Northwest Power and Conservation Council 

Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program 

Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments 

September 2005 (document 2005-13) 

Introduction 

 On August 12, 2002, pursuant to Section 4(h) of the Northwest Power Act, the Northwest 

Power and Conservation Council1

 requested in writing that state and federal fish and wildlife 

agencies, Indian tribes and others submit recommendations for amendments to the Council’s 

Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program. The Council requested recommendations for 

objectives and measures for the program at the subbasin level, to be submitted in the form of a 

subbasin plan for each subbasin or as possible elements for a subbasin plan. 

 On May 28, 2004, the Council received proposed subbasin plans for 59 subbasins of the 

Columbia River, formally recommended for amendment into the Council’s fish and wildlife 

program. Following a lengthy public review process required by the Power Act and described in 

more detail below, the Council formally adopted as amendments into the program subbasin plans 

for 57 subbasins, based on the recommendations submitted. 

 In this section of the fish and wildlife program, the Council provides written findings 

explaining its disposition of the subbasin plan recommendations, as required by Section 4(h)(7) 

of the Power Act. When the Council rejected all or part of a recommendation, these findings 

explain how the Council’s decision comports with the standards in that section of the act for 

rejecting recommendations. This document also explains how the Council responded to the 

public comments it received on the recommendations and on draft program amendments. In 

doing so, this document also serves as the “statement of basis and purpose” called for in Section 

553 of the federal Administrative Procedures Act to accompany agency decisions on final rules. 

Along with the requirements in the Power Act, the Council follows the notice and comment 

rulemaking procedures of the APA in developing and adopting amendments to fish and wildlife 

program. 

More detail on the legal framework for amending the Fish and Wildlife Program 

 As noted above, the Council develops and adopts amendments to its Columbia River Basin 

Fish and Wildlife Program using a process and subject to standards established in Section 

4(h)(1)-(8) of the Northwest Power Act. The Council followed these procedures and standards 

in the subbasin plan amendment process. 

 

1

 When the Council issued the call for recommendations, it was known by the name Northwest Power 

Planning Council. In mid-2003, the Council changed the name by which it is known to the Northwest 

Power and Conservation Council. Both names are short forms of the Council’s official legal name, the 

Pacific Northwest Electric Power and Conservation Planning Council. 
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

A program amendment process formally begins with the Council soliciting, in writing, 

“recommendations” for amendments from state and federal fish and wildlife agencies, Indian 

tribes and others. (As will be seen below, the Council engaged with others in a substantial 

amount of preparation for subbasin planning before it released the formal call for 

recommendations). The request for recommendations sets a time period by which 

recommendations are to be submitted to the Council, which must be at least 90 days but may be 

more. 

The Power Act then requires that the Council make any recommendations submitted within 

the specified time period available to the public for review and comment. The Council consults 

with interested parties and receives oral and written comment on those formal recommendations. 

The Council evaluates the recommendations received and any comment provided on them

relative to standards that program amendments must meet under the act. 

After this review of recommendations and comments, the Council then develops and releases 

for public review a set of draft program amendments based on the recommendations. The 

Council conducts public hearings in each of the four states of the Council, and provides an 

opportunity for written comment on the draft program amendments. 

The Council then adopts final program amendments based on the recommendations, any 

supporting documents submitted with the recommendations, and the views and information 

obtained by the Council in public comments on the recommendations and draft amendments and 

in consultations with the fish and wildlife agencies, tribes and others. The Council’s decisions as 

to what to adopt in terms of program amendments, and how those amendments are based on the 

recommendations, are made consistent with the substantive standards that program amendments 

must meet under the act. The key substantive standards for program measures are found in 

Sections 4(h)(5)-(6) of the act. An overarching requirement is that the program consist of 

measures that protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the development, 

operation and management of the hydroelectric facilities on the river while assuring the region an 

adequate, efficient, economical and reliable power supply. More specific requirements include, 

for example, that measures amended into the program complement the existing and future 

activities of fish and wildlife agencies and tribes, be consistent with the legal rights of Indian 

tribes, be based on the best scientific knowledge available, and utilize least-cost alternatives 

where various alternatives would achieve the same biological objective. 

A program amendment process is not completely finished until the Council explains its 

disposition of the recommendations in written findings. The Council also uses this document to 

explain how it responded to comments on the recommendations and on key issues. More 

precisely: 

The Council must adopt formal “findings” when it does not adopt “recommendations” 

for program amendments. Section 4(h)(7) of the Power Act requires that the Council adopt 

written “findings” as part of the fish and wildlife program itself when the Council does not adopt 

all or part of the formal recommendations for amendments that it received. The Council may 

reject recommendations in certain specified instances set forth in this section of the act --

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

essentially in those instances in which the Council finds that the recommendations would be 

inconsistent with the act’s substantive standards for program measures as detailed in sections

4(h)(5) or 4(h)(6), or when the Council decides that a recommendation would be less effective 

than the adopted recommendations for the protection, mitigation and enhancement of fish and 

wildlife. 

At the same time, the Council explains how it responded to two sets of public “comments.” 

As noted above, after receiving the formal recommendations for amendments, the Council must 

provide an opportunity for interested entities and the public to “comment” on the 

recommendations. The Council considers these comments in making its ultimate decision on 

program amendments, and the comments become part of the administrative record of the 

program amendment process. The Power Act does not require the Council to adopt formal 

findings or any other written explanation (as part of the program or separate) as to how it has 

responded to these comments on the recommendations. However, the Council traditionally has 

provided a written explanation as to how it responded to comments on the recommendations, as 

one aspect of following the federal APA notice and comment rulemaking procedures to the 

extent appropriate and so as to provide complete public notice of the breadth of information 

considered by the Council in making its final program amendment decisions. 

Also, in this amendment process, as in the past, the Council shaped the formal 

recommendations it received into draft fish and wildlife program amendments and then 

conducted public hearings and accepted comment, views, advice and information on those draft 

amendments. Again, the Council considers these comments in making its final decisions on 

program amendments, and the comments are part of the formal administrative record. And 

again, the Act does not require the Council to adopt formal “findings” or any other written 

explanation as to how it responded to the comments on draft amendments in making its 

decisions. But for the same reasons noted above, the Council traditionally does explain in 

writing, with the findings and response to comments on recommendations, how it took the 

comments on draft amendments into account in its final amendment decisions. 

How the rest of this document in organized 

Section I of the Findings and Responses to Comments describes the subbasin-level program

amendment process. The purpose is to establish the context for the Council’s explanation as to 

how it handled the recommended subbasin plans, for the Council’s formal Section 4(h)(7) 

findings on recommendations, and for the responses to comments on recommendations and draft 

amendments. 

Section II then outlines the steps the Council took to review particular recommendations for 

subbasin-level program amendments. This section includes a summary of the comments

submitted on each of these formal recommendations, and how the Council responded to these 

comments. To keep all of the comments related to each recommendation together, Section II 

also includes a response to relevant comments made in the second public comment period 

discussed above – on the draft program amendments crafted by the Council out of the 

recommendations. Because many comments addressed the same issue or set of issues, rather 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

than providing a response to each individual comment, the more commonly expressed issues are 

described and grouped by subject, and identified as “General Comments.” The Council’s 

responses to these General Comments are also provided in Section II. Finally, Section II 

includes the Council’s statutorily required “findings” on the recommendations it received in this 

amendment process, in those instances in which findings are required by the act. 

Section III describes a set of issues that were raised in the public comment periods that did 

not apply to specific recommendations or draft amendments, but rather, to the Council’s 

amendment process and the subbasin planning exercise generally. This last section describes the 

process used by the Council to develop and consider these more general matters, and provides a 

response to those comments. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Section I: Description of the Subbasin-Level Program Amendment Process 

The Council’s 2000 program amendments called for a complete restructuring of the fish and 

wildlife program through a framework of vision, objectives and strategies at different geographic 

levels (basinwide, ecological province, subbasin), tied together with a consistent scientific 

foundation. In the amendment process that led to the 2000 Program, the Council adopted the 

basinwide provisions, and described the means and schedule for how it would add more specific 

objectives and measures to the fish and wildlife program for the mainstem Columbia and Snake 

rivers and at the subbasin and province levels. The Council committed to future amendment 

processes to develop program provisions at those levels. The Council initiated an amendment 

process for mainstem and system operations measures and objectives in 2001, finalizing the 

Mainstem Amendments in 2003. Even as the Council worked on the mainstem amendments, it 

began its preparation for the subbasin planning effort, the next step in the program revision. 

Preparatory Actions for the Subbasin-Level Program Amendment Process 

The 2000 Program established the fundamental structure and requirements for subbasin 

planning and subbasin plans. Based on those provisions, and prior to calling for subbasin plan 

recommendations, the Council worked with a broad range of interests in the region and 

developed a non-binding Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners in 2001 to help ensure that 

plans had a consistent format and content. The Technical Guide provided detailed information 

on what should be included in the assessment, inventory, and management plan elements of the 

subbasin plan. The Technical Guide may be found on the Council’s website at 

www.nwcouncil.org/library/2001/2001-20.htm. 

At the same time as it developed the guidance document, the Council consulted with the 

state, tribal and federal entities about a planning structure to coordinate the development of 

subbasin plan amendment recommendations. The Council worked with these entities for this 

purpose because the Council recognized the many planning initiatives already underway in parts 

of the basin (by states, by federal agencies, by local governments, by tribes, and so forth) to 

address fish and wildlife needs, efforts that the Council needed to consider and coordinate with 

in its basinwide subbasin planning and amendment process. Existing initiatives included salmon 

recovery and water resources planning; watershed assessments; focus watersheds; and other 

programs related to habitat, fish and wildlife protection and restoration. 

The product of these consultations was a three-tier subbasin planning support structure. The 

structure was designed to be flexible enough to work with the various ongoing processes. The 

three-tier structure also reflected the three-tier structure of the 2000 Program -- subbasin, 

state/provincial and basin levels. The following briefly describes the role of each tier of the 

subbasin planning structure: 

Subbasin Level 

The Council organized Subbasin Planning Groups, which were formal or informal groups of 

representatives of states, tribes, local governments, and others in one or more subbasins 

participating in subbasin planning. The subbasin-level groups often contained a number of 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

subgroups, such as a technical assistance committee, a citizen involvement or citizen advisory 

committee, a planning team, and so forth. In most cases, the subbasin planning group was 

coordinated by an individual or entity(s) selected by the state/provincial coordinating body (see 

below) to “lead” the planning effort in that subbasin. A key role of the coordinator was to help 

ensure broad participation by local stakeholders. The “lead entity”(sometimes more than one) 

held contracts and was ultimately responsible for delivering the technical assessment and then 

the subbasin plan as a whole. 

State or Province Level 

The Council also established state/provincial level coordination groups (also called Level 2 

groups) that consisted largely of tribal and state representatives. These groups sought to provide 

a measure of consistency and coordination between and among the subbasin planning groups on 

both policy and technical issues, and to be a more direct interface with the Council. 

Representatives of this group would also communicate with the Regional Oversight Committee 

(see below) as appropriate. The Council also designated certain individuals as coordinators for 

subbasin planning in each state or region, charged with working with the Council, the regional 

oversight group, the state/provincial coordination groups, and the subbasin planning groups to 

ensure that the work proceeded in appropriate and efficient fashion. 

Basin Level 

Finally, the Council helped organize and chaired a Regional Oversight Committee for 

subbasin planning. The group met approximately every six weeks to coordinate macro-level 

issues related to budgets, standards for planning, schedules, and coordination with overlapping 

planning efforts related to the federal Endangered Species Act. There were several technical 

issues coordinated at this level as well by a regional technical assistance group. 

Once this planning structure was generally in place, the Council worked with the Bonneville 

Power Administration to secure funding support for the subbasin planning. Bonneville provided 

$15.2 million out of its regular fish and wildlife program budget to support the planning groups 

to develop subbasin plan recommendations that could be considered for amendments to the 

Council’s fish and wildlife program. This was the first time in the history of the Council’s 

program that funding has been made available to the public to help develop recommendations for 

fish and wildlife program amendments. 

The Council Initiates the Subbasin-Level Program Amendment Process with a Call for 

Recommendations 

On August 12, 2002, the Council broadly distributed a request for recommendations for 

amendments to the program at the subbasin level. The Council notified in writing the fish and 

wildlife agencies and tribes and others that the Council sought recommendations for program

objectives and measures in the form of subbasin plans or subbasin plan elements as described in 

the 2000 Program. That solicitation provided notice that the Council sought recommendations in 

the form of subbasin plans as generally presented in the adopted 2000 Program. That is, the 

subbasin recommendations should have an assessment of conditions in the subbasin for relevant 

fish and wildlife, an inventory of on-going efforts to address adverse conditions, and a 

management plan of objectives and strategies to address these problems (see 2000 Program,

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

“Subbasins” section A.1). The request for recommendations directed the public to the guidance 

documents that the Council had developed -- the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners and the 

Subbasin Planning Overview. The 2002 request for subbasin plan amendment recommendations 

may be found on the Council’s website at www.subbasins.org/admin/recommendations.htm. 

Consistent with the 2000 Program, the August 12 request for recommendations also provided 

notice that the Council sought recommendations for subbasin plan amendments that were the 

product of a local and collaborative effort involving fish and wildlife agencies, Indian tribes, 

interested state and local government, policy and technical experts, landowners, public interest 

groups, and other stakeholders. Because funding would be made available to assist with the 

local planning effort, the request for recommendations also asked interested individuals and 

groups in the subbasins to help in the identification of the “lead entities” that could facilitate the 

collaborative planning effort described and act as the fiscal agent for the planning monies that 

would be made available. 

While the 2000 Program called for subbasin-level recommendations in the form of complete 

subbasin plans that were the product of a broadly representative and collaborative planning 

process, the program and the request for recommendations also recognized that any person or 

entity had the legal right to offer program amendment recommendations that were not a complete 

subbasin plan, or that were not developed in the collaborative planning effort. The Council 

advised that if it did receive such recommendations, it would evaluate those along with any other 

recommendations it received for the subject subbasin against the standards of the act. 

Finally, the August 12, 2002 request for recommendations notice set the deadline for 

submitting recommendations for subbasin-level amendments as May 28, 2004. 

The Council Receives Recommendations for Subbasin Amendments and Takes Public 

Comment on the Recommendations 

On May 28, 2004 the Council received proposed subbasin plans for 59 subbasins of the 

Columbia basin, submitted as formal recommendations for amendments to the Council’s fish 

and wildlife program. In the first week of June, 2004, the Council released these proposed 

subbasin plan recommendations for public review and comment. This included seeking review 

and comment by an independent scientific panel made up of members of the Independent 

Scientific Review Panel and Independent Scientific Advisory Board. 

The Council received the comments on the recommendations through August 12, 2004. The 

Council staff simultaneously reviewed the recommended subbasin plans for consistency with the 

requirements of the act and the various elements of the 2000 Program. 

Summary of the Issues Raised in the Comments on the Recommendations 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

The Council found that most of the significant substantive issues identified in public 

comment on the recommendations or in its own review of the recommendations could be 

grouped into a handful of categories. These issues cut across or were found alike in many of the 

proposed plans, and so could be treated similarly. The following issues predominated: 

1. Linkage of assessment conclusions to management plan. A significant number of the 

recommended plans lacked the proper “linkage” between the limiting factors identified 

in the technical assessments and the strategies proposed in the management plans -- what 

the independent science reviewers called the “logic-path.” Comments or concerns about 

a lack of prioritization of strategies in the management plan component were a subcategory of the “linkage” problem, in that the prioritization problem identified could 

often be traced back to a weakness in making explicit links as to how proposed strategies 

would address key limiting factors. 

2. Artificial production strategy integration. In a number of the recommended subbasin 

plans, artificial production strategies in or affecting the subbasin were not sufficiently 

defined or sufficiently integrated with other elements of the subbasin plan. 

3. Monitoring and evaluation. The comments from the independent science reviewers 

particularly noted inadequate or incomplete provisions for monitoring and evaluation. 

4. Assessments. Review comments identified that some of the technical assessments were 

not sufficiently developed to guide the development of a management plan that 

conformed to the requirements of the Power Act and the 2000 Program. 

5. Mainstem habitat. The list of subbasins included reaches of the mainstem Columbia 

and Snake. Some of the recommended mainstem reach plans focused on habitat in small 

tributaries, not on habitat in the mainstem itself.

6. Terrestrial/wildlife element. On the whole, the Council review and public comment 

noted that terrestrial/wildlife elements of the plans were weaker and less developed than 

the aquatic/riparian elements, with obvious exceptions. 

7. USFWS comments on Bull Trout. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service commented that 

several plans needed a more direct assimilation of specific provisions of the Service’s 

draft Bull Trout Recovery Plan. 

8. Organization. Council review and public comment noted various problems of 

organization, writing, length, formatting, attachments, and so forth that interfered with 

the ability to review certain plans. 

9. Process. A number of the comments, especially from the tribes, included concerns about 

the meaning of the subbasin plan process for the program and questions about additional 

planning or implementation planning needs. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

The Council Reviewed the Recommendations in Light of the Issues Raised by Public 

Comment, the Power Act’s Standards for Program Amendments and the Guidelines in the 

2000 Program -- The Council’s Response to these Initial Comments 

In late August of 2004 the Council considered the recommended plans and the issues raised 

in the public comment against a consistent set of standards from the Power Act and the 2000 

Program. The Council made two key decisions at this point as a product of this review. The first 

key decision was to redirect how and where most of the additional work regarding artificial 

production integration (Issue 2 above) and monitoring and evaluation program development 

(Issue 3 above) would occur. The second key decision was to divide the subbasin plan 

recommendations into three categories based on varying states of readiness to be proposed as 

draft program amendments. These two key Council decisions are discussed in turn below. 

The Council’s response to those comments on the recommendations questioning the 

treatment of artificial production was to focus most of the additional work needed on 

artificial production integration through the ongoing Artificial Production Review and 

Evaluation Process (APRE).

The public comments and staff review revealed that a number of the plans did not account for 

the effects of artificial production in and affecting their subbasins as completely as anticipated by 

the 2000 Program guidance and the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. Many plan 

recommendations that included artificial production strategies did not fully describe how that 

strategy would be integrated with habitat-related strategies to meet integrated biological 

objectives for a focal species. Similarly, plan recommendations did not always clearly describe 

the artificial production strategy within the ecological context of the subbasin. 

The Council concluded that a number of reasons contributed to the planners being unable to 

complete this particular aspect of the planning work. One was the lack of information 

forthcoming from federal recovery planning and hatchery-planning processes as expected. There 

were also ongoing legal proceedings where these issues were being discussed, and in some cases, 

it appeared that planners decided that the decisions in those proceedings needed to be made 

before further detail could be put into plan recommendations. 

In light of those challenges, as well as others, the Council did not recommend returning the 

subbasin plans to the planning groups/recommending entities to do more work on this element. 

Rather, the Council concluded that the primary treatment for this problem would flow from its 

on-going Artificial Production Review and Evaluation (APRE) and related initiatives outside of 

subbasin planning, as described below. Improvements should be integrated back into subbasin 

plans when those plans are next revised at some later date. The Council made limited exceptions 

to this recommendation when it believed that additional work on the artificial production element 

could be made in conjunction with other improvements that the Council requested in order to 

find the plans adequate for being adopted into the program. 

Nearly all of the subbasin plan recommendations saw some measure of criticism in the 

comment period regarding their artificial production elements. However, the Council did see 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

distinctions in the magnitude of the problems, distinctions important in deciding how to treat the 

issue. The severity of the problem from a program adoptability standpoint, and the possible 

treatments, were dependent on the nature, location and role of artificial production in the 

recommended plan. In descending order of seriousness, the different categories were as follows: 

(1) In some subbasins, artificial production is a central population rebuilding strategy in the 

Council’s current program, in conjunction with habitat improvements, and thus a central 

strategy in the proposed subbasin plan recommendation. In some of these subbasins, the 

recommended plans presented one of the two following situations: 

a. The artificial production strategy was presented as a “stand alone” strategy, with 

little or no integration into the habitat or natural production strategies, or into the 

assessments and objectives, even though artificial production is intended to help 

rebuild naturally spawning runs. The Council concluded that this was one situation in 

which the lack of adequate treatment of artificial production presented a problem of 

sufficient magnitude so as to prevent adoption of the plan into the program without 

correction, not a defect for which treatment could be deferred to other processes. 

b. The role of the artificial production strategy was relatively well described and 

integrated into the plan’s habitat/natural production strategies, but only in a 

qualitative or narrative sense, without quantified objectives or a sophisticated analysis 

of the ecological context. A number of plan recommendations fell into this category. 

(2) In other cases, artificial production exists in the subbasin -- or exists out of the subbasin 

but nearby and its effects are strongly felt in the subbasins -- but artificial production in 

the subbasin was not a central strategy of this Council program or the proposed subbasin 

plan recommendation. In some of these subbasins, the recommended plan presented one 

of the two following situations: 

a. The proposed subbasin plan included little discussion of the role and effects of 

artificial production, in the assessment or the management plan or both. In some

cases, this was a significant problem in understanding the viability of and effects on 

natural production/habitat objectives and strategies. 

b. The recommended subbasin plan recognized the existence and effects of artificial 

production in the subbasin, especially in the assessment, but the next step of 

incorporating or evaluating those effects as in the objectives and strategies for the 

subbasin had not been done. 

With the exception of the situation identified in 1(a) above, the Council concluded that the 

APRE process would be the best vehicle to make advancements on these questions, rather than 

returning to the subbasin planning groups that struggled with this component. Future APRE 

work will assist subbasin planning by better integrating artificial production with local 

conditions, as well as out-of-subbasin impacts. As part of a process to clarify basinwide artificial 

production objectives, the Council anticipated that the APRE process will include a series of 

provincial meetings with hatchery operators and harvest managers to clarify harvest and 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

production objectives. In those meetings, the Council, with others, will work with the 

assessment information from subbasin plans and production, harvest and recovery goals 

described in other plans, to attempt to ensure that hatchery production, habitat conditions and 

restoration efforts, and natural population status is accounted for and integrated. In general, 

participants in the APRE exercise will be supplied the information on habitat conditions, 

hatchery restoration/protection strategies, and natural population status from subbasin plans and 

be asked to determine the appropriate role for hatchery production in the subbasin. This work is 

underway at the time of this writing. 

From the APRE activities described above, the Council and others will work to develop 

numeric biological objectives for hatchery returns, natural escapement and harvest needs in and 

out of the subbasin. These numeric subbasin objectives can then be aggregated into provincial 

objectives and provincial objectives into basinwide objectives. The products from these 

workshops will likely inform future iterations of subbasin plans. The APRE will work with 

NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to coordinate with ongoing NEPA and 

ESA processes. 

With regard to the recommended subbasin plans that failed to integrate the artificial

production strategies that are key to the Council’s own program with other elements of the plan 

(those in category 1a above), this delayed the Council ability to propose the plans as draft 

program amendments. The planners were asked to make revisions to the plan in the form of a 

supplement before consideration of the recommended plan as a draft amendment, described later 

in this section. 

The Council’s response to those comments on the recommendations criticizing the 

research, monitoring and evaluation provisions as deficient was to reevaluate the 

efficacy of pursuing this work at a subbasin scale at this time. The Council decided that 

additional research, monitoring and evaluation (RME) design should be pursued first at 

a regional scale through other ongoing initiatives. 

 The independent scientists’ comments submitted as part of the public comment on the 

recommendations noted that adequate RME sections were lacking in nearly all subbasin plan 

recommendations. These comments, and the Council’s own review, noted that a key challenge 

in this area is how to evaluate resource management efforts at different scales in a way that is 

scientifically defensible and ecologically meaningful, e.g., how to link monitoring efforts at the 

watershed or subbasin scale with efforts at the larger scale of evolutionarily significant units. 

The Council, with the support of others, concluded that addressing the RME needs for the 

Columbia River Basin in any practical sense requires a shift from work at the project and 

subbasin scales to a regional or programmatic approach. Momentum in the region for taking this 

different approach built significantly after the time when subbasin planners were asked to begin 

developing recommendations, and when those recommendations came due in May 2004. The 

Council considered the fact that individual subbasins cannot be expected to have or hire the 

specialized expertise, secure long range funding commitments, or command the ability to mount 

and sustain long-term RME efforts. Yet because the issues of interest to subbasin 

planners/recommendation sponsors in RME were also of interest to entities with responsibilities 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

over a broader geographic scale, it is possible for efforts at the smaller scale to benefit from the 

overlay of efforts at a broader scale. Therefore, rather than try to design a complete and 

comprehensive monitoring program in each subbasin, which the program probably cannot afford, 

the Council decided it should redirect, at least for the time being, this effort to a full regional 

discussion about how much and what type of monitoring is needed and can be afforded for 

managing an effective fish and wildlife program. The result was that the Council decided that 

subbasin plan recommendations would not be rejected where the only substantive deficiency was 

failure to provide a complete RME component. 

At the same time, the Council decided to continue to support the efforts of the Pacific 

Northwest Aquatic monitoring Program (PNAMP) to develop a regional approach to monitoring. 

PNAMP is a voluntary, non-directive, self-organizing forum committed to developing a unified 

approach to monitoring in the Pacific Northwest. PNAMP provides a forum for collaboration of 

the members as they work toward developing a coordinated approach to monitoring by providing 

a durable structure for facilitating the development of cross-party linkages. The products of the 

PNAMP group and others can be fed back into future iterations of subbasin plans, and thus, into 

the program, as they develop over the next few years.

The Council responded to the other comments on the recommendations by placing each 

of the proposed subbasin plan recommendations into one of three “tracks” depending on 

the severity of the issues raised in public comment and its own evaluation of the 

recommendations’ consistency with the standards in the act for program amendments 

and the requirements for subbasin plans in the 2000 Program. The process used to 

further consider subbasin plan recommendations varied for each of those three tracks. 

As a product of the review of the recommendations and comments provided on them 

summarized above, and after deciding to treat the artificial production and research, monitoring 

and evaluation issues as detailed above, the Council found that one set of plan recommendations 

met the standards of the act for program amendments, a second set likely could meet the 

standards for adoption with a discrete set of modifications and improvements by the 

recommendation sponsors, and that a third, very small set of plan recommendations was not 

likely meet the act’s standards without significant additional modification. These were the three 

tracks for considering the recommendations as program amendments: 

Track 1: Plan recommendations that had no issues, as identified above or otherwise, that 

would prevent their being adopted as amendments to the program were in the first track. 

This did not mean that these plan recommendations were entirely free of substantive 

issues, just that what issues did exist would be more effectively addressed outside of the 

subbasin planning group (local, state, and regional) structure that was used through May 

28th. The plans in this category were, however, fundamentally sound and ready to serve 

their primary purpose -- to guide program funding/implementation processes. These 

recommendations were packaged as soon as identified as draft program amendments to 

circulate for public review as candidate amendments to the program. 

Track 2: Into the second track went plan recommendations that needed significant 

substantive improvement within the management plan component (the objectives and 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

strategies) before the plan could meet the standards for adoption into the program. The 

severity of the problems varied widely, but the plan recommendations in this track 

generally had adequate technical assessments, and thus, an adequate foundation for the 

needed revision of the management plan. For the plans in this track, it was determined, 

after talking with those offering the recommendations, that it would take no more than 12 

weeks, and in many cases less, to bring these plans to an adoptable state. The Council 

relied primarily on the subbasin planning groups that offered the original plan 

recommendations to make these improvements. After the Council received the 

response/improvements from the subbasin planners, the next step was to review those and 

shape the revised plan recommendations into proposed draft program amendments. 

Track 3: The third track was for those few plan recommendations that were incomplete 

or inadequate in both assessment and management plan and required substantially more 

work to develop a plan that could meet the adoptability standards of the act and be used 

to guide funding and implementation processes. The Council developed particularized 

guidance and schedules for completing these plans and moving them toward program 

adoption. 

The table on the following page displays how the Council divided the recommended subbasin 

plans into the three tracks and the schedules for the plans in each track: 

13
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Track 1: potentially adoptable Track 2: additional work needed Track 3: substantial 

work needed 

Schedule: 

Oct 2004 -- draft amendments 

released for public comment and 

hearings 

Dec 2004 -- Council adopted plans 

Schedule: 

Dec 2004 -- draft amendments 

released for public comment 

Jan 2005 -- public hearings 

Feb 2005 - Council adopted plans 

Schedule: 

Mar 2005 --draft 

amendments released for 

public comment 

Apr/May 2005 -- public 

hearings 

Apr 2005 -- release John 

Day for public 

comment/hearings 

May 2005 -- Council 

adopted Grande Ronde, 

Upper Snake plans 

June 2005 -- Council 

adopted John Day plan 

GREEN BLUE RED

Asotin 

Bruneau 

Coeur d'Alene 

Columbia 

 Gorge 

Fifteenmile 

 Creek 

Flathead 

Hood 

Kootenai

Lake Chelan

Lake Rufus 

 Woods 

Lower Snake 

Malheur 

Owyhee 

Pend Oreille

Salmon

San Poil 

Spokane 

Tucannon

Umatilla 

Upper Columbia 

Upper Mid- 

 Columbia 

White Salmon

Willamette 

Boise 

Burnt 

Clearwater 

Columbia 

 Estuary 

Cowlitz* 

Deschutes 

Elochoman* 

Entiat 

Grays* 

Imnaha 

Kalama* 

Klickitat

Lewis* 

Little White 

 Salmon 

Lower 

 Columbia 

Lower Mid- 

 Columbia

Lower Mid- 

 Snake

Methow 

Okanogan 

Payette 

Powder 

Snake Hells

 Canyon 

Upper Mid- 

 Snake 

Walla Walla 

Washougal* 

Weiser

Wenatchee 

Wind 

Yakima

*moved from 

Track 1 

Crab Creek 

Grande Ronde 

John Day 

Palouse 

Snake Headwaters

Upper Snake Closed 

 Basin

Upper Snake 

14
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Section II: How the Council Processed the Recommendations in Each Track, 

and the Findings and Responses to Comments on the Subbasin 

Plan Recommendations and Draft Amendments 

As described above, the Council divided the recommended subbasin plans into three tracks, 

with different requirements and time lines for considering and releasing them as draft program

amendments. This section of the document describes for each track how the Council handled the 

recommendations, how and when they were released for public review and comment, the nature 

of the comments received, how the Council responded to the comments, and the date and nature 

of the Council’s final decision on program amendments. This section also includes the formal 

written findings on recommendations in circumstances required by the Northwest Power Act. 

Subbasin Recommendations in Track 1 

The table at the end of the last section lists 23 subbasin plan recommendations that the 

Council provisionally concluded met the act’s standards for inclusion in the program. (The 

Council actually began with 29 recommended plans in Track 1, but then moved six of the plans 

in the Lower Columbia province to Track 2, for reasons noted below.) The record developed 

through the conclusion of the first comment period (August 12, 2004) demonstrated that these 

recommended subbasin plans were consistent with the purposes of the act and the specific 

standards of Section 4(h)(6), and were supported by fish and wildlife managers with jurisdiction 

within the geographic and subject matter scope of the recommendations, as well as other 

interested private and governmental interests. With this determination, the Council released this 

set of recommendations as draft program amendments for public review and comment on 

October 13, 2004. 

The Council received written comments on these draft program amendments, and held public 

hearings in all four states of the Columbia basin. The comment period on these draft 

amendments ended November 22, 2004. The Council reviewed the public comments on the draft 

amendments, together with the draft amendments, the original recommendations, and the 

comments on the recommendations to make final adoption determinations. The Council made its 

final program amendment decisions on these recommended subbasin plans at the Council 

meeting in December 2004. 

The Council did not receive extensive comments on the draft program amendments 

themselves. The comments the Council did receive on specific plans were largely favorable to 

the proposed amendments and recommended Council adoption with a few or no changes. What 

follows first is a summary of the comments specific to each subbasin plan recommendation and 

draft amendment, the Council’s responses to these comments, and formal Section 4(h)(7) 

findings on recommendations where appropriate. 

Most of the comments the Council received during the comment period on the Track 1 draft 

program amendments dealt with the plans collectively, or raised general issues about the process 

and about the relationship of subbasin plans to the program as a whole or to separate processes 

ongoing in the region. Where these comments raised general issues directly relevant to the 

15
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

adoption of the Track 1 plans, these comments are summarized and responded to at the end of 

the following discussion of the Track 1 plan recommendations. For comments that raised 

broader issues about the role of subbasin plans in the program and future processes, the Council 

developed an issue paper and began a separate but parallel public discussion. This is the subject 

of Section III below. 

(1) Specific subbasin plan recommendations/draft amendments in Track 1: comments, 

responses and findings 

Asotin 

The Asotin plan was developed with the oversight of the Snake River Salmon Recovery 

Board (Snake River Board), guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as 

the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. In addition to recommending the plan for adoption 

as part of the Council’s fish and wildlife program, the Snake River Board commented that it also 

intends to use the subbasin plan in ongoing work on developing a draft ESA recovery plan. The 

Council review of the Asotin plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both its 

substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 

Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Asotin subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Public Utility District No. 1 of Asotin County 

• Encouraged Council adoption of the subbasin plan as well as funding for implementation. 

The Watershed Planning Unit for the Middle Snake-WRIA 35 supported plan. 

Recognized the need over time for additional refinements and scientific understanding, 

which will be addressed through ongoing planning discussions associated with the 

development of the WRIA 35 Watershed Plan and a regional salmon recovery plan. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for comment as a draft program amendment in October 

2004. 

Bruneau 

The Shoshone-Paiute Tribes led the development of the subbasin plan, guided by 

informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners, and the tribe contracted with the Idaho Industry on Council and Environment to 

conduct the public outreach and participation elements of the planning process. The Council 

review of the Bruneau plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both its 

substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 

Program. 

16
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Summary of public comment on the Bruneau subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Lisa Jim and Tim Dykstra of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe (discussion following public 

hearing)

• Nevada portion of the subbasin, in which Bonneville has historically not provided 

funding, is an area of strength for the Bruneau and Owyhee subbasins. The QHA 

assessments models identify the strength in Nevada. 

Response to Comments: These comments do not question the adequacy of the draft 

amendment. Decisions about funding projects are made in separate, future project selection 

processes, and proposals for funding actions anywhere within the subbasin will be considered. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

Columbia Gorge 

The Columbia Gorge Mainstem plan lead was the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, 

guided by informational materials provided by the Council such as the Technical Guide for 

Subbasin Planners, and with assistance from the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board, the 

Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs 

Reservation of Oregon, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Fish and 

Wildlife Service, NOAA Fisheries, USGS, the U.S. Forest Service, the Washington Department 

of Ecology and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Council’s review of the 

Columbia Gorge plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and 

public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Columbia Gorge subbasin plan as a draft program 

amendment: 

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife: 

• Comment sought to update bull trout research currently being implemented in Bonneville 

Reservoir by WDFW and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. 

Comment makes reference to Bonneville research projects 200306500 and 19902400. 

The comment states that this project information should be included in section 4.4 of the 

plan. 

Response to Comments: The sponsors of the original recommendation (May 2004) 

submitted a document characterized as an “addendum” that acknowledged the comments from

the independent scientists, the Council and public reviews, identifying errata, and discussing 

prospective planning work. This addendum was added to the original recommendation as part of 

the draft amendments released by the Council for public review and comment. 

17
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 with the addendum subsequently submitted by the recommendation 

sponsors, as released for public review as a draft program amendment in October 2004. 

Fifteenmile Creek 

The Fifteenmile Coordination Group, headed by the Wasco Soil and Water Conservation 

District and including the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, 

NRCS, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the 

Oregon Department of Agriculture, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, NOAA 

Fisheries and Wy’East RC&D as members of the various planning teams, developed the 

subbasin plan guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical 

Guide for Subbasin Planners. The Council’s review of the Fifteenmile Creek plan and related 

administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were 

consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

No public comment on the Fifteenmile Creek subbasin plan as a draft program amendment 

Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

Flathead 

The Salish and Kootenai Tribes coordinated the development of the plan with Montana Fish, 

Wildlife & Parks assisting as co-coordinator. A number of agencies, entities and interested 

individuals participated in the development of the plan, including a diverse Technical Team. The 

Council review of the Kootenai plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both its 

substance and public involvement aspects are consistent with the Council’s 2000 Program, and 

was guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for 

Subbasin Planners. 

Summary of public comment on the Flathead subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Flathead Lakers 

• The Flathead subbasin plan lists impoundment and hydropower operations as a primary 

limiting factor. Flathead Lakers encouraged the Council and Bonneville to acknowledge 

the Kerr Dam license requirements, including the requirement for a drought management 

plan. 

• Reiterated comment regarding the need for workshops for interested stakeholders to help 

them understand the assessment and plan and to highlight priority strategies and areas 

identified by the plan. 

• Reiterated concern that it was difficult to understand the recommendations in the plan, 

where they apply and what the priority actions are. Cited specific recommendations for 

increasing clarity. 

18
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Bob Jamieson, BioQuest International Consulting

• An ecologist involved in design of the terrestrial portion of the assessment for both the 

Kootenai and Flathead subbasin plans. Kootenai and Flathead plans have received kudos, 

but no one had enough time to do the final segment justice. 

• Need to think through the plans and implications in the long term. There needs to be 

follow up with planners and stakeholders to look at various aspects of the plan. 

• Need to allow for inputs and proposals based on analysis that is independent of the 

process used in each plan. Essential elements in the plan may have been missed. 

• Mapping of alluvial floodplains is a serious data gap in the plan. 

• Need a province or even a basinwide process for addressing data gaps such as this. 

• Provided a series of recommendations for addressing gaps. 

• Supported a funding mechanism outside the subbasin funding process to address these 

types of projects. 

F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co

• It would be helpful to have an overview of each individual project and the funding 

involved. This information was not available at the meetings and does not appear on the 

Council’s website. 

The Gallatin Group on behalf of the National Organization to Save Flathead Lake 

• Comments are provided to encourage the Council to adopt and implement the Flathead 

subbasin plan. 

• Plan acknowledges other existing plans and management programs. However, it does not 

acknowledge the Flathead Lake Drought Management Plan. Once complete it will be 

important to integrate the operations of Hungry Horse and Kerr Dams, which control the 

elevations of Flathead Lake. 

• Cited limiting factors from the plan. A primary external factor affecting the Flathead 

subbasin resources comes from the Columbia River federal hydropower operations that 

“affect environmental conditions in the reservoirs upstream and river downstream of 

Hungry Horse and Kerr dams.” Given this background, encouraged the Council and 

federal agencies to seek a fair and balanced operation of the entire hydro system. Only

way to achieve the vision of this subbasin plan and to achieve the long-term mitigation 

goals of the Council’s program is to carefully review hydropower operations in the 

context of fish, flood control, recreation and power needs. The drought management plan 

is working in that direction. 

• Hungry Horse and Kerr should be integrated and coordinated in a way that results in 

efficient and effective releases of drafts from Hungry Horse. Coordinated operations 

would help achieve the human community aspects of the vision statement. 

Response to Comments: The comments on the substance of the document relate primarily 

to operation of Hungry Horse and Kerr dams, and Columbia basin hydropower operations more 

generally. These issues were addressed in the Council’s 2000 Program and then in its 2003 

Mainstem Amendments to the 2000 Program. While these issues are beyond the scope of the 

subbasin planning exercise, the Council does believe that its 2003 Mainstem Amendments 

sought to address operational issues comprehensively and in a balanced manner. As for the 

drought management plan under development, the Council expects future versions of the 

19
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

subbasin plans will address this and any other new information. With regard to the comments 

suggesting additional technical information or detail and additional review, these details can be 

addressed in future versions of the plan, and none of the issues raised is significant enough to call 

into question the technical soundness of the plan. In fact, the independent scientists rated the 

plan as one of the best. 

Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended to the Council in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program

amendment in October 2004. The plan adopted by the Council had been modified by those 

offering the original recommendation, but only for editorial and organizational matters. 

Hood 

The Hood River Soil and Water Conservation District took the lead in the basin, guided by 

informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners, and used the Hood River Watershed Group as its planning team, consisting of the 

Warm Springs Tribe, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, the 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Hood River County, Port of Hood River, three irrigation districts, 

three city governments, the Hood River Growers and Shippers Association, Longview Fiber Co. 

and Union Pacific RR. The Council review of the Hood plan and related administrative record 

demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act 

and Council’s 2000 Program.

No public comment on the Hood subbasin plan as a draft program amendment 

Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

Intermountain Province Subbasins (Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, Pend Oreille, Upper 

Columbia Mainstem, Lake Rufus Woods and San Poil)

The bi-state Intermountain Province Coordinating Committee was formed in 2001 to provide 

oversight and direction for the development of the subbasin plans in the Intermountain Province, 

and to organize those as an overall Intermountain province plan. Early in the process, the 

Intermountain Committee decided to split the Upper Columbia subbasin into two subbasins -- 

Lake Rufus Woods and the Upper Columbia. The Coordinating Committee developed and 

submitted the recommended subbasin plan, guided by informational materials provided by the 

Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. At the same time as the 

recommended subbasin plan, the Upper Columbia United Tribes submitted an additional related 

document entitled “Recommended Measures for the Intermountain Province Plan.” This 

additional UCUT document was provided to the independent scientists and public during the 

review of the recommendations. The Council review of the Intermountain Province subbasin 

plans and related administrative record demonstrated that both their substance and public 

involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

20
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Summary of public comment on the Intermountain subbasin plans as draft program 

amendments: 

(i) Comments that related to the entire set of plans: 

Inland Power and Light Company 

• Expressed concern with the language in the plan objectives that calls for “full mitigation” 

for impacts due to the construction and operations of the hydropower system as well as 

language that calls for testing the feasibility of reintroducing anadromous fish above 

Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams. Believes these objectives go beyond Power Act 

requirements. 

• Asked if Council adopting plans means that the Council is endorsing each and every 

aspect of the plans. 

• Greater accountability and attention to cost effectiveness regarding fish and wildlife is 

critical. 

• Portions of the plans that do not relate to impacts of the FCRPS should not be adopted. 

• Council should examine potential for cost sharing from other parties for project capital 

expenditures and operations and maintenance costs. 

• It is unreasonable and unnecessary to call for actions that “fully mitigate” and 

“completely replace all losses” related to federal projects. 

• Urges Council not to adopt plans containing unrealistic expectations or open-ended 

obligations.

• There should be a place for non-ESA mitigation actions, but priority should be given to 

ESA objectives and projects as well as those most cost effective. 

• Further prioritization of projects is needed. 

• Subbasin plans are extensive and warrant a process that provides sufficient time for the 

Council and others to conduct a thorough review and examine implications. 

Kalispel Tribe 

• Supported adoption of plans; supported adoption of the UCUT and Kalispel tribe 

recommendations submitted in the “Recommended Measures” document submitted with 

the Intermountain Province plans. 

Upper Columbia United Tribes 

• Strongly recommended that the Council consider and adopt the “measures” submitted by 

UCUT Tribes with the plans. These “measures” and ten-year budget describe appropriate 

levels of effort for the Intermountain Province and Kootenai and Okanogan subbasins. 

UCUTs support for the Intermountain Province plan is contingent upon adoption of 

accompanying measures. 

(ii) Comments that applied to the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene subbasin plans as draft 

amendments: 

Avista Utilities 

• Avista is concerned with the goals and objectives that reference the federally licensed 

hydropower projects. It is concerned that including federally licensed projects in the plan 

21
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

could create conflicts with the FERC relicensing project. Planners responded that FERC 

projects were included to meet stakeholder interests in attracting federal funding and 

further clarified that it was not the intent of the planning process to establish 

commitments for these non-federal hydropower systems. 

• Avista is currently involved in a relicensing process for the Spokane River Hydroelectric 

Project. The relicensing identifies and evaluates resource interests associated with the 

operation of Avista’s hydroelectric developments on the Spokane River. Therefore, 

objectives and strategies identified in the Intermountain Province plan that reference the 

Spokane River projects or its operations as limiting factors, assumes impacts of the 

projects, suggests mitigation for losses, or suggests changes to the operation of the 

projects, are inappropriate and do not create an obligation for Avista. 

(iii) Comments that applied to Pend Oreille subbasin plan as a draft amendment: 

EES Consulting on behalf of Pend Oreille Public Utility District 

• Studies conducted for the Box Canyon Hydroelectric Project contain a significant amount 

of information about the resources in the river and its tributary streams between 

Boundary and Albeni Falls dams. The District suggests these studies be considered 

before finalizing the subbasin plan. 

• Comments contained 13 pages of fact checking, technical and editorial comments. 

Jim Carney 

• Served on the Pend Oreille subbasin plan planning team representing agriculture 

interests. 

• Believed that inviting participation from some stakeholders was an afterthought. Plan 

was written by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Idaho Department 

of Fish and Game and the Kalispel Tribe, while other stakeholders were expected to 

rubberstamp the plan. 

• The Council sought citizen participation, but the citizens were often ignored and did not 

have an equal voice in decisionmaking due to their lack of technical education or 

background. 

• The consultants were not always impartial. Agencies are potential future customers with 

financial backing, whereas farmers and citizens do not have this advantage. 

• Landowners feel they were being used in order to “check the box” where landowner 

participation was called for. Meetings should be held in the evenings and weekends 

because landowners and citizens have jobs that preclude them from participating. 

• Conservation Districts could have played a bigger role in the development of the 

subbasin plans. 

Response to Comments: The comments that relate to the relationship of the subbasin plans 

to the non-federal hydroprojects and the FERC relicensing processes, and the comments that 

relate to Bonneville’s authority or responsibility to fund activities called for in subbasin plans, 

were raised in several other instances. The Council provides a general response to these 

comments later in this Section II and also in Section III below. 

22
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Mr. Carney’s comments, while a concern, were not broadly shared and seem to be the 

exception rather than the norm. The Council closely monitored the conduct of the planning 

process in the Intermountain Province and was consistently impressed with the diligence with 

which the planning coordinators sought to provide notice and opportunity for broad public 

participation. Additionally, while the Council is disappointed that the commenter had such a 

perception about the conduct of the process, the comments do not call into question the 

soundness of any substantive element of the final subbasin plan product. Given the strong and 

broad support for the substance of that final subbasin plan recommendation product, and the 

Council’s determination that the recommendations substantively meet the act’s requirements for 

adoption into the Program, the comments do not warrant a rejection of the subbasin plan 

recommendations. 

With regard to the comment that there are additional studies that might have been included or 

considered in the plans, or that editorial improvements would benefit the plan recommendations, 

as in many other cases, the Council believes that these can be added in future versions of the 

subbasin plans. The information, data and analyses included in the plans, particularly in the 

assessment component, were reviewed and found to adequately support the measures in the 

management plans. There is no suggestion in the comment that consideration of other studies 

would have altered the measures recommended in the management plan elements of the 

recommendations. 

Council Findings: No need for formal findings. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended to the Council in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program

amendment in October 2004. 

The Council adopted the recommendations submitted independently by the Upper Columbia 

United Tribes as an appendix to the management plans, with this understanding: The Council 

considers what the tribes submitted to be in the nature of specific project labels and funding 

recommendations. The Council accepts the UCUT Tribes’ judgment that these specific actions 

are consistent with the subbasin plans they relate to, and that they represent how the UCUT 

managers view the priorities and further define the elements of the plans. Adopting these 

recommendations as an appendix or companion piece to the subbasin plans does not, however, 

commit the Council to recommend funding for the corresponding project proposals that may be 

submitted to implement these provisions at any specific time. No such commitment can be made 

at this time because matters such as funding availability, competing basinwide priorities, 

independent scientific review, consistency review with the subbasin plans, cost-effectiveness, 

and the need to consider alternative proposals by others must be considered in a separate and 

distinct project selection process mandated by Section 4(h)(10)(D) of the Power Act. 

The subject raised by the UCUT recommendations is related to several general comments the 

Council received on the Track 1 plans calling for more specific “measures” to be added to the 

plans or included in the program. The Council addresses this subject in its response to the 

general comments later in this section. 

23
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Kootenai 

The Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho led the development 

of the plan with assistance from other state, Canadian provincial and tribal fish and wildlife 

managers and guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical 

Guide for Subbasin Planners. The Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative (KVRI) provided the 

public outreach component in the lower Kootenai portion of the subbasin. The Council review 

of the Kootenai plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and 

public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Kootenai subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Bob Jamieson, BioQuest International Consulting

• An ecologist involved in design of the terrestrial portion of the assessment for both the 

Kootenai and Flathead subbasin plans. Kootenai and Flathead plans have received kudos, 

but no one had enough time to do the final segment justice. 

• Need to think through the plans and implications in the long term. There needs to be 

follow up with planners and stakeholders to look at various aspects of the plan. 

• Need to allow for inputs and proposals based on analysis that is independent of the 

process used in each plan. Essential elements in the plan may have been missed. 

• Mapping of alluvial floodplains is a serious data gap in the plan. 

• Need a province or even a basinwide process for addressing data gaps such as this. 

• Provided a series of recommendations for addressing gaps. 

• Supported a funding mechanism outside the subbasin funding process to address these 

types of projects. 

F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co 

• It would be helpful to have an overview of each individual project and the funding 

involved. This information was not available at the meetings and does not appear on the 

Council’s website. 

• Extremely disappointed to learn that only two of the five Montana Columbia subbasins 

submitted recommendations for plan amendments. 

Response to Comments: With regard to the comments suggesting additional technical 

information or detail and additional review, these details can be addressed in future versions of 

the plan, and none of the issues raised is significant enough to call into question the technical 

soundness of the plan. In fact, the independent scientists rated the plan as one of the best. 

Information about projects that relate to and implement the subbasin plan will be provided in the 

separate and distinct project selection process required by Section 4(h)(10)(D) of the Act. 

The decision to focus on two of the five Montana subbasins in this first subbasin planning 

exercise was made by the State of Montana and the tribal co-managers, largely because there is 

little to no history of Bonneville funding in the other basins. The Council deferred to this 

decision. The Council understands that Montana and the tribes intend to develop 

recommendations for the other subbasins in future program amendment proceedings. 

24
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended to the Council in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program

amendment in October 2004. The plan adopted by the Council was modified by those offering 

the original recommendation, but only for editorial and organizational matters. 

Lake Chelan 

The Lake Chelan subbasin plan as well as the Wenatchee, Entiat, Upper Mid-Columbia 

Mainstem, Methow and Okanogan subbasin plans were drafted under the oversight of the Upper 

Columbia Salmon Recovery Board, guided by informational materials provided by the Council, 

such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. The lead entities for subbasin planning in 

Lake Chelan were Chelan County and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The 

plan relied heavily on research and analysis done by Chelan PUD to write an Environmental 

Impact Statement for the FERC relicensing effort for Lake Chelan. The Council’s review of the 

Lake Chelan subbasin plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance 

and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program

No public comment on the Lake Chelan subbasin plan as a draft program amendment 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

Lower Snake River 

The Lower Snake subbasin plan was developed with the oversight of the Washington State 

Snake River Salmon Recovery Board (Snake River Board), guided by informational materials 

provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. The Council’s 

review of the Lower Snake plan and related administrative record demonstrates that both its 

substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 

Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Lower Snake River subbasin plan as a draft program 

amendment: 

Public Utility District No. 1 of Asotin County 

• Encouraged Council adoption of the subbasin plan as well as funding for implementation. 

The Watershed Planning Unit for the Middle Snake-WRIA 35 supported plan. 

Recognized the need over time for additional refinements and scientific understanding, 

which will be addressed through ongoing planning discussions associated with the 

development of the WRIA 35 Watershed Plan and a regional salmon recovery plan. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

25
Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Malheur 

The Malheur subbasin plan was developed through the joint administration of the Malheur 

Watershed Coalition, consisting of the Burns-Paiute Tribe and the Malheur Watershed Council, 

guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for 

Subbasin Planners. The Council’s review of the Malheur plan and related administrative record 

demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act 

and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Burns Paiute Tribe:

• Participated in the development of this plan. The Malheur plan was developed in a 

relatively short time frame and issues may have been overlooked. Suggested three 

specific language changes regarding the reintroduction of anadromous fish, asserting the 

changes are consistent with project number 200302900 approved by the ISRP, CBFWA 

and the Council.

Response to Comments: The Council sought confirmation with the other parties that took 

part in developing the plan that the omissions noted by the Tribe should be included. The 

Watershed Council agreed with correcting this oversight. The Council added the language 

suggested by the Tribe. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004, with the correction noted above. 

Owyhee 

The Owyhee Subbasin is located in three states, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. Planning 

meetings were held in each of those states, and individuals representing the state and tribal fish 

and wildlife managers of all three states as well as local citizens participated in the development 

of the plan. The Owyhee Watershed Council and the Shoshone Paiute Tribes worked together to 

produce the plan recommendation, guided by informational materials provided by the Council, 

such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. However, the Watershed Council and the 

Tribe disagreed regarding the final product submitted by the Tribe to the Council, primarily 

related to concerns the Watershed Council has about some of the data and information used in 

the planning process. The Watershed Council submitted as public comment a dissenting opinion 

document that included alternatives to the plan presented to the Council by the Tribe. The 

Council’s review of the Owyhee plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both 

its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 

Program. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Summary of public comment on the Owyhee subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Owyhee Watershed Council 

• Requested that the Council take into account their resolution and their “dissenting 

opinion” document as comments. 

• Drafted resolutions in consultation with the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes and/or Council staff 

attempting to address rights, licenses, grazing permits, water rights, etc. Requested the 

addition of “disclaimer language” regarding the validity of the data included in the plan. 

• Several other points in the comments remarked upon the lack of or poor data quality and 

the need for sound science. 

• Terrestrial species should be given greater consideration in the plan. 

• QHA assessment tool has limitations and this should be considered when viewing the 

results of the model. 

• Attempted to work cooperatively with all parties, but still stands by its written dissent to 

the plan based on its lack of sound science. The Owyhee Watershed Council also 

disagreed with the ISRP about the quality of scientific data in the plan. 

• Given the dissension on the plan, any Bonneville funds allotted to implement the Owyhee 

should not focus on capital projects. More scientifically sound data are necessary to 

implement effective fish and wildlife restoration projects within the subbasin. An 

increase in sound science will lead to increased support for restoration efforts by local 

stakeholders. 

Response to Comments: There was a significant dispute and difference of opinion between 

the Tribe and the Watershed Council on the plan, particularly focused on the quality and the 

accuracy of certain data and analyses in the assessment component. Under the Power Act, the 

Council must act on the best available scientific knowledge. While the Council is confident that 

the data and analyses in the plan are adequate to meet standards for adopting the plan, the 

Council does not represent or claim that each piece of data or analysis is definitive or should be 

accepted as such in any other legal or regulatory contexts, which has been a concern of the 

Watershed Council. Moreover nothing in this subbasin plan or in the Council’s fish and wildlife 

program can be used or construed to affect the validity of any right, license, permit or privilege 

held under federal or state law, including grazing permits, water rights or any other privately 

held property right, license, permit, privilege or interest. The Council understands that there 

may be disputes or differences of opinion as to the validity of some of the data or information 

underlying the technical assessment of conditions in this subbasin. The Council’s subbasin plan 

review process reviewed the quality and validity of the conclusions drawn in the assessment and 

the management plan, assuming the validity of the underlying data and information; the Council 

did not investigate or make an independent determination of the validity of any of the data or 

information underlying the assessment. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Salmon 

The Salmon subbasin plan was the product of a complicated planning structure. The Idaho 

Department of Fish and Game did the technical assessment work for the entire subbasin. A 

planning team in the upper Salmon was under the direction of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes 

working closely with the upper Salmon watershed group. A planning team under the direction of 

the Nez Perce Tribe was organized in the lower Salmon. Teams in the upper and lower reaches 

and the technical team then coordinated production of the final product. Federal, state and tribal 

fish and wildlife managers along with other agency and local representatives participated in the 

development of the recommended plan, all of this guided by informational materials provided by 

the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. The Council review of the 

Salmon plan and related administrative record demonstrates that both its substance and public 

involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

No public comment on the Salmon subbasin plan as a draft program amendment

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

Tucannon 

The Tucannon plan was developed with the oversight of the Washington State Snake River 

Salmon Recovery Board, guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the 

Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. The Council’s review of the Tucannon plan and related 

administrative record demonstrates that both its substance and public involvement aspects were 

consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Tucannon subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Public Utility District No. 1 of Asotin County 

• Encouraged Council adoption of the subbasin plan as well as funding for implementation. 

The Watershed Planning Unit for the Middle Snake-WRIA 35 supported plan. 

Recognized the need over time for additional refinements and scientific understanding, 

which will be addressed through ongoing planning discussions associated with the 

development of the WRIA 35 Watershed Plan and a regional salmon recovery plan. 

Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

Umatilla 

The Umatilla/Willow Subbasin Plan encompasses both the Umatilla River and Willow 

Creek, a tributary to the Columbia. Guided by informational materials provided by the Council, 

such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners, the plan was developed by the 

Umatilla/Willow Core Partnership, which included the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Indian Reservation, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Morrow SWCD, Umatilla 

SWCD, Umatilla Irrigation Districts, and the Umatilla Watershed Council. The Council’s 

review of the Umatilla plan and related administrative record demonstrated that both its 

substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 

Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Umatilla subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation 

• Submitted a revised plan accompanied by an errata sheet indicating specific changes 

made in October 2004 to the original plan submitted in May 2004. The full Partnership 

that developed the original recommendations submitted in May 2004 agreed to the 

revisions. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft amendment in October 

2004, with the modifications described above by the Tribes that were ratified by the 

Umatilla/Willow Core Partnership that made the original recommendation. See the November 

19, 2004 memo from CTUIR on behalf of the Partnership. 

Upper Mid-Columbia Mainstem

The Upper Mid-Columbia Mainstem subbasin plan as well as the Wenatchee, Entiat, Lake 

Chelan, Methow and Okanogan subbasin plans were drafted under the oversight of the Upper 

Columbia Salmon Recovery Board. Douglas County and the Washington Department of Fish 

and Wildlife partnered as lead entities to develop the Upper Mid-Columbia plan, guided by 

informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners. The Council’s review of the Upper Mid-Columbia subbasin plan and related 

administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were 

consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

No public comment on the Upper Mid-Columbia Mainstem subbasin plan as a draft program 

amendment 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

White Salmon 

The White Salmon subbasin plan was prepared by the Washington Department of Fish and 

Wildlife, with assistance from the Yakama Nation and opportunity for input from Klickitat and 

Skamania counties and guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the 

Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. The Council review of the White Salmon plan and 

related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement 

aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Summary of public comment on the White Salmon subbasin plan as a draft program 

amendment: 

Klickitat County Planning Department 

• Agreed with ISRP’s finding that the management plan was incomplete. Plan required 

more thorough rationale for the biological objectives. The biological objectives were 

generated by the WDFW without input from Klickitat County or other parties to the 

planning effort. 

• Plan was produced without adequate public involvement or adequate participation by all 

members of the subbasin planning team. There is no agreement among the subbasin 

planning team members on the plan. 

• None of the comments submitted by ISRP, Klickitat County, others have been addressed. 

• Council should return the plan to the subbasin planning team to address the comments

and provide planning team with the time needed to broaden participation. 

Response to Comments: The Council staff and individual Council members met with 

officials from Klickitat County several times in the course of preparing for the initiation of the 

amendment process and during the course of the process as well to address the County’s 

concerns about the ability to participate in the development of subbasin plan program

recommendations. Klickitat County received funding to participate and perform public outreach 

in the amendment process. In these discussions, and with review of the record, the Council is 

fully satisfied that the County and the public had meaningful opportunity to participate in the 

amendment process. With regard to the critique of the subbasin plan recommendations 

submitted by the independent scientists as part of the initial comment period, the Council dealt 

with those comments (e.g., quality of the description and integration of non-program artificial 

production, the monitoring and evaluation provisions, etc.), which applied to many plans, as 

discussed above. The comments provided by the independent scientists were not of the nature 

that called into question the basic scientific or technical efficacy of the proposed amendments. 

Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

Willamette

The plan was developed by the Willamette Restoration Initiative, with an extensive network 

of supporters and stakeholders involved in developing the strategies and reviewing the analysis, 

and guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for 

Subbasin Planners. The Council’s review of the Willamette plan and related administrative 

record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with 

the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Summary of public comment on the Willamette subbasin plan as a draft program 

amendment: 

City of Portland 

• City struggled with how to identify specific actions, and it became more difficult closer 

to the ground. The city is comfortable proceeding with the level of specificity in the plan 

now; gives us time to digest the plan and share it with stakeholders. 

Bruce Newhouse 

• With regard to terrestrial technical appendix, Festuca rubra is not native to the 

Willamette Valley. 

Response to Comments: The City of Portland’s comment relates to the degree of specificity 

of the measures proposed in the subbasin plan recommendation. See the Council’s discussion of 

this issue in the responses to general comments below and in Section III; the City’s conclusions 

are consistent with the Council’s. The comment related to an inaccuracy in the technical 

appendix is noted, and as the Council determined in many instances, this is an item that can be 

addressed in future versions of the plan. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommended in May 2004 and released for public review as a draft program amendment in 

October 2004. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

(2) Responses to general comments and general issues raised in the public comment 

period for the subbasin plan recommendations in Track 1. 

Many of the public comments submitted on the first set of draft subbasin plan program

amendments spoke to general issues related to the subbasin planning and program amendment 

process in general, interpretations of the act, or future implementation of the adopted fish and 

wildlife program. While these comments did not relate to any particular draft fish and wildlife 

program amendment, the Council’s consideration and treatment of these issues did influence 

how it judged the adequacy of the recommendations and draft program amendments relative to 

the standards in the act and the 2000 program. What follows is a summary of the general issues 

presented in the comments, and the Council’s responses. 

General Comment 1: What is the correct level of specificity in the subbasin plans? Some 

comments encouraged the addition of more specific implementation plans or 

implementation actions to the subbasin plans. The “measures” issue. The Columbia River 

Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (Commission) commented that these draft program amendments 

were legally deficient for not including “measures” as required by the Northwest Power Act, and 

that the Council must not adopt the subbasin plans without first calling for recommendations for 

more specific “measures” to add to the subbasin plans. The Commission raised this issue in its 

August 2004 comments, and renewed its position in comments submitted on the first set of draft 

plan amendments. The Commission did not raise this issue, it must be noted, at the time of 

submission of subbasin plan recommendations themselves (May 2004), nor at any time in the 

more than a year and half following the Council’s call for subbasin plan recommendations, a 

time of significant interactions between the Council and others, including Commission and other 

tribal representatives, over the course of subbasin planning. Nor did the Commission or any of 

its member tribes submit recommendations of this type during the period for submitting 

recommendations or at any other time after. 

 Council Response: This is an issue about the level of specificity of the actions included in 

the subbasin plans and the program. The Commission couched the issue in a legal argument 

about the definition of the term “measures” as used in Section 4(h) of the Power Act. 

Yet the Council understood this issue to be more important than a legal debate of definitions. 

The Council understood the issue to derive from a desire to ensure that subbasin plans serve their 

fundamental function of guiding the allocation of Bonneville resources to the most biologically 

and cost-effective activities -- a critical and fundamental issue. In order to get the perspective of 

others on this issue, on October 22, 2004, the Council released a paper initiating a special, 

additional public comment process for a set of five broad process and planning topics that had 

developed in the course of its fish and wildlife program subbasin plan amendment process (See 

Section III below for a full discussion of the other issues). This issue about specificity and 

“measures” was one of the issues raised. The Council took written comment for 30 days, and 

continued discussions with interested persons and entities through February 2005. 

The October 2004 issue paper invited comment on whether the strategies in draft subbasin 

plan amendments were sufficiently specific to guide the development of project proposals and 

then the review and selection of projects for Bonneville funding. The Council requested that if a 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

commenter was of the opinion that the draft amendment plans cannot guide a project 

development and review process, that they then suggest the appropriate process to employ to 

obtain this greater level of specificity for the plans. A number of alternatives were presented in 

the Council’s October 2004 letter, including: 

• After the subbasin plans are adopted into the program, the Council could call for more 

specific implementation plans outside of a statutory program amendment process, but 

prior to or as part of the 4(h)(10)(D) project review process. 

• The Council could use the period of public review and comment on draft subbasin plan 

amendments in the current amendment process to receive lists of more specific actions or 

implementation plans from interested parties that the Council would add to the subbasin 

plans before their final adoption into the program. 

• The Council could adopt a decisionmaking structure or management framework and the 

subbasin plans as “reference documents,” explaining how the plans will be used, and then 

prescribe a process and schedule for adding specificity to the subbasin plans (outside of 

an amendment process) over the next few years. 

• The Council could follow the subbasin plan amendment process with another program 

amendment process specifically calling for recommendations for program amendments to 

add specific implementation plans consistent with the adopted subbasin plans. 

In response to the special comment process initiated with the October issue paper, a number 

of commenters did state that the Council had work to do before making the transition from

adopted subbasin plans to project definition and selection processes. However, the additional 

work suggested was in a substantially different direction than the Commission’s request to add 

more detail at the subbasin level. For example, many of the suggestions for next steps or 

additional work urged the Council to engage in a process to aggregate the subbasin plan 

objectives at a regional and basinwide level and evaluate whether what they add up to is 

appropriate. Other comments urged the Council to define further the program priorities at a level 

above the subbasin plans to guide the allocation of Bonneville funding to the different provinces, 

and more clearly define the next project selection process. (See the discussion of the “roll-up” 

concept in Section III.) And some commenters, such as NOAA Fisheries, agreed that there 

would eventually be a need to “step down” from the subbasin plan strategies to more specific 

implementation actions or projects, but that work at a province or ESU scale first was most 

pressing. In sum, the vast majority of the response on this matter advised the Council that work 

at a broader scale -- at the province or ESU level -- should be pursued as a priority and that this 

should precede adding detail at the subbasin or finer scales. 

No entity other than the Commission argued that the subbasin plans lacked such specificity in 

the strategies as to be not functional. Nor did other commenters argue that the Council should or 

must hold up adoption of the subbasin plans while adding more specific measures, or that such a 

thing was legally required, such that the next action the Council should take, whether it adopted 

the subbasin plans or not, would be to call for recommendations for more specific measures to 

add to the plans. And most of the commenters on this particular issue said exactly the opposite -- 

that the strategies in the plans were sufficiently specific to guide implementation decisions in the 

subbasins, and the Council should not take the time next to obtain further specificity in the 

subbasin plan strategies when there is so much other valuable work to be doing. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

The comments on this issue were enlightening and of great assistance to the Council. They 

were not definitive under the act, of course -- what was definitive was the nature of the strategies 

in the proposed subbasin plans. The Power Act does require the Council to call for 

recommendations and adopt a fish and wildlife program consisting of “measures.” The term

“measure” is not defined in the act, nor does the act require a certain level of specificity before 

something is a “measure.” A common dictionary definition of measure is “an action planned or 

taken toward the accomplishment of a purpose: a means to an end.” See Webster’s Third New 

International Dictionary. The dictionary definition is consistent with the way the term

“measure” is in fact used in the Power Act -- those provisions in the program that Bonneville and 

others are to implement to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the 

Columbia hydrosystem. This is precisely what the strategies in the subbasin plans are. As 

described in the program, “[a]t the subbasin level, ‘strategies’ will include the particular

measures to be implemented within a given subbasin”; they are to be the “plans of action to 

accomplish the biological objectives” of the plan, thus contributing to satisfying the objectives of 

the program and the act. The Council’s call for subbasin plan recommendations similarly called 

for the management plan to include “implementation strategies, which will guide or describe the 

actions needed to achieve the desired conditions.” 

A review of the recommended subbasin plans and draft amendments indicated that the 

strategies recommended in these plans precisely fit this description -- they are actions proposed 

for implementation to meet the objectives of the plan, program and act. Moreover, a 

comparative review indicates that these strategies describe proposed actions at a level of 

specificity that is at least the equivalent of, and in most cases far more specific than, the 

measures in past versions of the fish and wildlife program, most notably the 1994-95 program

measures that will be replaced by the measures in the subbasin plans. 

With the assistance of the comments and advice on this issue, and with careful consideration 

of the act and of how the next project review and recommendation process will be structured, the 

Council concluded that the draft subbasin plans had sufficiently detailed measures (primarily 

their “strategies”) to guide a future Section 4(h)(10)(D) project selection process. That is, a 

Section 4(h)(10)(D) process would call for proposals for particular projects that are demonstrably 

linked to the objectives and strategies (that is, the measures) in a subbasin plan. The comments 

supported the Council’s conclusion that the strategies in the proposed subbasin plans were 

sufficient to serve as the “measures” for program implementation, and that the Council need 

neither hold up adoption of the subbasin plans to add more specific measures to the plans, nor 

immediately follow subbasin plan adoption with a program amendment process calling for more 

specific subbasin measures. 

General Comment 2: Delay adoption of final amendments pending resolution of 

additional issues about the amendment process and next steps for program. As noted 

above, there were several broad process issues raised in the public comment on the 

recommendations concerning the role and use of subbasin plans, the “roll-up” of subbasin plan 

objectives and strategies to broader, provincial- and basinwide-scale objectives, the “measures” 

issue discussed above, questions about the shape of future project selection processes, the 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

relationship of subbasin plans and the program to recovery planning under the federal 

Endangered Species Act, and how the Council might go about adopting the management plan 

components of subbasin plans into the programs yet allow for their periodic updating to allow 

the plans to be “living documents.” And as also noted above, the Council released an issue paper 

in October 2004 on these broad process issues, seeking comments and suggestions on how best 

to explain further the role of subbasin plans to clarify any remaining confusion and what steps to 

take next with regard to planning and implementation. This parallel comment process ran 

concurrently with the public comment opportunity on the first set (Track 1) of draft subbasin 

plan amendments and, subsequently, the second set (Track 2). 

A few commenters on this first set of subbasin plans, of particular note the Nez Perce Tribe 

and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, recommended that the Council 

delay its decision to adopt any draft amendments as subbasin plans into the program until the 

Council addressed and resolved these broader process issues. These commenters focused 

particularly on the need to assess what the subbasins plans add up to from a collective vantage 

point at broader provincial- and basin- or program-wide scale. On the other hand, most of the 

commenters -- the great majority -- including a number of fish and wildlife managers and 

Bonneville, encouraged the Council to continue on the schedule it had set for considering and 

adopting the subbasin plans into the program while working on these broad process issues. 

 Council Response: As noted above, the Council created a special comment opportunity in 

October 2004 on this set of broad process-oriented issues raised on the recommendations, with a 

commitment to resolve the issues before completing the final adoption of the very last of the 

recommended subbasin plans. The Council met this commitment, coming to a resolution on 

these issues in the spring of 2005, after adoption of the Track 1 and 2 plans, but before final 

adoption of the other plans. The substance of these broad process issues, and the Council’s 

treatment and disposition of them, are presented in Section III below. 

The Council concluded that there was nothing about the resolution of these broader issues 

that would require changing the recommended subbasin plans before program adoption or 

changing the schedule to consider the plans for adoption. These broader questions went to how 

to aggregate, assess and make use of the subbasin plans once adopted, and did not suggest any 

required changes in the plans themselves. On the point about aggregating or “rolling up” 

subbasin objectives to broader-scale province or program objectives, it is worth noting that the 

2000 Program explicitly states that development of broader provincial objectives would take 

place after the development and adoption of subbasin-scale amendments to the fish and wildlife 

program. The Council decided in the 2000 Program to call for province-level planning and the 

setting of objectives, and to do so after the development of subbasin assessments and plans, 

based on the comments and advice from many, including fish and wildlife managers, that 

planning at these different levels would obviously be an iterative process. On the other issues, 

the Council saw the relationship of the subbasin plan amendments and program implementation 

to ESA-based planning as an ongoing coordination challenge, not one that would be resolved 

definitively at any one point in time, and that additional structure or design of the project 

selection process required by Section 4(h)(10)(D) of the Act beyond that established in the 2000 

Program could and should be developed over a longer period of time. The Council decided to 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

adopt the draft amendments as final program amendments without having resolved all of the 

broader issues to the complete satisfaction of all commenters. 

General Comment 3: Comments offering corrections to assessments and inventories. A 

number of the comments received on the recommendations and then on the Track 1 draft 

subbasin plan amendments pointed out errors in the technical assessments or inventories for one 

or more of the subbasin plans. These were errors of the nature of a mis-labeled stream reach or 

the absence of an existing project from an inventory of projects in a table. 

 Council Response: None of the commenters asserted that the errors were of a nature to 

undermine the conclusions in the assessments or the reliance on the assessments in the 

management plans. The plans were developed and reviewed by those with local knowledge, and 

then by independent scientists. 

The Council decided not to require that all the corrections offered in these comments be 

made before adopting the recommended Track 1 plans into the program. First, the Council was 

incapable of judging whether the technical errors identified in these comments were accurate. It 

did not seem an efficient use of resources to delay adoption of the subbasin plans for a month or 

more and reconvene the planning groups that developed the original recommendations to 

evaluate these suggested corrections, given that they were not of a material nature. Second, such 

an editorial exercise seemed inefficient given that the Council did not adopt the assessments and 

inventories formally into the program -- only the management plan element is adopted formally 

as part of the Program. One of the reasons not to adopt the assessment and inventory pieces is so 

that the technical assessments may be more easily updated and improved as new information is 

received or developed. 

For the plans in Tracks 2 and 3, for which the Council asked the subbasin planners to correct 

certain substantive deficiencies, the Council made all the comments on the recommendations 

available to the planners to review and, if appropriate, correct any errors of this nature. Any such 

non-material corrections then offered in comments on the Track 2 and 3 plans as draft 

amendments were treated as explained above. 

General Issue 4: The relationship of subbasin plan amendments to hydroproject 

relicensing. Comments from Avista Utilities on the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene plans and from

a consultant on behalf of the Pend Oreille Public Utility District on the Pend Oreille plan raised 

an issue about the relationship of the subbasin plans and the Council’s program to non-federal 

hydroprojects on the Columbia and its tributaries and especially to re-licensing proceedings for 

these projects pending before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. 

 Council Response: To the extent the comments stated that the objectives and strategies in 

the subbasin plans do not or should not apply to the non-federal hydroprojects or to conditions 

for fish and wildlife affected by these hydroprojects, this is not correct as a matter of law. The 

Power Act calls on the Council to adopt a program to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and 

wildlife affected by the development and operation of any hydroelectric program on the 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Columbia and its tributaries, without distinguishing between federal and non-federal projects. 

And then Section 4(h)(11) of the Power Act provides that the federal agencies responsible for 

“managing, operating, or regulating Federal or non-Federal hydroelectric facilities” must 

exercise those responsibilities taking into account the Council’s program to the fullest extent 

practicable at each relevant stage of decision-making. This provision clearly applies to FERC 

licensing and re-licensing of non-federal hydroprojects. The Council’s program has always 

included measures to address the effects of non-federal hydroprojects, and FERC has faithfully 

taken into account the Council’s program as it exercises its responsibilities. The subbasin plans, 

once adopted into the program, will be no different. FERC will have an obligation to consider 

these plans as they apply to any project undergoing relicensing. 

The Council recognizes that as part of the FERC re-licensing process, a project license holder 

and FERC will have to assess the affect of the project on fish and wildlife, an assessment that 

will be one basis for the license holder to propose and FERC to decide on mitigation obligations. 

The commenters here are concerned of the implications if their assessments differ from the 

subbasin assessments, or the mitigation planning to address the project assessments reaches 

different conclusions on objectives and mitigation strategies than did the subbasin planners. 

These comments raise a fair concern, but not an insurmountable problem. In preparing and 

evaluating any project assessment, and engaging in mitigation planning, FERC and the license 

holder will have to seriously consider the relevant subbasin assessment and management plan. 

But, the subbasin assessments and management plans are not binding on the agency. If 

differences emerge between the Council program’s approach and the conclusions developing in 

the FERC process, involving either the assessments or the proposed strategies to address the 

assessments, FERC and the license holders logically should consult with the Council and the 

relevant participants in the subbasin plan to try to resolve these differences, as an obvious aspect 

of taking the Council’s program into account to the fullest extent practicable. Ultimately, of 

course, FERC will have to reach its own independent conclusion, based on all the information 

before it and its multiple legal responsibilities. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Subbasin Recommendations in Track 2 

As discussed in Section 1, after a review of the recommended subbasin plans and the 

comments on the recommendations, the Council identified a second set of plans that required 

additional work before they could be released by the Council for public review as draft 

amendments to the program. That is, the Council found each of these recommended plans -- and 

there were 23 of them in this Track 2 to begin with -- to be significantly deficient with respect to 

one or more of the nine issues identified in Section I above under the heading “Summary of the 

Issues Raised in the Public Comment on the Recommendations.” 

By far the most common and pervasive problem identified by the Council and public 

comment with this set of recommended plans related to what became known as the “linkage” 

issue. This is the logical connection and progression (or “linkage”) that an acceptable plan must 

have from the key findings in the assessments to the objectives and strategies in the management

plan sections of the plan recommendations, and further, how that “linkage” leads to an

identification of priorities among the strategies in the plans. 

Perhaps the key concept underlying the Council’s call for subbasin plans consistent with the 

2000 Program framework was to develop the objectives and strategies in the plans in such a way 

that they were driven by the biological problems identified first in the technical assessments. So 

the central question asked of every recommended subbasin plan was whether the objectives and 

strategies in the management plan had been linked to -- based in and driven by -- the biological 

problems and limiting factors identified in technically adequate assessments. A schematic that 

illustrates this concept is: 

Assessments → Management Plan (objectives & strategies) 

 limiting factors → objectives and strategies address limiting factors 

limiting factors prioritized → prioritization framework 

→ strategies prioritized 

In a few instances, the plans in Track 2 were also deficient in explaining how artificial 

production strategies key to the program were related to other activities in the recommended 

plans. Even though, as discussed in Section I, the Council decided to route most of the near-term

development of artificial production integration to the ongoing Artificial Production Review and 

Evaluation process, in a few instances in which the artificial production activities were found to 

be so key and closely connected to the Bonneville-funded program, the Council sought revisions 

to the recommended plans for that purpose. 

The Council’s response to the defects identified in the recommended plans through the 

comments and the Council’s own review was to ask the recommending planners to improve their 

recommended plans. The planning groups that offered the plan recommendations to begin with 

were guided by the Council as to what improvements would allow the Council to find that the 

recommendations provisionally met the standards in the act and the 2000 Program and thus were 

eligible for release for public review and comment as draft program amendments. 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

The Council asked the planners to make the improvements needed for the Track 2 plans in 

the form of a “supplement” to the original subbasin plan recommendations that would better 

explain and summarize: (1) the key factors limiting biological potential of the selected focal 

species in the subbasin (referencing the existing assessments); (2) which limiting factors were of 

priority to address first (if possible, and again referencing the existing assessments); (3) the 

description of the objectives and strategies, with an explanation and direct link as to how 

particular strategies addressed the limiting factors identified; (4) either a prioritizing of the 

strategies (related to the priority limiting factors) or a description of a “prioritization 

framework,” i.e., the criteria/considerations and procedures that would be used to develop and 

prioritize proposed actions in future project selection processes consistent with the assessment 

and linked strategies; and (5) how artificial production actions would integrate with the habitat 

objectives and strategies and help surmount problems identified in the assessments. The Council 

believed that responding to these concerns in this supplement fashion -- rather than trying to 

revise or edit or replace the original management plan recommendation -- would make for a 

more manageable effort and user-friendlier plan. 

With regard to the issue of the prioritization of strategies within the recommended plan, in 

some cases the Council, with the advice gathered in the comment period, found the assessment 

portion of a plan recommendation adequate, as well as the basic linkage of strategies in the 

management plan to the assessment, but then found the management plan lacking in its 

development of strategy prioritization. If a plan recommendation lacked an explicit 

prioritization of strategies, but was otherwise sufficient in demonstrating how strategies linked to 

limiting factors in the assessments, the Council did not recommend that the plan be returned to 

the subbasin planners for further work solely on prioritization. This was because the Council 

expected that this type of additional detail could and would be prepared at the time of first 

implementation of the plan in the separate project selection process. However, where the 

Council sought revisions to the recommended plan for some other reason -- such as an 

assessment/strategies linkage problem or a failure to integrate artificial production adequately -- 

the planners were also asked to add a “prioritization framework” to the plan supplement. 

The Council and Bonneville, coordinating with the planning groups, developed 

individualized statements of work and contracts for specific improvements for the Track 2 

subbasin plan recommendations. Contracts for this purpose were executed in September 2004. 

By late November 2004, the subbasin planners submitted all of the revisions requested. The 

Council staff and state coordinators met and systematically reviewed the revisions to ensure each 

improved subbasin plan recommendation addressed the previously noted deficiencies. The staff, 

and then the Council, determined that overall the improvements were on point and of high 

quality and, when added to the plans, provisionally satisfied the standards in the act and 2000 

Program for draft program amendments. 

In addition to the 23 subbasin plan recommendations that the Council identified as needing 

additional work, the Council, with the support of the planners offering the recommendations, 

placed six additional subbasin plan recommendations from subbasins in the Lower Columbia 

province region in this Track 2 group. The Council did not do so because of a conclusion that 

the original plan recommendations were deficient, but rather, because the recommendations had 

been revised by the original planners after May 28, 2004, as part of a coordinated and related 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

effort in Washington to produce a draft ESA recovery plan. Given that changes had been made, 

the Council and the recommending entities wanted to provide an opportunity for public review 

and comment on the most current version of the plan recommendations, and that meant moving 

them into Track 2. 

With these improved plan recommendations in hand, the Council at its December 2004 

meeting released for public review and comment this second set of what was now 29 improved 

subbasin plan recommendations as draft fish and wildlife program amendments. The Council 

received written comments on the draft program amendments, and held public hearings in all 

four states of the Columbia basin. 

The Council did not receive extensive comments on these draft program amendments. What 

comments the Council did receive were largely favorable to the proposed amendments and urged 

Council adoption, with few or no changes. At its February 2005 meeting, the Council adopted 

25 of the 29 recommended subbasin plans, as improved, into the program. Four subbasin plan 

recommendations -- for the Okanogan, Methow, Klickitat, and Lower Middle Mainstem

subbasins -- were held over for additional consideration and comment and were adopted by the 

Council into the program at its March 2005 meeting. What follows is a description of each plan 

in Track 2, with a summary of any public comment on the draft amendments and then the 

Council’s response to those comments and any required findings. 

Boise, Payette and Weiser

The Boise, Payette and Weiser subbasin plans were submitted under one cover. The 

planning team for these plans was composed of staff from Ecovista, the Idaho Department of 

Fish and Game and the Idaho Council on Industry and the Environment. They were tasked with 

pulling the parts of the plan together under a single cover under the guidance of larger planning 

and technical teams, guided as well by informational materials provided by the Council, such as 

the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking 

improvements to the recommended plan. The Shoshone-Paiute Tribe then submitted the Boise, 

Payette, and Weiser subbasin plan package to the Council. The Council’s review of the three 

recommended subbasin plans as improved through the subbasin plan supplement and the related 

administrative record demonstrated that both their substance and public involvement aspects 

were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Boise, Payette and Weiser subbasin plans as draft 

program amendments: 

US Bureau of Reclamation 

• Suggested technical and editorial changes to the assessment, management plan and 

supplement. 

Pat Barclay, Idaho Council on Industry and the Environment 

• Concerned that planners were not given enough time to review plan and provide 

meaningful input. 

• References to timber harvest and grazing were particularly negative. 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

• Document had typos, outdated data and misinterpreted data. 

Response to Comments: Technical and editorial changes can be made in future versions of 

the plans. The comments did not suggest problems that called into question the technical or

scientific soundness of the plans or of their suitability for adoption into the program under the 

standards of the act or the 2000 Program. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council did not reject the Boise, 

Payette and Weiser subbasin plan recommendations. Rather, the Council adopted the subbasin 

plan recommendations submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplements with the 

improvements to the plans prepared by the original planners and releasing the plans for public 

review in that form as draft program amendments. 

Burnt and Powder 

The Baker County Association of Conservation Districts, an organization composed of the 

various Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Baker County, led the planning team for the 

Burnt and Powder subbasin plans, guided by informational materials provided by the Council, 

such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statements of work seeking 

improvements to the recommended plans. The planning team included members from the U.S. 

Fish and Wildlife Service, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Bureau of Land 

Management. 

The supplements prepared in November 2004 provided additional detail on key limiting 

factors for redband and bull trout, including the effect of fine sediment and high water 

temperatures relating to low flow and loss of riparian cover on spawning and incubation habitat, 

the impact of water quantity and quality on summer rearing and winter rearing, and physical 

obstructions from passage barriers for migration. The responses identified low flow as the 

primary factor for depressed populations and prioritized that factor in management actions, 

although the planners also recognized a need to deal holistically with the problems confronting 

focal species. The Council’s review of the Burnt and Powder plans as improved through the 

subbasin plan supplements and the related administrative record demonstrated that both their 

substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the standards in the act and the 

Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Burnt and Powder subbasin plans as draft program 

amendments: 

US Bureau of Reclamation 

• Suggested one and three editorial changes to the plans, respectively. 

Response to Comments: Technical and editorial changes can be made in future versions of 

the plans. The comments did not suggest problems that called into question the technical or

scientific soundness of the of the plans or of their suitability for adoption into the program under 

the standards of the act or the 2000 Program. 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the Burnt and 

Powder subbasin plan recommendations submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the 

supplements with the improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the 

recommended plans for public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Clearwater

The Nez Perce Tribe, working with and through the Clearwater Policy Advisory Committee, 

led the development of the Clearwater subbasin plan, guided by informational materials provided 

by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of 

work seeking improvements to the recommended plan. The planning process and structure built 

upon prior planning efforts as part of the Focus Watershed program that involved the Tribe and 

Idaho Soil Conservation Commission. The supplement prepared by the planners improved the 

recommended plan by clarifying plan structure and the prioritization. The Council’s review of 

the Clearwater plan as improved through the subbasin plan supplement and the related 

administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were 

consistent with the standards in the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Clearwater subbasin plan as a draft program 

amendment: 

Nez Perce Tribe 

• The subbasin plan generally provided for, but did not provide explicit context for the

Tribe’s Resident Fish Substitution Program, conservation enforcement activities or 

harvest monitoring, and so the Tribe recommended specific language to address these 

matters. 

Response to Comments: The Council finds that the objectives and strategies in the 

recommended plan include within their scope the implementation activities related to resident

fish substitution, harvest monitoring, and conservation enforcement that concerned the Tribe. 

The plan is sufficient to support the Tribe if it desires to pursue these activities in future project 

selection processes. Given that finding, the Council did not believe that it would be equitable to 

further highlight or emphasize these particular activities without providing an opportunity to all 

planners and the public to emphasize other strategies or activities within the scope of the 

management plan. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Deschutes 

The Deschutes Coordinating Group led in the development of the plan, guided by 

informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the recommended plan. The 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Group encompassed a large and varied contingent of interests in the Deschutes Basin, including 

among others the Deschutes Resources Conservancy, Wy’East RC&D, the Oregon Department 

of Fish and Wildlife, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, the City of Bend, 

Oregon Water Resources Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, all Deschutes watershed 

councils, and the Deschutes Land Trust. The Council’s review of the recommended Deschutes 

plan as improved through the supplement and the related administrative record demonstrated that 

both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 

2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Deschutes subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

US Bureau of Reclamation 

• Offered minor technical corrections to the plan. 

Response to Comments: Technical and editorial changes can be made in future versions of 

the plans. The comments did not suggest problems that called into question the technical or

scientific soundness of the plan or of its suitability for adoption into the program under the 

standards of the act or the 2000 Program. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Entiat 

The Yakama Nation and Chelan County prepared the Entiat subbasin plan, guided by 

informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the recommended plan. They 

developed the Entiat subbasin plan in coordination with five other subbasin plans in the upper 

Columbia region under the oversight of the Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board. The 

planners developed the subbasin plan simultaneously and in coordination with a draft ESA 

recovery plan for the area including the subbasin. The planners worked in coordination and 

consultation with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. 

Fish and Wildlife Service, and other state and local governmental entities. The Council’s review 

of the recommended Entiat plan as improved through the subbasin plan supplement and the 

related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement 

aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Entiat subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Chelan County Conservation District on behalf of the Entiat Watershed Planning Unit 

• Recommended adopting the plan into the program 

• Even though there are some deficiencies in the plan the document provided a good 

representation of the existing conditions and has provided reasonable conclusions in the 

key findings and management plan 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

• The plan incorporated by reference the WRIA 46 management plan for the Entiat 

• Subbasin plan is a living document intended to change over time, and thus the commenter 

looked forward to opportunities to periodically update the subbasin plan 

Response to Comments: See the Council’s discussion concerning the issue of how to 

update plans in Section III below. 

 Council Finding: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Imnaha 

The Nez Perce Tribe led the planning for the Imnaha subbasin plan, with the Wallowa 

County Natural Resources Advisory Committee forming the planning team. The Committee 

included representatives from the Tribe, the County, the Oregon Department of Fish and 

Wildlife, and various federal land managers and local landowners. Work on the plan was guided 

by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the recommended plan. The 

Council’s review of the recommended Imnaha plan as improved through the subbasin plan 

supplement and the related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public 

involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Imnaha subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife 

• Comments submitted by ODFW were not incorporated into the revised plan or the draft 

program amendment. 

• Plan did not recognize many on-going monitoring and evaluation or habitat restoration 

efforts in the subbasin. 

• Problems with focal species have not been fully described. 

• Some habitat factors have been overstated. 

• Plan does not provide an adequate basis for setting all future priorities. 

Response to Comments: The collaborative nature of the planning exercise sought to 

develop recommendations that could be supported broadly while also meeting the act’s 

standards. It is almost certainly the case that no one entity involved in subbasin planning in any 

area had all of its suggestions incorporated into the recommended plan. The fish and wildlife 

agency’s comments did not go so far as to call into question the scientific soundness of the plan, 

nor did the comments suggest a lack of policy-level acceptance of the plan or that the plan was 

not suitable for adoption into the program under the standards of the act and the 2000 Program. 

The Council expects that the suggestions and comments not incorporated in this version of the 

plan, and the specific technical issues noted, can be revisited in future revisions of the plan. The 

plan’s priorities were enhanced in the revisions, and can be further defined in the distinct future 

project selection processes. 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Klickitat

The Yakama Nation prepared the Klickitat subbasin plan, with assistance from the 

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and opportunity for input from Klickitat County. 

Planning was guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical 

Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the 

recommended plan. The Council’s review of the recommended Klickitat plan as improved 

through the subbasin plan supplement and the related administrative record demonstrated that 

both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 

2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Klickitat subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Klickitat County Planning Department 

• Klickitat County did not support the subbasin plan. 

• Plan was produced without adequate participation by Klickitat County. 

• None of the comments submitted by Klickitat County were addressed. 

• Council should return the plan to the ‘lead entities’ and provide adequate time to organize 

a planning process to develop a plan that is consistent with the vision statement. 

• Other comments from Klickitat County Board of Commissioners, landowners, Glenwood 

Community Council and the Conservation District each expressed the same concerns as 

the County (came in after the comment period on the draft amendments ended on January 

31, 2004). 

Response to Comments: Council members and staff met with Klickitat County 

representatives many times to try to address the concerns expressed in the comments. The 

Council provided funding resources to Klickitat County to participate in the development of the 

recommended subbasin plan. The Council delayed adopting the plan into the program for a 

month after the ordinary Track 2 schedule because of the concerns expressed in the comments, in 

order to have enough time to meet with state and local government officials and interested public 

to address these concerns. Throughout the course of the planning process, including in the late 

meetings with local and state officials, it appeared that the county’s concerns focused more on 

process than on the substance or provisions of the plan itself. The county did not identify any 

particular substantive deficiency with the recommended subbasin plan. 

The Council recognizes that some that some of the data or analyses in the plan may turn out 

not to be complete or accurate. Under the Power Act, the Council must act to develop its 

program on the best available scientific knowledge. While the Council is confident that the data 

and analyses in the plan are adequate to meet the standards in the act and the 2000 Program for 

developing, considering and adopting a subbasin plan, the Council does not represent or claim

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

that each piece of data or analysis is definitive in other legal or regulatory contexts, which has 

been one concern of this and other commenters. That is, while it is true that the information in 

the plan may be an important starting point in other regulatory, planning, or legal processes, the 

standards for data and information in those other settings will control the force and effect of the 

information in those settings, and any party will be able to augment, contradict, or rely upon 

information in the plan as those other processes permit. Nothing about the Council adopting the 

subbasin plan recommended here will change how this underlying information is perceived in 

another context. Similarly, the Council’s program is not regulatory in nature, and the mere fact 

that the plan suggests that the pursuit of a certain strategy, activity or objective in a tributary 

would benefit fish and wildlife, the Council’s act of adopting the plan does not and cannot 

impose on any party the obligation to undertake those actions. Rather, adopting the plan as part 

of the program makes it possible for others to access Bonneville funding for the offsite 

mitigation activities outlined in the plan, provided that these actions or Bonneville funding for 

them are not foreclosed by specific limitations in the act (e.g. the prohibition on Bonneville 

funding replacing funding required from other parties) or other local, state or federal laws. 

Finally, the fish and wildlife managers with jurisdiction in the subbasin supported this 

recommended plan as a program amendment. The act directs the Council to give significant 

weight to the recommendations of those parties. The continued support of those parties for the 

Klickitat plan is significant and weighed heavily in the plan’s favor for adoption against the 

county’s objections. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. The act does not require a formal 

finding in response to the county’s comments objecting to the recommend plan and draft 

amendment. 

Lower Middle Mainstem Columbia 

The Yakama Nation prepared the Lower Middle Mainstem subbasin plan, with assistance 

from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and opportunity for input from Klickitat 

County. During the time the planners worked on the supplement to improve the plan, the Oregon 

Department of Fish and Wildlife added information about Oregon and the mainstem Columbia. 

Planning was guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical 

Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the 

recommended plan. The Council’s review of the recommended Lower Middle Mainstem plan as 

improved through the supplement and the related administrative record demonstrated that both 

its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 

Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Lower Middle Mainstem subbasin plan as a draft 

program amendment: 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Klickitat County Planning Department 

• Inadequate time for review. 

• Klickitat County disagreed with numerous findings, objectives, and strategies found in 

the subbasin plan, such as the proposal to enact a moratorium on mainstem water 

withdrawals.

• Council should return the plan to the ‘lead entities’ with adequate time to organize a 

satisfactory planning process 

Daniel H. Lichtenwald 

• Consider including discussion of three industrial wind energy projects that are in the 

permitting/appeal stage: Bighorn, White Creek and Windricity Projects. 

• Include notation that many shorebird species have been observed using wetlands during 

their migrations through the subbasin. 

Letter from Attorney James Buchal (not submitted as comment) stating that the strategy 

dealing with a water withdrawal moratorium was not consistent with the Power Act. 

Response to Comments: The county raised the same or similar comments with regard to 

the recommended Klickitat plan and draft amendment. The Council’s response above to the 

Klickitat plan comments responds to the county’s comments here, too, and is incorporated here 

by that reference. The suggestions from Mr. Lichtenwald do not call into question the soundness 

of the plan, and can be addressed in future versions of the plan. With regard to Mr. Buchal’s 

comment, the Council notes that the simple act of adopting a plan that contains a strategy dealing 

with water withdrawal limitations does not in any way modify, affect, or abridge any water rights 

or laws and thus is not inconsistent with the Power Act. Other legal processes or actions that 

actually govern water rights would be required to effect an actual change in any recognized or 

claimed water right. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. The act does not require a formal 

finding in response to the county’s comments objecting to the recommend plan and draft 

amendment. 

Lower Middle and Upper Middle Snake 

The Shoshone-Paiute Tribes was the lead entity for the development of these plans. The 

tribes hired two contractors to help organize the planning teams and to help write plan 

documents: Ecovista and the Idaho Council on Industry and the Environment (ICIE). The Idaho 

Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) helped develop the assessment and inventory for the 

subbasins. Planning was guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the 

Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to 

the recommended plans. The Council’s review of the recommended Lower Middle Snake and 

Upper Middle Snake plans as improved through the supplement and the related administrative 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

record demonstrated that both substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the 

act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

The same group that completed the Burnt and Powder subbasin plans recommended to the 

Council a separate plan for the Brownlee Reservoir area in the middle Snake. This other plan 

largely concerned wildlife species on a few streams that feed into the Brownlee Reservoir. The 

Council included that Brownlee area plan as an element of the Burnt and Powder plans. 

Summary of public comment on the Lower Middle and Upper Middle Snake subbasin 

plans as draft program amendments: 

Owyhee Cattlemen’s Association, Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, and Jerry Hoagland

• All were concerned with the characterization of livestock grazing in the subbasin 

assessment and in the supplement implying that all grazing causes habitat degradation. 

Urged that the plan distinguish between improper grazing and properly managed grazing 

of livestock.

Response to Comments: The Council concluded that it would be appropriate to make the 

language change suggested by the commenters, inserting the word “improper” where grazing 

impacts are characterized. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Lower Columbia tributary subbasin plans (Cowlitz, Elochoman, Grays, Kalama, Lewis, 

Little White Salmon, Washougal and Wind subbasins) 

The Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board prepared subbasin plans for eight tributaries of 

the Columbia on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge, lower Columbia and estuary 

provinces -- the Cowlitz, Elochoman, Grays, Kalama, Lewis, Little White Salmon, Washougal 

and Wind subbasins. The Recovery Board developed the plans simultaneously and in 

coordination with the plans for the Lower Columbia and the Estuary (see below), with state 

watershed plans for many of the subbasins, and with an integrated draft ESA recovery plan for 

the Washington side of this part of the river. Planning was also guided by informational 

materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners. All of 

these plans were developed in coordination and consultation with relevant tribes, the Washington 

Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Lower 

Columbia River Estuary Partnership, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, EPA and other state and local governmental entities. The 

Council’s review of these recommended plans developed by the Recovery Board and the related 

administrative record demonstrated that both their substance and public involvement aspects 

were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

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Subbasin Plan Amendments 

Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

No public comment on the Lower Columbia tributary subbasin plans as draft program 

amendments 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendations submitted in May 2004, after incorporating revisions submitted by the 

recommending entity (the Recovery Board) and releasing the recommended plans for public 

review in that form as draft program amendments. 

Lower Columbia River and Columbia Estuary 

The plans were developed through a bi-state effort of Washington and Oregon. The Lower 

Columbia River Estuary Partnership, a bi-state organization, led the planning effort with 

assistance from Washington’s Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board. Planning was guided by 

informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners, and later the statements of work seeking improvements to the recommended plans. 

The Council’s review of the recommended Lower Columbia and Estuary plans as revised and the 

related administrative record demonstrated that both substance and public involvement aspects 

were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

No public comment on the Lower Columbia River and Columbia Estuary subbasin plans as 

draft program amendments 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendations submitted in May 2004, after incorporating revisions submitted by the 

recommending entity (the Estuary Partnership) and releasing the recommended plans for public 

review in that form as draft program amendments. 

Methow

Okanogan County and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) prepared the 

Methow subbasin plan, guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the 

Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to 

the recommended plan. The planners developed the Methow subbasin plan in coordination with 

five other subbasin plans in the Upper Columbia region under the oversight of the Upper 

Columbia Salmon Recovery Board, developing the plan simultaneously and in coordination with 

a draft ESA recovery plan for the area. The plan was developed in coordination and consultation 

with the Colville Tribe, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other state, 

tribal and local governmental entities. In preparing the supplement, the planners responded as 

much as possible also to numerous comments of both a general and specific nature that the 

Council received on the recommended plan. The Council’s review of the recommended Methow 

plan as improved through the subbasin plan supplement and the related administrative record 

demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act 

and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

No public comment on the Methow subbasin plan as a draft program amendment 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

 Council Findings: The Council adopted the subbasin plan recommendations submitted to 

the Council in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the improvements submitted 

by the recommending entities and releasing the recommended plan for public review in that form 

as a draft program amendment. During the work on the subbasin plan supplement, the county 

(one of the lead planning entities that recommended the subbasin plan) proposed that a particular 

project prioritization framework be added to the plan and submitted to the Council. The Council 

could not include these provisions in a subbasin plan adopted into the program because they 

would restrict the Power Act and the Council’s actions under the act in a way the text of the act 

does not support and Congress did not intend. The county is free to use this prioritization 

framework for its own local decisionmaking purposes. During this same period the other 

planning participants did develop and propose a different, revised prioritization framework for 

the subbasin plan supplement and submitted it to the Council. The Colville Tribe, the 

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Recovery Board supported this revision, 

which the Council adopted into the program as part of the Methow subbasin plan. 

Okanogan

The Colville Confederated Tribes and Okanogan County prepared the Okanogan 

subbasin plan, guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical 

Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the 

recommended plan. The planners developed the Okanogan subbasin plan in coordination with 

five other subbasin plans in the Upper Columbia region under the oversight of the Upper 

Columbia Salmon Recovery Board, developing the plan simultaneously and in coordination with 

a draft ESA recovery plan for the area. The plan was developed in coordination and consultation 

with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and 

Wildlife Service, and other state and local governmental entities. The Council’s review of the 

recommended Okanogan plan as improved through the subbasin plan supplement and the related 

administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were 

consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Okanogan subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Okanogan County 

• Recommended a local process for making decisions about which projects to 

recommended for Bonneville funding under the Northwest Power Act. 

• In a meeting with Council members and staff during a one-month delay in the Council’s 

schedule for considering the adoption of the draft amendments into the program, county 

representatives indicated the county could not support the plan. 

Response to Comments: The prioritization framework recommended by the county could 

not be included within the subbasin plan because it would restrict the Power Act and the actions 

of the Council under the Power Act in a way the text of the act does not support and Congress 

did not intend. The county is free to use this framework for local decisionmaking purposes. As 

part of the effort to prepare the subbasin plan supplement, the rest of the planning group included 

a prioritization framework that significantly improved that element of the original 

recommendation. The Council is disappointed that it could not secure the express support of the 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

county for adopting the plan. But given the support for the plan from others, including the fish 

and wildlife managers with jurisdiction in the area, the Council concluded that the plan should be 

adopted. The Council will continue to work with the county to gain support for implementation 

of the adopted plan and for future versions of the Okanogan subbasin plan. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. The act does not require a formal 

finding in response to the county’s comments expressing a lack of support for the plan. 

Snake Hells Canyon

The Nez Perce Tribe served as lead entity for subbasin planning for the Snake Hells Canyon 

subbasin. The Tribe’s contractor, Ecovista, organized and facilitated the planning and technical 

teams. Planning was guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the 

Technical Guide for Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to 

the recommended plan. The Council’s review of the recommended Snake Hells Canyon plan as 

revised and the related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public 

involvement aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

No public comment on the Snake Hells Canyon subbasin plan as a draft program amendment 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Walla Walla 

The Walla Walla subbasin plan was a bi-state effort of Washington and Oregon. Walla 

Walla County for the Walla Walla Watershed Planning Unit (Washington) and the Walla Walla 

Basin Watershed Council (Oregon) led the planning effort in their respective states, with 

technical support form the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Washington 

Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Planning was 

guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for 

Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the recommended 

plan. 

The subbasin plan as originally recommended in May 2004 incorporated an EDT assessment. 

During the effort to prepare a supplement to the subbasin plan, the planners had the opportunity 

to run eight additional EDT scenarios and use the resulting information in preparing the 

supplement. Those scenarios include variations in flow (2 scenarios), passage (1) and habitat 

changes (5). The originally recommended plan prioritized geographic areas for necessary habitat 

work; the supplement added a more comprehensive prioritization framework for aquatic habitat 

and species, terrestrial habitat and species and process steps and additional considerations. All 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

priority geographic areas incorporated EDT assessments results, the focal species affected, 

limiting factors and affected life stages, and habitat objectives. The supplement also provided 

additional detail on information in the Oregon portion of the subbasin, allowing the Walla Walla 

Watershed Council to be able to endorse the plan. The Council’s review of the recommended 

Walla Walla subbasin plan as improved through the supplement and related administrative 

record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with 

the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Walla Walla subbasin plan as a draft program 

amendment: 

Garden Farms Irrigation District No. 13, Columbia County Board of Commissioners, City of 

Walla Walla and County of Walla Walla 

• Supported the Walla Walla subbasin plan and supplement submitted in November 2004. 

Each also recognized the need for further refinements, improved scientific understanding, 

and ongoing discussion for noted areas of disagreement. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Wenatchee 

The Yakama Nation and Chelan County prepared the Wenatchee subbasin plan, guided by 

informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for Subbasin 

Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the recommended plan. The 

planners developed the Wenatchee subbasin plan in coordination with five other subbasin plans 

in the Upper Columbia region under the oversight of the Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery 

Board, developing the plan simultaneously and in coordination with a draft ESA recovery plan 

for the area. The plan was developed in coordination and consultation with the Washington 

Department of Fish and Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other 

state and local governmental entities. The Council’s review of the recommended Wenatchee 

plan as improved through the subbasin plan supplement and the related administrative record 

demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement aspects were consistent with the act 

and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

No public comment on the Wenatchee subbasin plan as a draft program amendment 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Yakima 

The Yakima Subbasin Fish and Wildlife Planning Board prepared the Yakima subbasin plan, 

guided by informational materials provided by the Council, such as the Technical Guide for 

Subbasin Planners, and later the statement of work seeking improvements to the recommended 

plan. This Planning Board developed the Yakima subbasin plan simultaneously and in 

coordination with a draft ESA recovery plan for the subbasin. The plan was developed in 

coordination and consultation with Yakima County, Benton County, the Yakama Nation, the 

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

Service, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and other state and local governmental entities. The 

Council’s review of the Yakima plan as improved through the subbasin plan supplement and the 

related administrative record demonstrated that both its substance and public involvement 

aspects were consistent with the act and the Council’s 2000 Program. 

Summary of public comment on the Yakima subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Wenatchee Field Office) 

• USFWS suggested 25 modifications to the plan that ranged from technical and editorial 

corrections to more substantive language changes. The changes covered a range of issues 

including bull trout, artificial production, and reintroduction sections of the plan.

Response to Comments: The editorial and substantive changes suggested by the Service 

came well after the planning process ran its course and the plans and supplements had been 

submitted to the Council. The Council understands that all plans may be improved in future 

versions along the lines suggested by the commenters, and that not all participants saw 

everything they proposed included in this version of the plans. But in this case, as in many 

others, the issues raised in the comments did not call into question the overall technical or 

scientific soundness of the plan or its suitability for adoption into the program under the 

standards of the act and the 2000 Program. The Council will make non-substantive corrections 

identified by the commenter in the publication process. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004, after incorporating the supplement with the 

improvements submitted by the recommending parties and releasing the recommended plan for 

public review in that form as a draft program amendment. The comments of the Service did not 

go so far as to call into question the overall soundness of the plan, nor did they evidence a 

policy-level objection to adopting the plan. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Subbasin Recommendations in Track 3 

A third set of subbasin plan recommendations submitted to the Council in May 2004 had 

significant deficiencies. This included the three Upper Snake subbasin plan recommendations 

and the subbasin plan recommendations for the Grande Ronde, John Day, Palouse and Crab 

Creek subbasins. Generally speaking, the public comment on these recommendations and the 

Council’s own review revealed that the assessment elements were so inadequate or incomplete as 

to fail as the basis for a management plan that could be used to define the Council’s program and 

guide Bonneville funding of fish and wildlife activities. After consultation with representatives 

of the recommending entities and of the relevant states and tribes, the Council decided to ask for 

revisions for each of the recommended subbasin plans by December 31, 2004, except for the 

Crab Creek and Palouse subbasins. 

The Council decided not to ask for revisions to those two plans for several reasons. First, the 

recommendations were substantially deficient in meeting the standards in the act and 2000 

Program for subbasin plans to be included into the program. Second, these subbasins do not 

currently participate in any significant way in the Bonneville-funded fish and wildlife program, 

and, given existing and competing priorities, the Council did not foresee increased participation 

in the near future. Finally, the remaining funding available for the planning exercise was limited, 

and it was determined that remaining resources should be dedicated to improving the 

recommended plans in Track 2 and the other subbasin plans in this last group, which cover 

critical areas in the Council’s on-going program. 

The Council, with the advice of those planning entities offering the original 

recommendations for the Upper Snake, Grande Ronde, and John Day subbasins approved a 

response period through the end of the Master Contract period of December 31, 2004, for these 

Track 3 plans. As it did with the Track 2 plans discussed above, the Council developed detailed, 

task-based statements of work for the required revisions, and the coordinators and planners 

developed proposed budgets against those statements. 

The recommending entities for the three Upper Snake subbasin plans and the Grande Ronde 

subbasin plan submitted revised subbasin plans prior to the December 31, 2004 deadline. The 

central and state Council staff, with the assistance of the state coordinators, reviewed the revised 

plans against the statements of work. The general conclusion of the staff and ultimately of the 

Council was that the revisions were of high quality, addressing the deficiencies noted in the 

original reviews, and significantly enhancing the recommended subbasin plans that they related 

to. The Council released for public review and comment these revised subbasin plan 

recommendations as draft program amendments at the Council’s March 2005 meeting. The 

comment period on these draft program amendments was open through April 22, 2005, and the 

Council conducted public hearings in each of the four states. The Council then adopted final 

program amendments for these subbasin plans at its May 2005 meeting. 

Revisions in the John Day continued past December 31, 2004, but the work occurring after 

that date was paid for by the State of Oregon. The planners submitted the revised John Day 

subbasin plan to the Council in March 2005, and the Council released it for public review and 

comment at its April 2005 meeting. The Council included the John Day plan in the public 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

hearings on the Track 3 plans in each of the four states. The Council then adopted the John Day 

subbasin plan as a final program amendment at its June 2005 meeting. 

Public comments on these five subbasin plan draft amendments was extremely limited. This 

public comment, the Council’s responses and applicable findings are presented below. 

Grande Ronde 

The Grande Ronde Model Watershed developed the original subbasin plan recommendation 

and prepared the revisions. The Model Watershed has a fourteen-member board representing the 

various federal, state and tribal governments and private interests in the Grande Ronde. 

The Model Watershed responded to several problems identified with the initial Grande 

Ronde subbasin plan recommendation. The Grande Ronde plan, as initially presented, lacked 

sufficient detail and linkage to artificial production strategies under consideration within the 

program and the basin. Planners also had to complete the initial loading of subbasin data into the 

Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment assessment model, and then take the complete assessment 

information and analysis and link the strategies in the management plan to that completed 

assessment. The planners responded to each of these concerns in the revised plan submitted to 

the Council. 

No public comment on the Grande Ronde subbasin plan as a draft program amendment

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council did not reject the Grande 

Ronde subbasin plan recommendation. Rather, the Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004 after incorporating the subsequent revisions by the 

original planners and submitted by the recommending entity, the Grande Ronde Model 

Watershed, and then released for public review in that form as a draft program amendment. 

Upper Snake, Upper Snake Closed and Snake Headwaters

The Upper Snake plan was submitted as one document that covers the entire Upper Snake 

province -- three subbasins. The Upper Snake plan is the uppermost province of the Snake River 

system and includes areas within Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. The Shoshone Bannock 

Tribes worked with CH2M Hill, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and many other state, 

federal and local interests to develop the plan. 

The Council asked the planners to respond to several problems with the initial Upper Snake 

plan recommendation identified during the review of the recommendation. The Upper Snake 

plan as initially presented lacked a complete assessment, leaving reviewers unable to review 

adequately the management plan. Within the response period, the planners adequately addressed 

the limiting factors, the biological objectives and the linkages between the two and also provided 

a framework for which they could later prioritize projects in the implementation phase. 

Summary of public comment on the Upper Snake subbasin plans as draft program 

amendments: 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

• Several private citizens attended a public hearing in Pocatello, Idaho on the draft 

amendments, and there was a general question and answer-type conversation. They did 

not offer comments on the specific plans. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004 after incorporating the subsequent revisions offered by 

the original planners and recommending entity and then released for public review in that form

as a draft program amendment. 

John Day 

The John Day Subbasin Coordination Team, led by the Columbia Blue Mountain RC&D, 

developed the John Day subbasin plan. A large group of stakeholders including state and federal 

agencies, tribal governments, local Soil and Water Conservation districts, watershed councils and 

non-governmental entities contributed to the development of the John Day plan. 

The use of the EDT assessment tool posed a significant challenge for the subbasin planners 

in the John Day. The team identified more than 1,200 individual reaches for rating on EDT 

parameters. By May 2004, the team had rated about 800 of the reaches, insufficient for a 

complete EDT analysis and thus for a complete technical assessment upon which to base a 

management plan. The results of the original EDT runs also turned up some anomalous results. 

Thus, the original plan submitted had flaws that the Council asked planners to rectify. 

Supplemented with funding from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, the revised John 

Day plan includes a complete EDT analysis, a completed technical assessment, and a 

significantly improved and well-linked management plan that addressed the Council’s concerns. 

Summary of public comment on the John Day subbasin plan as a draft program amendment: 

Steve Anderson (landowner) 

• Offered testimony that he would like to have seen the plan encourage the Bureau of Land 

Management to adopt stronger fire suppression policies to protect habitat work done in 

small watersheds. 

Linda Brown (Warm Springs Tribe, John Day Office) 

• Supported the subbasin plan. 

Response to Comments: Mr. Anderson’s comment is noted, and this is an issue that he or 

others should pursue in future versions of the plan. The comment was presented as a point of 

information and not as an objection to the Council adopting the draft amendment into the 

program. 

 Council Findings: No need for a formal finding. The Council adopted the subbasin plan 

recommendation submitted in May 2004 after incorporating the subsequent revisions offered by 

the original planners and recommending entity (the Columbia Blue Mountain RC&D) entitled 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

John Day Subbasin Revised Draft Plan (March 15, 2005), and then released for public review as 

a draft program amendment. 

Crab Creek 

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife developed and submitted the Crab Creek 

subbasin plan recommendation. For the reasons explained above, the Council, after 

consultations with various participants in subbasin planning, chose not to seek revisions to the 

Crab Creek plan after the original review of the recommended plan uncovered a number of 

deficiencies. WDFW did not object to this decision, nor did any other entity or person. 

 Council Findings: The Council did not adopt the subbasin plan recommendation for Crab 

Creek. The Council’s decision was heavily influenced by the comments provided by the 

independent scientists that the technical and scientific foundation in the assessment was seriously 

deficient and not an adequate basis for developing a management plan, that the inventory 

required more work, and that the management plan was unusable for guiding fish and wildlife 

actions. The Council’s own review concurred with that offered by the scientists. While not 

repeated here, the entirety of the comment offered by the independent scientists is incorporated 

herein by reference as explanation for the Council’s decision to not adopt this recommendation. 

The Council consulted with WDFW about the desirability of undertaking the significant 

revisions required to remedy deficiencies identified in the plan, and it was agreed that this would 

not be done in this amendment cycle. The Council will work to secure recommendations for a 

Crab Creek subbasin plan that meets the act’s standards in future amendment processes. 

The Council decided not adopt the recommendation as the record demonstrated that 

including this recommendation into the program would not advance the protection, mitigation, 

and enhancement of fish and wildlife affected by the hydroelectric facilities (Power Act Sections 

4(h)(5), 7(A)) and also because the Council could not conclude that the recommendation was 

supported by the best available scientific knowledge (Sections 4(h)(6)(B), (7)(B)). 

Palouse 

The Palouse-Rock Lake Conservation District developed and submitted the Palouse subbasin 

plan recommendation. For the reasons explained above, the Council, after consultations with 

various participants in subbasin planning, chose not to seek revisions to the Palouse plan after the 

original review of the recommended plan uncovered a number of deficiencies. The Conservation 

District did not object to this decision, nor did any other entity or person. 

 Council Findings: The Council did not adopt the subbasin plan recommendation for the 

Palouse subbasin. The Council’s decision was heavily influenced by the comments provided by 

the independent scientists that the technical and scientific foundation in the assessment was 

seriously deficient, and that overall, the recommendation failed to meet many standards for the 

program. The Council’s own review concurred with that offered by the scientists. While not 

repeated here, the entirety of the comment offered by the independent scientists is incorporated 

herein by reference as explanation for the Council’s decision to not adopt this recommendation. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

The Council consulted with the Conservation District about the desirability of undertaking 

the significant revisions required to remedy deficiencies identified in the plan, and it was agreed 

that this would not be done in this amendment cycle. The Council will work to secure 

recommendations for a Palouse subbasin plan that meets the act’s standards in future amendment 

processes. 

The Council decided not adopt the recommendation as the record demonstrated that 

including this recommendation into the program would not advance the protection, mitigation, 

and enhancement of fish and wildlife affected by the hydroelectric facilities (Power Act Sections 

4(h)(5), 7(A)) and also because the Council could not conclude that the recommendation was 

supported by the best available scientific knowledge (Sections 4(h)(6)(B), (7)(B)). 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Section III Broad Process Issues Raised in the Two Public Comment Periods 

and the Council’s Responses 

As the amendment process record developed through the middle of October 2004, comments 

submitted on the subbasin plan recommendations came in two very different categories -- 

comments related directly to the adequacy of particular proposed subbasin plans, and comments 

about the subbasin planning and fish and wildlife program amendment processes generally. This 

second group of comments was collateral to the question of whether or not the recommended 

subbasin plans met the standards for adoption into the program. But the Council considered that 

second group of broad process-related comments worthy of further consideration, as raising 

important matters regarding future or additional fish and wildlife program development and 

program implementation. 

So, on October 22, 2004, the Council released a paper seeking public comment on a set of 

five broad process and planning topics that had arisen during the comment period on the 

subbasin plan recommendations: 1) subbasin plan level of specificity and implementation; 2) 

subbasin plan “roll-up” as related to basinwide fish and wildlife objectives; 3) project 

selection/prioritization; 4) recovery planning under the federal Endangered Species Act; and 5) 

whether and how to update the management plan components of subbasin plans to be adopted 

into the program. The Council initiated a regional dialogue on these issues as part of this fish 

and wildlife program amendment process with the release of the October 2004 issue paper, 

taking written comments for thirty days. The Council also directed its staff to engage in 

discussions with interested parties on these matters. Meetings and discussions with interested 

persons and entities were conducted through February 2005. 

The comment period on the five topics identified in the October 2004 letter ran concurrently 

with the public comment period on the first set (Track 1) of recommendations released by the 

Council as draft program amendments. Comments submitted on those draft amendments 

identified two more broad issues -- the relationship of subbasin plans adopted into the program to 

private entities, especially non-federal hydropower licensees on the Columbia, and Bonneville’s 

“responsibility” to fund activities identified in the adopted plans. 

In March of 2005, after much discussion and consideration, the Council released a letter 

advising the public how it viewed the five original broad process issues and the two additional 

issues presented in comment on the Track 1 plans. That March 2005 notice letter continues to be 

the Council’s response to these issues, and the following material draws directly from that 

original notice. 

Process Issue 1: Level of specificity in the subbasin plans -- comments that encouraged the 

addition of more specific implementation plans or implementation actions to the subbasin 

plans. This is an issue about the level of specificity of the actions included in the subbasin plans 

and thus the program. Several of the comments couched the issue in a legal argument about the 

definition of the term “measures” as used in section 4(h) of the Power Act, a term not defined in 

the act or in the adopted fish and wildlife program. Some comments questioned whether the 

objectives, strategies and other provisions in the subbasin plans were adequate to serve as the 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

“measures” for the fish and wildlife program as envisioned in the act, and if not, what further 

process might be needed to add more specificity to the subbasin plans. 

This issue includes the “measures” issue presented and responded to as General Comment 1 

in Section II of this document. 

Council Response: The Council’s response presented for General Issue 1 in Section II is 

adopted here as well. That response is augmented with the following: 

The adopted subbasin plans contain “measures” that the act calls for to constitute the 

Program. “Measure” is not defined in the Act. The common definition is “a step planned or 

taken as a means to an end.” That is what the strategies in the subbasin plans are -- the actions or 

steps or “measures” proposed for implementation as means to protect, mitigate and enhance fish 

and wildlife, consistent with the provisions of the act and program and with the goals and 

objectives in the subbasin plan. The subbasin plan strategies are similar to, if even more 

elaborate and specific than, the measures the Council’s program has always contained for this 

purpose. 

The Council’s 2000 Program amendments envisioned that the mainstem plan and the 

subbasin plan amendments would contain the more specific objectives and measures for the 

revised program. Consistent with that guidance, the Council’s May 2002 call for 

recommendations stated explicitly that the Council was requesting recommendations in the form

of subbasin plans, and that these plans were to contain the specific objectives and measures for 

the tributary subbasins. 

If that plain meaning of the term “measure” needs elaboration, it can only be in light of the 

fundamental function of the Council’s adopted fish and wildlife program. The function of the 

adopted program (a composite of “measures”) is to guide the actions and expenditures by 

Bonneville (and the actions of other federal agencies) as Bonneville endeavors to meet its own 

legal obligation to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the development 

and operation of the hydrosystem in a manner consistent with the Council’s program. Most of 

the commenters concluded, and the Council agreed, that the subbasin plans as presented can and 

should direct Bonneville spending in furtherance of the act’s fish and wildlife mandate without 

more detail or specificity being required. The subbasin plan management plans -- particularly in 

the “strategies” they present -- provide more detail about what should be done, where it should 

be done, and to what ends it is done than any previously adopted program. 

The Council did not invite the public to submit as amendment recommendations what have 

been considered projects. Over the 20+-year history of the Council’s program, a project has 

meant a particular activity proposed for Bonneville funding to implement a measure in the 

program, with a defined sponsor, budget, tasks, technical details, and short-term timeline. If the 

parties recommending the subbasin plans had chosen to include details of that sort along with the 

subbasin plan measures, including those project-type details in the program would not violate the 

act, although these details would have no practical effect. But there is no support in the act for 

the position that a “measure” means a “project” or requires “project” details of this type, and 

especially no support for the point of view that only a project of this type could be a “measure.” 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Rather, the history of program implementation is that projects are defined and proposed for 

funding after the adoption of program amendments, and that measures in the program are 

implemented by projects. Congress recognized this fact and made it law when it added section 

4(h)(10)(D) of the Act in 1996, making clear that projects are developed and evaluated after the 

program measures are in place. The Council will continue to use a process that meets the 

requirements of 4(h)(10)(D) to invite entities to propose projects for Bonneville funding to 

implement the measures in the adopted program. For most habitat and production projects that 

means the adopted subbasin plans. 

Process Issue 2: The relationship of subbasin plans to provincial or ESU biological 

objectives, to the basinwide biological objectives in the Council’s program, and to related 

matters of prioritization/allocation between subbasin plans -- “Roll-Up.” Comments and 

consultations generally acknowledged that if each of the 57 subbasin plans is independently 

sound, each certainly will improve our ability to guide implementation actions within the 

respective subbasins, particularly habitat-related actions. However, commenters asked a set of 

questions about the plans as a collective body of work: 1) What do the plans add up to in terms of 

benefiting populations that are usually viewed collectively at a scale above the subbasin, such as 

at the ESU or provincial levels? Should the program set biological objectives at that higher 

level? (2) Do the plans “add up” to meet the objectives established at the basin level in the 2000 

Fish and Wildlife Program? 3) Because resources always are limited, can the plans inform

decisions about dedicating resources to one subbasin or to one province or to one type of strategy 

over others? 

The Council recognized in the 2000 Program that working with subbasin plans as a collective 

body of work -- what became known as a “roll-up”-- could strengthen the relationship of the 

plans to broader fish and wildlife program objectives and help inform resource allocation issues. 

Therefore, in the October 22, 2004, issue letter the Council invited the public to offer views and 

information on the best way to accomplish a “roll up” of the subbasin plans. In providing 

advice, the Council noted that it would be important to carefully explain what purpose or 

purposes this exercise would serve. And the Council invited perspectives on what might be the 

preferred process -- e.g., should the Council initiate a follow-on program amendment process; 

should the Council undertake technical or scoping work before starting a formal amendment 

process; and should a subbasin “roll-up” effort should precede adding more specific 

implementation details to subbasin plans (Process Issue 1 above)?

Council Response: The issue of “roll-up”-- generally described as an evaluation of the 

subbasin plans as a collective body of work and the setting of program objectives at this broader 

scale -- drew far more interest and input than any of the other topics in the October issue paper. 

A large majority of the commenters were pleased with the subbasin planning process, but urged 

that a next step in the development of the program was critical and must be completed soon -- a 

review of the subbasin plans as a collective body of work to establish larger-scale objectives. To 

do so would be consistent with the Council’s 2000 Program, which called for the development of 

province-scale biological objectives once the Council adopted the subbasin plans. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

The 2000 Program and the commenters generally agreed that adopting biological objectives 

for population and habitat improvements at the level of the ecological provinces will function to: 

• provide benchmarks for measuring fish and wildlife program performance 

• provide a framework for a more efficient monitoring and evaluation program 

• provide insights and context to resource allocation decisions 

In addition to completing the comprehensive revision of the fish and wildlife program started 

in 2000, this province-level amendment process could also allow the Council and interested 

parties to address two of the issues that were not satisfactorily treated in the subbasin planning: 

(1) the integration of habitat plans and artificial production activities, and; (2) the design and 

conduct of monitoring and evaluation. The province-level amendment process would be 

designed to address these issues and, if not completely treat them, to make as much progress as 

possible. 

For this reason the Council decided early in 2005 to work with others to begin a technical 

effort to integrate the subbasin plan information with other information and activities underway 

in the basin (hydro operations, harvest, information on ocean survival, etc.) and assess what this 

planned condition might achieve in a collective or aggregated sense for populations of 

anadromous and resident fish. Informed by these technical results, the Council is likely to 

initiate a formal amendment process later in 2005 to establish province-level biological 

objectives for the program to serve the purposes identified in the three bullets above. 

From the same technical effort, the Council will evaluate whether the collective planned 

work of the revised program is consistent with the basinwide biological objectives adopted in the 

2000 Program. The Council is confident from its own review and from the amendment process 

comments that the mainstem and subbasin plans are consistent with the broad, qualitative 

population and habitat objectives in the 2000 Program, and perhaps the quantitative objectives, 

too, at least in certain cases. Whether the plans are fully consistent with the quantitative 

population abundance numbers for anadromous fish in the 2000 Program is not yet known. 

Moving forward with this province objective amendment process will not postpone any 

necessary allocation decisions for the upcoming project selection processes. That is, the work to 

set province-level biological objectives discussed here will not be formally completed in time to 

inform allocations for program funding in Fiscal Years 2006 or 2007, nor is it obvious how it 

would be useful for this effort, even if completed in time. Allocation decisions needed for Fiscal 

Year 2006 and to begin a comprehensive provincial project review for Fiscal Year 2007 are 

being made using the best information available, and with the central objective of implementing 

the adopted subbasin plans. 

Process Issue 3: Project review and recommendation process. Some commenters asked 

questions and stated concerns about the design of future project review processes under Section 

4(h)(10)(D) of the act. The questions included how subbasin plans will be used in project 

selection processes; what will be the timing and elements of that process; how will available 

resources be allocated among the provinces and subbasins; how will proposed projects be 

reviewed for consistency with subbasin plans and by whom; and will the planning groups or 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

other subbasin-level groups formed to develop and recommend subbasin plans also have a role in 

project selection? Some commenters were reluctant to support adoption and use of subbasin 

plans without more information on such questions. 

The Council set forth several of the fundamental project review particulars in the 2000 

Program. For example, once adopted into the program, subbasin plans indeed will be the 

program’s cornerstone for project definition and review. That is, projects proposed for funding 

will be evaluated for consistency with the relevant subbasin plans, and not recommended for 

funding if inconsistent. The Council has made this information available to the region over the 

last few years in guidance and informational materials. Additionally, it should be recognized 

that the subbasin planning initiative did not, and cannot, change the act itself. The provisions of 

Section 4(h)(10)(D) will continue to supply the basic legal requirements and procedures for 

project review, including independent scientific, public and Council review of projects proposed 

for funding. 

Within these limits, commenters had the opportunity in the October 2004 issue paper to 

provide advice on how the Council should conduct the project review process to implement 

subbasin plans. The Council also advised the commenters that it may be more appropriate and 

timely for interested parties to be involved in shaping these issues in other places, such as the 

Regional Coordinating Group meeting scheduled for November 1, 2004, and then in 

coordination with the Council’s development of this process in its normal course of business 

over the next year. 

Council Response: As outlined in the October issue paper, the 2000 Program established 

the fundamental elements of the project selection design (See the “Implementation Provisions” 

section of the program). That is, fish and wildlife needs to be addressed in subbasin areas would 

be determined from subbasin plans adopted by the Council; the solicitation form and process 

would be designed to, among other things, draw out the detail of how proposals are consistent 

with subbasin plan objectives and strategies; and local, Council, and independent science reviews 

would be conducted to shape three-year implementation packages that address the priorities in 

the subbasin plans. The basic design of the process would be like the Council’s last project 

review process -- a provincial format -- to allow for in-depth reviews and multi-year 

recommendations. Finally, and as stated in the October paper, the procedural requirements and 

review standards of Section 4(h)(10)(D) would be applied (ISRP review, Council 

recommendations and findings and explanations for recommendations where necessary). Most 

of the subsequent comment seemed to understand and support this basic description of how 

subbasin plans would be used in a project selection process. All commenters who spoke to the 

issue supported the continuation of the province-based format for the process. 

Some commenters sought to emphasize that while subbasin plans can be used for the 

purposes described above, there are other program areas or issues that they cannot be used for, 

such as: 

• developing priorities for projects that are mainstem/systemwide in focus (as opposed to 

subbasin) 

• making decisions about artificial production activities 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

• allocating the annual direct fund budget among provinces, subbasins and other program 

areas such as the mainstem/systemwide projects group 

Taking the points in the bullets in turn, it is accurate that the subbasin plans cannot be used to 

establish priorities for projects that are mainstem/systemwide in focus or do not have a direct 

subbasin-specific implementation focus. The Council anticipated this in the 2000 Program, 

explaining that projects without a subbasin orientation would be considered in a separate part of 

the project review and selection process. The Council has been working with Bonneville and 

others over the past year to identify those projects that do not have a subbasin-specific 

orientation, organize them together, and calculate their costs. This is being done to position them

for the same type of in-depth rigorous review that the subbasin-specific projects will receive. 

Other planning documents, such as the Mainstem Amendments, biological opinions on the 

hydrosystem, research plans and so forth will provide the guidance for these projects that 

subbasin plans bring to subbasin habitat and production projects. 

On the second point, while it is true that many of the subbasin plans were deficient in 

integrating artificial production activities, the Council required the subbasin plan for any 

subbasin that included artificial production funded out of the Council’s program to describe and 

integrate that artificial production to an adequate degree. Any general weakness in how artificial 

production was handled does not mean that the adopted plans are not useful for guiding artificial 

production project funding. Nor does it mean that a separate process or product is needed to deal 

with artificial production projects funded by Bonneville. Rather, just as is the case with all 

projects, those who propose Bonneville funding for artificial production activities will, as part of 

the proposal development and presentation steps, have to explain how that work relates to the 

subbasin objectives and habitat activities. In this way, the project selection process will begin to

remedy some of the shortcomings in some of the plans on this issue. 

The third point has to do with allocating the annual Bonneville direct program budget among 

the subbasins and other program areas. It is entirely accurate that the subbasin plans, as they 

exist now, do not give rise to an obvious funding allocation at a level above the subbasins. It is 

also right to acknowledge that subbasin plans and the planning process were not expected to 

yield an allocation scheme. At this point in time, the program’s 70 percent anadromous fish, 15 

percent resident fish, and 15 percent wildlife funding split is the only formal allocation of the 

fund. The last province review used historical funding patterns as an allocation scheme, and 

most found that reasonable, even if not acceptable for the long-term. There are ongoing regional 

discussions about how to make allocation decisions in preparation for a provincial project 

review for Fiscal Year 2007 funding decisions. Any allocation scheme for the fund is going to 

have policy, legal and scientific elements and alternative perspectives and positions. 

The Council shares the objective of many commenters to develop an equitable and costeffective allocation scheme focused on fish and wildlife results. One central purpose of the 

province planning amendment process described above is to provide biological objectives 

against which to measure project and subbasin performance. This effort eventually will yield 

precisely the kind of information about results at a regional scale that can be factored into 

discussions about funding allocations among the provinces and subbasins. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

Process Issue 4: Relationship to recovery planning under the federal Endangered Species 

Act. A concern expressed in some of the comments stemmed from statements in Council 

documents and from NOAA Fisheries that subbasin plans might be the “foundation” for recovery 

plans or “interim local recovery plans” under Section 4 of the ESA for listed salmon and 

steelhead ESUs. Some commenters indicated that their level of concern about the subbasin plans 

would be much higher if the Council were in fact to offer the subbasin plans as completed and 

fully adequate ESA recovery plans, or if NOAA Fisheries were to accept them as such. 

Council Response: The Council has consistently made clear that it is pursuing the 

development of subbasin plans to meet the statutory obligation under the Power Act to protect, 

mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the development and operation of the 

hydroelectric facilities on the Columbia and its tributaries. If those plans also prove useful in the 

effort to address the legal survival and recovery requirements of ESA for those same

populations, all the better. The Council believes the technical and planning work represented by 

the subbasin plans is of such a caliber and at such a depth that NOAA Fisheries would be remiss 

not to make use of that work in developing recovery plans. The products of subbasin planning 

are realistic “foundations” to build upon by those working on ESA recovery plans. And if 

NOAA were to find its recovery plan assessments or actions coming to very different 

conclusions about a subbasin than found in the Council’s subbasin plans, NOAA should consult 

with the Council before releasing the draft recovery plans for public review. But the ultimate 

point is that the Council has no legal obligation, nor does it have any commitment from NOAA 

Fisheries, to automatically make subbasin plans final ESA recovery plans. The same comments 

are true for recovery plans developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for listed bull trout 

and Kootenai River white sturgeon. 

In short, the Council believes that the Services ought to use the subbasin plans -- both the 

technical assessments and the management plans -- in recovery planning. But the Council 

engaged in subbasin planning in order to provide the sufficient foundation in the Council’s 

program for offsite mitigation under the Northwest Power Act, not to satisfy, in a legal sense, all 

requirements of the Endangered Species Act for recovery planning. In adopting the subbasin 

plans into the program, the Council did not make, and need not make, a determination at the 

same time that the subbasin plans, singularly or collectively, constitute complete or final 

recovery plans under the ESA. This is a determination that the federal agencies must make. 

Process Issue 5: Improving subbasin plans -- the “living document.” The Council proposed 

to adopt the management plan portions of subbasin plans into the fish and wildlife program, not 

the technical assessments or inventories. Part of the reason for this was simply to ease the 

burden of managing the program. But another reason was that the assessments are technical 

documents -- information and analysis -- that underlie the objectives and measures. The 

assessments ought to be in a posture that they can be modified relatively easily if and when new 

information arises. 

Some commentators were concerned that adopting the management plans into the program

would mean they would not be subject to modification or improvement, even if partially flawed 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

or easily improved, without a major program amendment process. Commenters suggested that 

the Council may want to establish a mechanism or procedure (short of the full program 

amendment process) for considering and approving modifications to any portion of a subbasin 

plan when appropriate, including modifications to the management plan portions that have been 

adopted into the program. 

Council Response: The commenters that addressed this matter in response to the October 

2004 issue paper stayed at a very general level -- some periodic updating of plans should be 

done, and the modification process should be as simple as possible while meeting legal 

requirements. None of the comments addressed the more specific questions in the issue paper as 

to what might trigger the need for modification or how those proposed modifications should be 

handled. 

The Council agrees that there would be benefits to developing an adaptive management 

process for considering and approving “minor” amendments to adopted subbasin plans that is 

more streamlined and expeditious than the full fish and wildlife program amendment process. 

However, the Council would like to consider the precise details and process more completely, 

and consult with others about those specifics. Because the plans have just been adopted, there is 

time to do this work in the future. Moreover, the Council believes that it and other interested 

parties may gain insights on how plans may be improved or modified as they are used for the 

first time in the project selection process, and also as the amendment process to add provincelevel biological objectives develops. 

Process Issue 6: Relationship of subbasin plans to non-federal hydroproject relicensing. 

As noted in the introduction to this section, comments received by the Council on the first set of 

recommended plans released as draft program amendments generated another issue--the 

relationship of adopted plans to the relicensing of non-federal hydroelectric projects. 

Council Response: The Council’s response is provided in Section II, for General Issue 4. 

Process Issue 7: Bonneville’s funding of activities in adopted subbasin plans. Several 

comments received during the public review periods on proposed program amendments raised 

the issue of Bonneville’s obligation to fund activities detailed in the subbasin plans. The 

particular perspective offered was that the Council should make clear that Bonneville has the 

responsibility to fund only those things that are directly tied to addressing the adverse effects of 

the federal hydrosystem. Bonneville itself commented that the Council should more clearly 

apportion responsibility for implementing or funding the actions in the subbasin plans. 

Council Response: Bonneville’s obligations are limited by the Power Act to protecting 

from and mitigating for the impacts of the hydrosystem on fish and wildlife. Neither the Council 

nor the plans it has adopted claim otherwise. Such a claim, even if it were embedded 

undiscovered in an adopted subbasin plan or some other part of the program, would be legally 

irrelevant. While that statement should dispose of the matter, the following additional discussion 

of this topic may be timely. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

At this time, the Council, Bonneville and others should not reach into the subbasin plans and 

declare some parts within the Bonneville mitigation obligation (or “responsibility”) and some

parts not. This is so because the real issue is Bonneville’s authority to meet its statutory 

obligations, rather than black and white divisions of responsibility. That is, Bonneville has a 

legal obligation to mitigate for hydrosystem impacts under the Power Act. To meet that duty, 

Bonneville has the authority to fund on-site protection and mitigation actions as well as offsite 

habitat and production actions. The latter is the offsite mitigation work now catalogued in the 

subbasin plans. Therefore, as long as an offsite mitigation measure funded by Bonneville 

addresses a species identified as adversely affected by the hydrosystem, that strategy/action is 

potentially within the authority of Bonneville to fund as part of its effort to satisfy its Power Act 

mitigation obligation. The Power Act precludes Bonneville from funding this work if it were to 

replace or be “in lieu” of funding provided by another responsible party. 

On this basis, subbasin planners sought to identify focal species that are adversely affected 

by the hydrosystem and that use that subbasin during some part of their life cycle. They then 

identified factors in the subbasin that limit the survival or productivity of those species, and 

proposed corresponding strategies to address those limiting factors. All such strategies are 

within Bonneville’s authority to fund as offsite mitigation to address Bonneville’s mitigation 

obligation, whatever the immediate cause of the limiting factor in the subbasin. The Council did

not ask the subbasin planners to determine at what aggregate point implementing the strategies in 

the subbasin plan would or could exceed Bonneville’s mitigation obligation for hydrosystem

effects. This cannot be assessed at the subbasin level, at least not at first, as it is instead a 

programmatic matter in the hands of the Council and Bonneville. 

Again, the Council acknowledges that Bonneville’s obligation vis-à-vis the subbasin plans is 

limited to funding actions that ultimate satisfy its Power Act mitigation obligation and authority. 

This is simply a restatement of existing law, but the Council offers it as a reminder to interested 

parties. 

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Findings and Responses to Comments (September 2005, document 2005-13) 

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