Thousands of Salmon Eggs Destroyed By Washington Utility's Dam Shut-Off

JIM CARLTON / WALL STREET JOURNAL 13dec00

An ill-timed dam shut-off by Washington state's Puget Sound Energy Inc. has dried up portions of one of the Pacific Northwest's biggest salmon rivers, leaving hundreds of salmon nests to die at the peak of the fish's spawning season.

The dewatering took place over the Thanksgiving holiday along a roughly 30-mile stretch of the Skagit River, a major tributary that pours out of the Cascades to supply as much as one-third of the water and salmon for Seattle's Puget Sound. Federal officials say most of the damaged or destroyed nests belonged to the region's more plentiful chum salmon, but add that as many as 700 threatened Chinook salmon nests may have been killed by exposure and being deprived of oxygen in the water. Each nest contains as many as 4,000 salmon eggs.

"Essentially what happened is that Puget Sound Energy has cut the umbilical cord on thousands, if not millions of salmon eggs," said Bill McMillan, a field biologist for Washington Trout, a conservation group.

Officials of the Bellevue, Wash. utility, which provides power to one million customers in western Washington, acknowledge their decision to curtail river flows from two of their reservoirs late last month was "unfortunately" timed. But they said the Northwest is suffering a severe drought this fall that has reduced river flows all over the region. "This [killing salmon nests] was something that was going to happen sooner or later," said Bill Gaines, vice president of energy supply for Puget Sound Energy.

Officials of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which next month is set to issue a directive on how to protect endangered salmon runs across the Northwest, say they are working with utility officials to increase dam flows into the river.

The officials note that Puget Sound Energy wasn't in violation of its dam-operating permit, which allows stream flows to be reduced to as low as 120 cubic feet per second from as much as 3,000 cubic feet per second of normal flow. Environmental groups are seeking to have that minimum flow greatly increased when the utility's dam permit comes up for renewal by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2006.

The dewatering problem came to light on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, when Mr. McMillan, the Washington Trout biologist, went out to fish in the Skagit River by his home. He said he noticed that the river, normally about 250 feet wide, had receded by about 50 feet, exposing parts of the rock and gravel streambed where female salmon burrow nests to lay their eggs. Mr. McMillan says he used stakes and pink ribbon to mark 66 exposed salmon nests, called "redds," along 100 yards of beach nearest his home.

It turned out that officials of Puget Sound Energy had opted on Thanksgiving eve to start refilling their two dams several miles upstream, on the Baker River that feeds into the Skagit. According to utility officials, they had let the two dams run unusually low in September in preparation for a turbine-rebuilding project set to be performed in January.