BPA is supposed to make up for the ongoing negative effects of the hydropower system on fish populations throughout the Columbia Basin. They should be following the recommendations of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and must treat the entire Columbia River as a system. This obligation pre-dates any Columbia River fish being added to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). BPA pays fish and wildlife co-managers in the basin to operate programs that seek to meet their obligation. For more than 30 years, BPA has paid for fish hatchery production in the lower Columbia (known as the SAFE program) that produces fish intended to be caught in commercial and recreational fisheries in terminal fisheries.

BPA has unilaterally and unexpectedly decided to stop paying for this fish production – notifying ODFW (who operates the program with WDFW and Clatsop County) with less than 3 months of notice. ODFW already has 7+ million fish in the hatcheries for next year’s production. If this decision is not overturned by Sept 30, those fish will be released prematurely, Gnat Creek hatchery will close, and millions of future fishing opportunities will be gone.

BPA’s reasons for this decision have varied – in their first letter notifying us of the termination, they indicated that the goal of the program was to protect ESA-listed runs and that BPA has not seen evidence that this goal is being met (ODFW disagrees on both fronts – it is primarily a program to make up for lost fishing opportunity because of the dams, but it does have benefits for ESA-listed runs). In a subsequent meeting, BPA told ODFW that it does not believe that they are obligated to mitigate for harvest – this flies in the face of their 30-year history of supporting the program and a plain reading of the Northwest Power Act.