Flow swings roil anglers

Steelhead anglers sounded the alarm last week when water releases from Dworshak Dam varied dramatically.

That concern was amplified through official channels Wednesday by fisheries managers who formally challenged the flow regime that mimics daily demand for energy and is known as load following. The daily dramatic swings in flows haven’t been seen on the Clearwater River in decades.

Water and power managers from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration all but promised the daily fluctuation of flows from about 1,700 cubic feet per second in the early morning to more than 10,000 cfs a few hours later will not occur for the next two weeks and likely not for the rest of February. Only a deluge from Mother Nature that delivers significant snow or rain over the Clearwater basin could lead to anything more than low flows leaving the dam. Such a deluge is not in the forecast.

“Over the next two weeks, considering the concerns that have been expressed, BPA will not request load following,” said Tony Norris of the Bonneville Power Administration during a conference call between fish, water and power managers.

Officials from the federal power marketing agency and the corps are expected to respond to a request to permanently halt wintertime load following at the dam during a Technical Management Team meeting Feb. 17. The request was submitted by fisheries managers at the Nez Perce and other Columbia River tribes, Washington and Oregon and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game didn’t sign the request but did voice opposition to load following during the meeting. Jonathan Ebel, who monitors hydropower operations for the agency, helped craft the request and said the only reason Idaho didn’t sign it was because he was unable to review the final language before it was submitted.

Known regionally as TMT, the group of salmon, water and power managers meets frequently to coordinate operations at federal dams in the Snake and Columbia river basins so they are in balance with the needs of fish.

On Wednesday the states and tribes said the load following that occurred Monday through Friday of last week disrupted tribal and nontribal steelhead angling, had the potential to harm protected juvenile fall chinook emerging from their redds in the Clearwater River and complicated operations at Dworshak National Fish Hatchery and the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery. They also said it could harm protected bull trout, cause some kokanee to be flushed out of Dworshak Reservoir and pose a danger to wading anglers.

“As we view it, this operation is harming angling opportunity on the Clearwater River, so we would object to it continuing,” Ebel said.

On Jan. 25 the volume of water leaving Dworshak Dam started climbing steeply about 4 a.m. On the Clearwater River, flows jumped from about 4,800 cfs to more than 12,000 cfs by about noon. The flows dropped back down by later afternoon. The regime was repeated through Jan. 29.

Anglers had varying experiences depending on where and how they like to fish. Those fishing in the Orofino area had some good days, but those downstream found fishing to be tough.

“It effectively destroyed the fishery from (a short distance below) Orofino down to Lewiston,” said Eric Brady, who has a house near Lenore. “It impacts the fish, so it impacts their behavior. It impacts where they hold. We all look for some consistency in temperature and flows that is typically important for (angling) success.”

LuVerne Grussing, an angler who lives along the river near Arrow, said the erratic flows made it pointless to go fishing.

“It basically took away a fishing day for each one of those days,” he said. “It’s not a great big deal but it’s frustrating.”

Steelhead outfitter Kyle Jones of Deary said the jump in flows seemed to draw fish into a narrow area near Orofino. Those able to hit that window did well, for a time.

“When that happens it basically forces most of the fleet into that small area around Orofino, but fishing was pretty darn good,” he said. “It seemed like it sucked a bunch of fish up in there and we beat up on them for a while and then it kind of settled into an every other day thing, like they will bite one day and the next day it’s kind of tough.”

Jon Roberts, a water manager for the corps Walla Walla District, said the agency released water last week to meet an end-of-month flood control target. The main purpose of Dworshak Dam is to reduce flooding from Orofino to Lewiston and especially hundreds of miles downstream in the Portland area. Water is released January through March based on mountain snow levels so that there is enough room in the reservoir to capture a portion of the spring runoff.

Such releases are common, but the way they were implemented last week isn’t. In the past, flood control operations have released water at a steady rate instead of ramping up and down to follow the demand for electricity.

Last fall, the corps and BPA released a new Federal Columbia River System Operations Biological Opinion, the document that spells out how federal dams in the Columbia River are to be operated to lessen their impact on salmon and steelhead. It calls for spilling water at Snake and Columbia river dams during the spring to help push juvenile fish to the ocean.

Spilling water means it can’t be run through hydroelectric turbines. To compensate for lost revenue, the latest biological opinion allows BPA to shape the wintertime releases from Dworshak so that they follow demand or load.

“This is a newer operation that BPA is exercising under the new biological opinion to be more efficient with power marketing and to move water more efficiently,” Roberts said.

At the TMT meeting, officials from the corps and BPA would only commit to studying the request but did not signal whether or not load following would return if and when additional water needs to be released to make room for spring runoff. They did say they would provide more notification if more load following is implemented.

Fisheries managers said they were caught off guard by last week’s operation. Although they were notified flows exiting the dam could increase from about 1,700 cfs to 10,000, they weren’t told of the load following.

“That level of notification was insufficient to describe such a radical departure from the last 35 years of not load following,” Ebel said.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.