Power company would rather truck fish than build ladders, screens
Sunday, April 30, 2006 12:04 AM PDT
By Associated Press
Printable version
E-mail this articleGRANTS PASS, Ore. -- PacifiCorp proposed Friday that it use a less expensive system of trucks and traps to haul salmon around dams on the Klamath River rather than spend $200 million to build fish ladders and screen turbines -- at least until it sees whether the fish can survive in waters they haven't inhabited in nearly a century.
The filing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., was in response to the suggestion last month from federal agencies that the Portland-based utility build miles of fish ladders and install turbine screens to restore salmon to 300 miles of spawning habitat blocked by the dams since 1918.
PacifiCorp, which serves 1.6 million customers in Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, is seeking a new federal license to operate a series of dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California.
Failing returns of wild fall chinook on the Klamath have led to the near-shutdown of 700 miles of California and Oregon coastline to commercial salmon fishing.
"PacifiCorp is concerned about native fish populations in the Klamath River Basin," Bill Fehrman, PacifiCorp Energy president, said in a statement from Portland. "However, the company also is a regulated utility whose business is to safely and reliably generate and deliver electric power to its customers at a reasonable cost."
Pacificorp, owned by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, offered no estimate of the cost of a trap-and-haul system. It said it wanted to use a "science-based" approach and work with interest groups that include Indian tribes, farmers, salmon fishermen and conservation groups to work out details.
"Our proposal doesn't envision fish ladders and screens at our dams," PacifiCorp spokesman Dave Kvamme said. "However, through the settlement process we are open to a range of outcomes. As fish ladders and screens make sense, we would support their construction."
Though Klamath River salmon once swam through Upper Klamath Lake to spawn in the Williamson and Sprague rivers, serving as a major food source for the Klamath tribes, the lake is now beset by poor water quality, and habitat in the Sprague is degraded by cattle grazing.
Building miles of fish ladders would allow adult salmon to swim upstream over the dams to spawn. Installing screens would keep young salmon out of turbines while they migrate downstream to the ocean. The cost has been estimated at $200 million.
Last year's commercial catch off Oregon and California was worth $36.3 million.
Changes to federal energy law last year gave utilities like PacifiCorp the power to appeal the agencies' prescriptions for fish and propose cheaper alternatives.
"PacifiCorps Klamath dams are poor producers of electricity, provide little flood control, and do not divert water for agriculture or drinking," said Leaf Hillman, vice chairman of the Karuk tribe in Orleans, Calif. "All they do well is kill fish and breed toxic blue-green algae. They must be removed."
He added that threatened coho salmon, steelhead and lamprey would not be helped by the trap-and-haul system.
Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which represents California salmon trollers, said PacifiCorp faced a high standard, showing that trapping and trucking fish around the dams would be as effective as a system that allows them to swim over the dams on their own.
"I frankly think they are going to have a very hard case to make," he said from Eugene.
After the third straight year of dangerously low returns of wild fall chinook salmon to the Klamath, the Pacific Fishery Management Council has recommended shutting down commercial salmon fishing along 400 miles of coast straddling the mouth of the Klamath River, with very limited fishing north and south of that zone.
Salmon in the Klamath have had problems for more than a century. Gold mining in the 1850s caused extensive erosion that silted over spawning beds. In the early 1900s, a federal irrigation project diverted water from the river. A federal salmon egg collecting station cut off returns to the upper basin in 1910. The first of the dams, Copco No. 1, was completed in 1918 with no fish ladder, permanently shutting off access to the upper basin. Highly toxic algae has been discovered in reservoirs behind two of the dams.
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