JoseCuervo
New member
The FERC license to operate the Hells Canyon complex (Hells Canyon Dam, Oxbow Dam, and Brownlee Dam) is due in 2005. Idaho Power took a unique approach, and developed most of the re-license application in private (which was their right, although a bit un-orthodox), and sprung the 30,000 page document on the good people of Idaho a few months ago.
Many people are tearing the document up, and trying to see what is says, as it did not seem to be together in any sort of collaborative manner.
The Statesman today, framed the issue. As far as I know, nobody is calling for breaching the dams, just to put in the modifications needed to restore the Salmon and Steelhead to the Marsing reach of the Snake and the Boise River. The original licenses called for fish passage, and Idaho Power dropped the ball, and the last Wild Salmon died in in 1973.
Now most of the argument centers around how much money should Idaho Power pay for Fish Improvements, and how should that be spread between a burden on Ratepayers (who enjoy some of the lowest rates in the Country) or paid by the Shareholders of IdaCorp.
My guess is we know the 'Gunner's position on Salmon and Steelhead, but I will post the article for those who want some education. I spend a week in Hells Canyon each Summer, rafting the Deepest Canyon in North America, I Steelhead fish in there in the Winter, and I have been known to catch crappie on Brownlee in June...
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Clashing values in Hells Canyon
Dam relicensing forces us to reassess costs of salmon, recreation, tribal tradition, power – and what we’re willing to pay
When Idaho Power Co. dammed up Hells Canyon in 1958 a chapter in Elmer Crow´s life ended.
As a boy, the Nez Perce Indian had spent weeks in the canyon each year fishing for salmon, hunting bighorn sheep and living a lifestyle his people had shared for thousands of years.
Hundreds of thousands of salmon died when the Snake River was inadvertently dried up in 1958, the year Oxbow, the first dam in the three-dam Hells Canyon complex, closed off the river.
The promise of passage for salmon through the dams to spawning grounds on the Snake River near Marsing and in the Boise and Payette rivers never came true, and an entire fishery was lost.
“When they developed these dams for power in the name of the almighty dollar, we were losing a part of ourselves and they didn´t even realize it,” said Crow, now 59. “I´ve been called a bitter Indian. I am.”
The Nez Perce´s loss was an economic boom for southern Idaho. The Brownlee, Oxbow and Hells Canyon dams opened a new chapter in economic development by supplying the power that created modern Idaho.
The cheap electricity helped the J.R. Simplot Co. expand its operations, said David Hawk, director of energy and natural resources for the J.R. Simplot Co. It was also the reason big companies like Micron came to Idaho.
“It would be wonderful to have a free-flowing stream all the way through there, but the Snake River is a working river,” Hawk said. “Are there tradeoffs? No question about it. But these are tradeoffs that I for one am willing to have.”
Now Idaho Power, the company that built the dams, must get a new license to operate them for the next 30 years, and Elmer Crow and others who see themselves as the losers of half a century ago are hoping to get back a piece of the natural heritage they lost.
They aren´t calling for removing the dams, but they want the salmon back and they want the flows in the canyon returned to a more natural state.
No matter what happens, Idaho Power´s 423,000 customers will pay more on their electric bills to recover the relicensing costs. Those costs will be determined by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a five-person independent panel charged with balancing the needs of the company and the public. FERC will hold hearings this week in Boise, Weiser and Halfway, Ore., on Idaho Power´s application to relicense its Hells Canyon, Oxbow and Brownlee dams.
Why do these dams need new licenses?
Idaho Power´s current 50-year license expires in 2005.
And even though the area´s industry and population have grown beyond the capacity of the three dams, Hells Canyon remains the foundation of Idaho Power´s supply system, an inexpensive source of electricity that doesn´t create air pollution and remains important for Idaho´s economy.
As the population grows, the dams´ role will shrink. But the value of the natural amenities — the salmon, the canyon and the wildlife — will increase.
The federal and state agencies in charge of protecting those resources have the power under federal law to place mandatory conditions on the license that could dramatically increase the what the dams cost Idaho Power. Mark Robinson, FERC director of office of energy projects, said the commission staff seeks to head off major conflicts.
“The norm is that by working through this very public process, people come to a consensus on what has to be done,” Robinson said.
In July, Idaho Power submitted its 36,000-page license application to FERC with suggestions on how it would improve operations at Hells Canyon.
Among those suggestions are proposals to improve fish habitat, develop a fish passage plan to move fish around Hells Canyon dam, start a white sturgeon conservation plan, purchase and enhance nearly 24,000 acres of upland and riparian habitat, and improve and enhance recreation facilities in the canyon.
Who is objecting? Why?
A reservoir of state and federal agencies, environmental groups, and Indian tribes seeks to press Idaho Power to do more for salmon, sturgeon, bull trout and even lamprey eels. Indian tribes also want the company to protect their spiritual and historic sites in the canyon, threatened by continuing erosion from the constant raising and lowering of water levels to meet power needs.
The state of Oregon is seeking improvements in water quality in Brownlee and below. Others are seeking additional wildlife habitat protection. Most of the groups have asked FERC to order the company to do more studies to determine the full impacts the dam has had on fisheries, wildlife, the canyon and water quality.
Idaho Power officials contend they´ve addressed the environmental consequences of the dams, and they´re hoping that the public process doesn´t result in costly new requirements.
If Idaho Power is given mandatory conditions, John Prescott, the company´s vice president of power supply, said the company will implement them unless they go too far and are too expensive.
“It depends on how draconian the conditions are,” Prescott said. “We have an obligation to protect our ratepayers.”
If the company decides they are too expensive, its only recourse would be to take the battle to court.
How much will it cost?
The company already has spent $50 million to prepare its license application and plans to spend nearly $324 million to cover ongoing costs and make improvements at the Hells Canyon complex over the next 30 years.
The bulk of those costs — $221 million — will go toward measures to improve fish and snail habitat. Nearly $49 million will be spent for recreation enhancements and nearly $35 million on wildlife enhancements.
The remaining money will go toward land management, botanical, historical and archeological improvements.
“It´s not generally understood by ratepayers that the costs are building and they will be paid by ratepayers,” said Jim Bellessa, an analyst with D.A. Davidson in Great Falls, Mont. “There´s no free lunch. They (Idaho Power) need to get a return and recovery on their investments.”
Didn’t Idaho Power just ask for a big increase?
Last month Idaho Power filed a request with state regulators for a 17.7 percent average increase on base rates, but those rate increases don´t include any of the costs from the Hells Canyon relicensing.
Prescott said eventually the company may ask ratepayers to cover those costs. How much that would increase rates isn´t known yet because most of the money hasn´t been spent.
But Prescott said if Idaho Power were to ask customers to recover the $50 million the company has already spent on the license application, it would up rates by another 7 percent.
How important are the dams to Idaho Power?
When the dams were built 50 years ago, the power they generated provided the bulk of the electricity for Idaho Power´s customers. In 1982, for example, hydropower accounted for 77.7 percent of Idaho Power´s electricity needs. The three Hells Canyon dams provided 40 percent of the company´s hydropower.
That´s not the case today.
Population increases and industrial growth forced Idaho Power to add outside sources to meet rising demand, and the problem gets worse during during drought years.
In the last decade, during normal and high-water years, the Hells Canyon dams and the company´s other 14 smaller dams can provide 40 to 50 percent or more of all the company´s power needs.
Idaho has been in a drought for the last four years, so the amount of power generated has fallen short of potential.
In 2002, the 17 dams generated only 37.5 percent of Idaho Power´s needs. The rest of the power came from its coal and natural gas plants or through wholesale power purchases.
During high-water years, the company can often generate excess power and sell it to other companies, Prescott said. The proceeds help reduce company expenses for purchased power, which in turn can lower customer rates.
The cost to generate power at the dams also is less than generating it from other sources or buying it wholesale. Historically, hydropower is one of the reasons Idaho Power´s rates remain some of the lowest in the country.
A recent survey by the Edison Electric Institute showed that Idaho Power´s rates were the lowest in the West and the eighth-lowest in the nation.
“Lower electric rates tie directly to the health of the economy in southern Idaho,” Simplot´s Hawk said. “We have lower electric rates than competing states, and it´s lower to a large extent because of our hydroelectric base. These are advantages when it comes time for a company to site a new plant or maintain an existing plant.”
How do salmon figure into the decision?
Crow, a technical consultant to the Nez Perce tribe´s fisheries department, said Idaho Power has had little or no regard for the wild salmon that once roamed the river.
Irrigation diversions, upstream dams and pollution had killed off most of the salmon runs by the time Idaho Power began building the Hells Canyon dams. Still, 17,848 fall chinook were counted at Oxbow in 1958.
Idaho Power attempted to move fish past the dams using traps, barges and trucks. But it didn´t work, mostly because the juvenile salmon didn´t survive the return trip through Brownlee and the dams to the Pacific. By 1963, only 945 returning salmon were counted. The last time a wild fish returned to the dam was 1973.
FERC approved Idaho Power´s plan to offset the loss of upstream runs by building hatcheries. The issue of restoring passage through the dams was postponed until the current relicensing.
But the most recent Idaho Power studies conclude that fish passage is still unrealistic.
Environmental groups, Indian tribes, Oregon state officials and federal fisheries officials don´t believe the company has studied the issue thoroughly.
They want Idaho Power to consider significant seasonal drawdowns to speed up the current through Brownlee Reservoir to aid juvenile salmon passage. They also want the company to do more modeling on water quality and spawning to speed efforts to resolve the impediments to fish passage.
Greg Haller, the senior biologist for the Nez Perce Tribe, argues that since Idaho Power´s dams destroyed the runs, it has the primary responsibility to restore them.
The same groups are seeking changes in dam operations that would reduce the erosion of sand and gravel bars downstream that provide spawning habitat for fall chinook salmon and contribute to the health of the canyon ecosystem.
They also want the company to install on its earthen Brownlee dam a multi-level outlet that would allow the release of deeper cold water in the summer and warmer water in the spring to aid salmon migration and spawning.
“A selective withdrawal system would mimic the river´s natural cooling scheme,” Haller said. “That would be one part of a solution for recovering fall chinook.”
Prescott, however, argues that such a withdrawal system has never been tried and could prove too costly and end up not working.
Who likes Hells Canyon as it is?
While Idaho Power deals with interest groups that want major changes at the projects, there´s another group that says Idaho Power has improved what was once a desolate area.
The construction of the dams brought more than cheap power. It also opened up a new playground for thousands of fishermen and other outdoor recreationists.
Each year more than 370,000 people visit the canyon. People like Mark Roberts of Caldwell.
A cool fall morning in October finds Roberts, 75, picking walnuts from trees at Idaho Power´s Hells Canyon campground.
“We´ve been coming here 30 years,” Roberts says during a break in his walnut gathering. “If they don´t relicense (the dams), it will be the biggest mistake they´ve ever made.”
Roberts doesn´t think much of the pressure being put on Idaho Power to do more to help restore native fish runs.
“They always say they want more salmon and steelhead, but what about warm-water fishermen,” Roberts said. “In April, May and June, there are hundreds of fishermen here.”
The reservoirs have become some of Idaho´s premier warm-water fisheries. Brownlee Reservoir, the largest at 15,000 acres, is one of the most heavily fished waters in the state. It has populations of warm-water fish like smallmouth bass, catfish and crappie.
The Hells Canyon dams have also helped bring strong steelhead runs to the Snake River below Hells Canyon Dam. The steelhead are part of the company´s hatchery programs that were started when the dams were put in to help make up for the loss of native fish.
What’s ahead?
Idaho Power´s current license expires in 2005, but there´s no guarantee that a new one will be issued by then. The company still has license applications pending at smaller projects that have been operating on year-to-year licenses for several years.
Prescott, however, said there is a movement among FERC´s leadership to speed up the relicensing process.
“All we´re hearing now is that the new chairman is focused on getting a license now and is trying to push through applications as fast as they can,” Prescott said. “What that means in terms of what we get in a license, I don´t know.”
Crow dreams of the day when wild salmon runs return so thick in Snake River tributaries that he can hear them coming, as he could back in the early ´50s.
He hopes for a day when herds of bighorn sheep once again number in the thousands along the canyon walls.
“I´d love to have my children see what I´ve seen and hear what I´ve heard,” he said.
Edition Date: 11-16-2003
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Many people are tearing the document up, and trying to see what is says, as it did not seem to be together in any sort of collaborative manner.
The Statesman today, framed the issue. As far as I know, nobody is calling for breaching the dams, just to put in the modifications needed to restore the Salmon and Steelhead to the Marsing reach of the Snake and the Boise River. The original licenses called for fish passage, and Idaho Power dropped the ball, and the last Wild Salmon died in in 1973.
Now most of the argument centers around how much money should Idaho Power pay for Fish Improvements, and how should that be spread between a burden on Ratepayers (who enjoy some of the lowest rates in the Country) or paid by the Shareholders of IdaCorp.
My guess is we know the 'Gunner's position on Salmon and Steelhead, but I will post the article for those who want some education. I spend a week in Hells Canyon each Summer, rafting the Deepest Canyon in North America, I Steelhead fish in there in the Winter, and I have been known to catch crappie on Brownlee in June...
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Clashing values in Hells Canyon
Dam relicensing forces us to reassess costs of salmon, recreation, tribal tradition, power – and what we’re willing to pay
When Idaho Power Co. dammed up Hells Canyon in 1958 a chapter in Elmer Crow´s life ended.
As a boy, the Nez Perce Indian had spent weeks in the canyon each year fishing for salmon, hunting bighorn sheep and living a lifestyle his people had shared for thousands of years.
Hundreds of thousands of salmon died when the Snake River was inadvertently dried up in 1958, the year Oxbow, the first dam in the three-dam Hells Canyon complex, closed off the river.
The promise of passage for salmon through the dams to spawning grounds on the Snake River near Marsing and in the Boise and Payette rivers never came true, and an entire fishery was lost.
“When they developed these dams for power in the name of the almighty dollar, we were losing a part of ourselves and they didn´t even realize it,” said Crow, now 59. “I´ve been called a bitter Indian. I am.”
The Nez Perce´s loss was an economic boom for southern Idaho. The Brownlee, Oxbow and Hells Canyon dams opened a new chapter in economic development by supplying the power that created modern Idaho.
The cheap electricity helped the J.R. Simplot Co. expand its operations, said David Hawk, director of energy and natural resources for the J.R. Simplot Co. It was also the reason big companies like Micron came to Idaho.
“It would be wonderful to have a free-flowing stream all the way through there, but the Snake River is a working river,” Hawk said. “Are there tradeoffs? No question about it. But these are tradeoffs that I for one am willing to have.”
Now Idaho Power, the company that built the dams, must get a new license to operate them for the next 30 years, and Elmer Crow and others who see themselves as the losers of half a century ago are hoping to get back a piece of the natural heritage they lost.
They aren´t calling for removing the dams, but they want the salmon back and they want the flows in the canyon returned to a more natural state.
No matter what happens, Idaho Power´s 423,000 customers will pay more on their electric bills to recover the relicensing costs. Those costs will be determined by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a five-person independent panel charged with balancing the needs of the company and the public. FERC will hold hearings this week in Boise, Weiser and Halfway, Ore., on Idaho Power´s application to relicense its Hells Canyon, Oxbow and Brownlee dams.
Why do these dams need new licenses?
Idaho Power´s current 50-year license expires in 2005.
And even though the area´s industry and population have grown beyond the capacity of the three dams, Hells Canyon remains the foundation of Idaho Power´s supply system, an inexpensive source of electricity that doesn´t create air pollution and remains important for Idaho´s economy.
As the population grows, the dams´ role will shrink. But the value of the natural amenities — the salmon, the canyon and the wildlife — will increase.
The federal and state agencies in charge of protecting those resources have the power under federal law to place mandatory conditions on the license that could dramatically increase the what the dams cost Idaho Power. Mark Robinson, FERC director of office of energy projects, said the commission staff seeks to head off major conflicts.
“The norm is that by working through this very public process, people come to a consensus on what has to be done,” Robinson said.
In July, Idaho Power submitted its 36,000-page license application to FERC with suggestions on how it would improve operations at Hells Canyon.
Among those suggestions are proposals to improve fish habitat, develop a fish passage plan to move fish around Hells Canyon dam, start a white sturgeon conservation plan, purchase and enhance nearly 24,000 acres of upland and riparian habitat, and improve and enhance recreation facilities in the canyon.
Who is objecting? Why?
A reservoir of state and federal agencies, environmental groups, and Indian tribes seeks to press Idaho Power to do more for salmon, sturgeon, bull trout and even lamprey eels. Indian tribes also want the company to protect their spiritual and historic sites in the canyon, threatened by continuing erosion from the constant raising and lowering of water levels to meet power needs.
The state of Oregon is seeking improvements in water quality in Brownlee and below. Others are seeking additional wildlife habitat protection. Most of the groups have asked FERC to order the company to do more studies to determine the full impacts the dam has had on fisheries, wildlife, the canyon and water quality.
Idaho Power officials contend they´ve addressed the environmental consequences of the dams, and they´re hoping that the public process doesn´t result in costly new requirements.
If Idaho Power is given mandatory conditions, John Prescott, the company´s vice president of power supply, said the company will implement them unless they go too far and are too expensive.
“It depends on how draconian the conditions are,” Prescott said. “We have an obligation to protect our ratepayers.”
If the company decides they are too expensive, its only recourse would be to take the battle to court.
How much will it cost?
The company already has spent $50 million to prepare its license application and plans to spend nearly $324 million to cover ongoing costs and make improvements at the Hells Canyon complex over the next 30 years.
The bulk of those costs — $221 million — will go toward measures to improve fish and snail habitat. Nearly $49 million will be spent for recreation enhancements and nearly $35 million on wildlife enhancements.
The remaining money will go toward land management, botanical, historical and archeological improvements.
“It´s not generally understood by ratepayers that the costs are building and they will be paid by ratepayers,” said Jim Bellessa, an analyst with D.A. Davidson in Great Falls, Mont. “There´s no free lunch. They (Idaho Power) need to get a return and recovery on their investments.”
Didn’t Idaho Power just ask for a big increase?
Last month Idaho Power filed a request with state regulators for a 17.7 percent average increase on base rates, but those rate increases don´t include any of the costs from the Hells Canyon relicensing.
Prescott said eventually the company may ask ratepayers to cover those costs. How much that would increase rates isn´t known yet because most of the money hasn´t been spent.
But Prescott said if Idaho Power were to ask customers to recover the $50 million the company has already spent on the license application, it would up rates by another 7 percent.
How important are the dams to Idaho Power?
When the dams were built 50 years ago, the power they generated provided the bulk of the electricity for Idaho Power´s customers. In 1982, for example, hydropower accounted for 77.7 percent of Idaho Power´s electricity needs. The three Hells Canyon dams provided 40 percent of the company´s hydropower.
That´s not the case today.
Population increases and industrial growth forced Idaho Power to add outside sources to meet rising demand, and the problem gets worse during during drought years.
In the last decade, during normal and high-water years, the Hells Canyon dams and the company´s other 14 smaller dams can provide 40 to 50 percent or more of all the company´s power needs.
Idaho has been in a drought for the last four years, so the amount of power generated has fallen short of potential.
In 2002, the 17 dams generated only 37.5 percent of Idaho Power´s needs. The rest of the power came from its coal and natural gas plants or through wholesale power purchases.
During high-water years, the company can often generate excess power and sell it to other companies, Prescott said. The proceeds help reduce company expenses for purchased power, which in turn can lower customer rates.
The cost to generate power at the dams also is less than generating it from other sources or buying it wholesale. Historically, hydropower is one of the reasons Idaho Power´s rates remain some of the lowest in the country.
A recent survey by the Edison Electric Institute showed that Idaho Power´s rates were the lowest in the West and the eighth-lowest in the nation.
“Lower electric rates tie directly to the health of the economy in southern Idaho,” Simplot´s Hawk said. “We have lower electric rates than competing states, and it´s lower to a large extent because of our hydroelectric base. These are advantages when it comes time for a company to site a new plant or maintain an existing plant.”
How do salmon figure into the decision?
Crow, a technical consultant to the Nez Perce tribe´s fisheries department, said Idaho Power has had little or no regard for the wild salmon that once roamed the river.
Irrigation diversions, upstream dams and pollution had killed off most of the salmon runs by the time Idaho Power began building the Hells Canyon dams. Still, 17,848 fall chinook were counted at Oxbow in 1958.
Idaho Power attempted to move fish past the dams using traps, barges and trucks. But it didn´t work, mostly because the juvenile salmon didn´t survive the return trip through Brownlee and the dams to the Pacific. By 1963, only 945 returning salmon were counted. The last time a wild fish returned to the dam was 1973.
FERC approved Idaho Power´s plan to offset the loss of upstream runs by building hatcheries. The issue of restoring passage through the dams was postponed until the current relicensing.
But the most recent Idaho Power studies conclude that fish passage is still unrealistic.
Environmental groups, Indian tribes, Oregon state officials and federal fisheries officials don´t believe the company has studied the issue thoroughly.
They want Idaho Power to consider significant seasonal drawdowns to speed up the current through Brownlee Reservoir to aid juvenile salmon passage. They also want the company to do more modeling on water quality and spawning to speed efforts to resolve the impediments to fish passage.
Greg Haller, the senior biologist for the Nez Perce Tribe, argues that since Idaho Power´s dams destroyed the runs, it has the primary responsibility to restore them.
The same groups are seeking changes in dam operations that would reduce the erosion of sand and gravel bars downstream that provide spawning habitat for fall chinook salmon and contribute to the health of the canyon ecosystem.
They also want the company to install on its earthen Brownlee dam a multi-level outlet that would allow the release of deeper cold water in the summer and warmer water in the spring to aid salmon migration and spawning.
“A selective withdrawal system would mimic the river´s natural cooling scheme,” Haller said. “That would be one part of a solution for recovering fall chinook.”
Prescott, however, argues that such a withdrawal system has never been tried and could prove too costly and end up not working.
Who likes Hells Canyon as it is?
While Idaho Power deals with interest groups that want major changes at the projects, there´s another group that says Idaho Power has improved what was once a desolate area.
The construction of the dams brought more than cheap power. It also opened up a new playground for thousands of fishermen and other outdoor recreationists.
Each year more than 370,000 people visit the canyon. People like Mark Roberts of Caldwell.
A cool fall morning in October finds Roberts, 75, picking walnuts from trees at Idaho Power´s Hells Canyon campground.
“We´ve been coming here 30 years,” Roberts says during a break in his walnut gathering. “If they don´t relicense (the dams), it will be the biggest mistake they´ve ever made.”
Roberts doesn´t think much of the pressure being put on Idaho Power to do more to help restore native fish runs.
“They always say they want more salmon and steelhead, but what about warm-water fishermen,” Roberts said. “In April, May and June, there are hundreds of fishermen here.”
The reservoirs have become some of Idaho´s premier warm-water fisheries. Brownlee Reservoir, the largest at 15,000 acres, is one of the most heavily fished waters in the state. It has populations of warm-water fish like smallmouth bass, catfish and crappie.
The Hells Canyon dams have also helped bring strong steelhead runs to the Snake River below Hells Canyon Dam. The steelhead are part of the company´s hatchery programs that were started when the dams were put in to help make up for the loss of native fish.
What’s ahead?
Idaho Power´s current license expires in 2005, but there´s no guarantee that a new one will be issued by then. The company still has license applications pending at smaller projects that have been operating on year-to-year licenses for several years.
Prescott, however, said there is a movement among FERC´s leadership to speed up the relicensing process.
“All we´re hearing now is that the new chairman is focused on getting a license now and is trying to push through applications as fast as they can,” Prescott said. “What that means in terms of what we get in a license, I don´t know.”
Crow dreams of the day when wild salmon runs return so thick in Snake River tributaries that he can hear them coming, as he could back in the early ´50s.
He hopes for a day when herds of bighorn sheep once again number in the thousands along the canyon walls.
“I´d love to have my children see what I´ve seen and hear what I´ve heard,” he said.
Edition Date: 11-16-2003
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
