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Table 1 110
State Idaho
Montana Nevada Oregon Utah Washington Wyoming
Percent of water
47.6 17.1 1.0 12.9
15.3 6.1
Percent of population
9.4 9.5 2.5
24.5 11.8 38.3 4.0
The upstream-downstream dynamic was hard to miss: Water...
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flood control, navigation, and other non-reimbursable benefits. Consequently, such projects have not ordinarily been commercially attractive. Thus, headwater developments, serving essentially multi-purpose values, have lagged.111
Although the...
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In addition to these issues, the compact negotiations became a forum for one of the electric utility industry's favorite pastimes: jousting between public power and private power, the scars of which were fresh from the Columbia Valley Authority...
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cooperation through the Northwest Power Pool (begun in World War II). The agreement was premised on the fact that the Columbia River power system is hydraulically and electrically connected, and so upstream storage operations affect downstream...
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laws, agreements and projects play an enormous part in this structure, it would be misleading to say that the river had been federalized. In addition to non-federal development in the Mid-Columbia, the Coordination Agreement is a contract whose...
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Idaho arrangements and institutions, the Two Rivers concept, the Committee of Nine, the rules for canal companies and irrigation districts are creations of state law. 126
The Basin entered the 1970s with a river from which a measure of flood...
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The hydropower system's financial commitment to reclamation is significant. In 1985, the General Accounting Office estimated that $14.1 billion in irrigation costs were scheduled on paper to be recovered through power revenues.131 However, because...
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The financial interdependence between reclamation and hydropower has not had the effect of integrating federal law and state law, however. The fault line between federal and state law, which divides the mainstem from each of its tributaries, is...
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IV. Restoring the River of Salmon
A. Salmon and the Effects of Development The developed river is a far cry from the river that saw the dawn of the 19th century. Storage projects have evened out the extreme year-to-year variations in flow.... |
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1. Loss of Tributary Habitat
Salmon are particularly sensitive to habitat degradation. They need cool, clean, running streams and healthy alluvial floodplains in which to reproduce and grow.' They require streamside riparian cover, large, woody...
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Throughout much of the Basin, the greatest change in land patterns came from the expansion of agriculture.' Irrigation diversions in the 19th century often blocked migrating salmon. Diversions usually lacked screens to keep juvenile fish from...
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that 80 percent of 153 Oregon tributaries had low-flow problems (two-thirds of which were caused at least in part by irrigation withdrawals).17 A 1992 analysis of water problems affecting fish production showed similar problems in many Idaho,...
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under the Clean Water Act, due to sedimentation, turbidity, flow alteration and high temperatures.27 Many of these streams have lost their capability to support salmon and other cold-water fish.28
The Environmental Protection Agency has found...
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reservoir levels can preclude food production at the river's edge.36 Scouring flows that create salmon gravels have been eliminated. Migratory conditions, water salinity and temperature in the estuary and ocean have been changed.37 A juvenile fish...
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3. Cumulative Impacts
All of these developments have fragmented the Columbia River salmon's habitat and destroyed connections among local populations. Scientists theorize that connections among salmon habitats and populations is important in...
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"synchronous" and widespread in the late 1960s.44 From historic peaks ranging from ten to sixteen million adult fish, the Columbia runs declined to something like a million (see Figure 5). As bleak as this number is, it understates the decline of...
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Millions of pounds
1935, Fishwheels prohibited
1988, Last sockeye season
1977, Last spring season
1950, Seines, traps, set nets prohibited
1965, Last summer season
Year 1866 1876 1886 1896 1906 1916 1926 1936 1946 1956 1966 1976...
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Notwithstanding the quantity of ink that has been spilt over such questions, only a few things are clear. There was significant over-fishing and habitat disturbance in the Columbia River Basin long before the mainstem dams were built. Snake River...
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Notwithstanding the quantity of ink that has been spilt over such questions, only a few things are clear. There was significant over-fishing and habitat disturbance in the Columbia River Basin long before the mainstem dams were built. Snake River...
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to try to get them past the dam. The managers relocated the upper Columbia salmon stocks into other tributaries and a hatchery at Leavenworth, one of the first of many.54
The Lower Columbia River Fishery Development Program, funded by the...
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to try to get them past the dam. The managers relocated the upper Columbia salmon stocks into other tributaries and a hatchery at Leavenworth, one of the first of many.54
The Lower Columbia River Fishery Development Program, funded by the...
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of cases on fish harvest in the Columbia River and Puget Sound, the tribes established the right to harvest up to half of the salmon runs, including hatchery populations.60
In addition to harvest rights, the treaty fishing cases suggested two...
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activities that affect salmon habitat, including the operations of the Columbia River dams.65.65 Together with the conservation principle quoted above, the tribes can argue with some force that treaty fishing rights cannot be limited unless...
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"equitable apportionment" principles of interstate water law.68 The court agreed that equitable apportionment applies to salmon in principle: "At the root of the [equitable apportionment] doctrine is the same principle that animates many of the...
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"equitable apportionment" principles of interstate water law.68 The court agreed that equitable apportionment applies to salmon in principle: "At the root of the [equitable apportionment] doctrine is the same principle that animates many of the...
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