Unfortunately, after the general collapse of legal constraints on agency behavior, nothing assures that all this money is spent in any sensible way. The concept that the adverse effects of federal projects upon fish and wildlife should be mitigated is expressed in literally dozens of federal statutes and regulations. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, having the most experience in planning mitigation for the construction of federal water projects, has extensive regulations intended to produce a rational, cost-effective approach to fish and wildlife mitigation. They are all ignored. The first problem is that no one really knows what the adverse effects of dam construction were.
Nobody really knows how many salmon ran in the Columbia River before it was dammed.
The biologists do not. A higher percentage are hatchery fish now, but no one really knows how much higher. The Northwest Power Planning Council is charged in the Northwest Power Act to devise a plan to mitigate for the adverse impacts of hydropower development in the Columbia River Basin. Obviously, the scope of the plan depends on some assessment of how many salmon have been lost, and why. By the early 1980s, salmon advocates began to realize that they needed a benchmark against which to measure the progress in salmon restoration, a benchmark against which present efforts would fall far short.