The BPA is tinkering with its spill program in response to direction from the National Marine Fisheries Service, which directs recovery efforts for federally protected salmon and steelhead in the river. Spill is designed to propel fish over the dams instead of letting them navigate the deadly turbines. Some of the measures announced this week are experimental. Others are expected to be longer term. Costs of the increased spill in terms of foregone power revenue are expected to be negligible because there's so much water in the rivers this time of year and power demands are relatively low compared with the peak of winter and summer, Gruber said.
Hopes are the coordinated spill plan increases fish passage by a little at each dam.
It's directed toward dams where young fish traveling downstream fare the worst. Juvenile fish journeys to the ocean started this week, but when those fish return to the mouth of the Columbia in a few years, the landscape could be about to undergo a major transformation. The Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing the benefits of taking out the four lower Snake River dams to boost fish passage and improve habitat. Darryll Olsen, a Kennewick water policy analyst, said the spill program bodes well for the four Snake dams because it leaves three of them alone. Otherwise, they would be monkeying around with this.