dams and reservoirs which slows 

 down their migration, reducing their survival once they reach the ocean. As a result, 

 several stocks of the remaining salmon in the Snake River are listed as endangered. 

 Efforts to save this anadromous fish may lead to the destruction of the fish in Lake 

 Roosevelt because the government is using a variety of untried and unproven meth- 

 ods to ensure that the smolts can return downriver to the Pacific. The newest meth- 

 od is "flushing" at the dam sites with a release of large amounts of water. We are 

 concerned that this method for insuring the migration of the smolts will in turn en- 

 danger resident fish by reduction of Lake levels and by depletion of nutrients nec- 

 essary for the survival of the fish. 



Mr. Chairman, there are reports that the Northwest Power Planning Council's 

 Fish and Wildlife program is proposing a release of 8.25 million acre feet of water 

 from the Upper Columbia basin as part of its effort to protect the anadromous fish 

 populations. The National Marine Fisheries Service in its recently issued biological 

 opinion concerning hydrosystem operations by BPA, Corps of Engineers and Bureau 

 of Reclamation proposed that these agencies release 10.2 million acre feet of water 

 from the Upper Columbia basin. Our biologists inform us that water releases of this 

 magnitude will cause resident fish in Lake Roosevelt to be flushed through Grand 

 Coulee Dam and will reduce nutrient levels in the Lake. Nutrient levels are of criti- 

 cal concern because the productivity of the Reservoir is dependent upon nutrients. 

 Lower nutrients mean lower plankton productivity resulting in poor fish growth. 



Either level of proposed water releases would be too high in our view. We simply 

 do not have sufficient information on the impact such releases would have on exist- 



