Efforts to stabilize river flows gain support

Montana's efforts to stabilize summer flows from Libby Dam and keep the water level high at Koocanusa Reservoir are gaining considerable support.

Last week, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council requested that federal water managers in the Columbia River system implement the council's 2003 amendments on maintenance of reservoir levels behind both Libby and Hungry Horse dams.

The amendments call for reduced summer drafts from both reservoirs, reducing the overall volume of water taken and prolonging the duration of flows into September. No more than 10 feet would be taken off the top of the reservoir compared to the call for the top 20 feet for endangered downstream salmon.

Council members say that would benefit fish in the reservoirs and in the Kootenai and Flathead rivers below the reservoirs - without measurable impact on salmon farther downstream in the Columbia River.

Montana representatives have argued for years that the water drafted from Koocanusa and Hungry Horse reservoirs is not measurable in the Columbia and therefore has no effect on endangered salmon.

The state asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries regional administrator to test such operations last summer. But Bob Lohm said the proposal lacked a testing procedure to determine its impacts on downstream salmon.

The biological opinion for the recovery of the salmon calls for a drawdown of 20 feet from Koocanusa to help push juvenile salmon out to sea.

Lohm suggested a symposium to determine if such testing was possible. Based on information from that November symposium, an independent scientific advisory board said the council's proposal is reasonable and that any affects on downstream salmon are likely to be too small to measure accurately because of the enormous flows in the Columbia River.

The power planning council asked the federal agencies to prepare a change in management operations for summer 2005 and fund the necessary testing.

Local fishermen and state biologists have expressed concerns for years that the summer salmon flows, which closely follow increased flows for endangered white sturgeon, were unnatural for the Kootenai River and posed a threat to resident trout and aquatic insects.

The scientific advisory board came away with more questions than answers on whether the high flows in the Columbia River benefited downstream fish.