Designation in hand, the pressure is on

Critical habitat addition for endangered white sturgeon spawns disagreement between ecology group and Army Corps of Engineers

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated an additional seven miles of the Kootenai River as critical habitat for endangered white sturgeon.

And the group that prompted the designation through a lawsuit maintains that it adds pressure on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to install additional turbines at Libby Dam, allowing for higher flows on the Kootenai River. The designation, announced Wednesday, will add 6.9 miles of river upstream from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, to 11 miles of river downstream that was designated as critical habitat in 2001. The service also released an economic analysis of the overall designations. Public comment on that analysis and the designation will be accepted during the next 60 days, and comments could result in revisions.

"With designation of additional critical habitat, the Army Corps can no longer ignore their responsibilities to save the Kootenai River white sturgeon from the abyss of extinction," said Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Spokane-based Center for Biological Diversity. "It's time for the corps to stop dragging their feet and start installing additional turbines in Libby Dam."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, however, doesn't see it that way.

"He is making a tremendous jump to say that in order to get fish to spawn up there, we need to install an additional turbine," said Greg Hoffman, a corps biologist stationed at Libby Dam.

"To be honest, the science has not shown that additional flows will get sturgeon up into that reach," Hoffman said.

DURING the next month, the Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to release a new biological opinion that will prescribe a course for conserving white sturgeon. Hoffman said that document likely will call for studies and experiments to test the benefits of additional flow for sturgeon spawning, before the corps and the Bonneville Power Administration commit to the considerable expense of installing additional turbines.

Greenwald points to two previous biological opinions and a recovery plan for sturgeon that called for increased flows to more closely mimic natural conditions and to encourage sturgeon to spawn upstream from Bonners Ferry.

Brian Marotz, fisheries projects manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, says that Kootenai River's white sturgeon are indeed on the brink of extinction. But he, like Hoffman, says it's far from certain whether higher flows will encourage sturgeon to move upriver for spawning within the newly designated area, which is known as the "braided reach" because of its multi-stranded channels.

"We don't have a really good idea if there's enough depth or velocity for fish to spawn within that reach or if they will swim past it," Marotz said.

Plans are in place to study the braided reach to determine whether it has the characteristics for spawning that are known from sturgeon populations that successfully spawn in the Columbia River.

Researchers have identified the stage at which wild sturgeon spawning has been failing - mortality is occurring between the ages of mature egg to several months old. That's attributed to wild sturgeon spawning over totally unsuitable, sandy bottomed stretches of river.

"They are spawning over shifting sands downstream, and that's just not successful," Marotz said.

It's estimated that the Kootenai River has only 500 remaining adult white sturgeon, a species with prehistoric roots that takes at least 25 years to reproductively mature.

"Right now, extinction is being postponed because the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho is stocking juveniles," Marotz said.

Experimental efforts are under way that involve physically transporting fertilized eggs to the more suitable cobble-bottomed river stretches above Bonner's Ferry.

But it will take 25 years to learn whether those fish have the "homing" instincts to spawn in the same stretches where they were hatched, Marotz said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has pressed for higher flows by releasing water over Libby Dam's spillways. But that has been discouraged.

So the Center for Ecological Diversity has consistently pushed for the installation of additional turbines.

The corps and BPA officials have maintained that installation of one additional turbines would require hefty expenses, mainly to upgrade the transmission infrastructure that serves not only Libby Dam, but Hungry Horse Dam.

According to Rick Pendergrass, BPA manager of power and operations planning, installing one additional turbine unit would cost $21 million, and would require transmission upgrades ranging from $25 million to $171 million.

The lower range transmission upgrade would allow the additional Libby dam turbine to operate, but require one of the four turbines at Hungry Horse to shut down. The transmission system was largely built to meet the huge power demands from the Columbia Falls Aluminum Plant. But the plant is no longer operating at full capacity, and the transmission system is not built to carry the additional load out of the Flathead Valley and Northwest Montana, Pendergrass said.

The government's economic analysis concludes that the critical habitat designation may have economic impacts ranging from $370 million to $790 million during the next 20 years.

"The vast majority of these impacts result from changes in flows to accommodate the sturgeon within the Kootenai River and related operations at Libby Dam," the service states according to a press release.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.