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Methow Valley News February 24, 2000 Endangered Species Winter fish kill study could pack wallop by Lee Hicks Although "the process" related to irrigation and endangered fish has dominated the public agenda for many months, a complex study is underway in the background that could substantially affect future water use and growth in the Methow Valley. In March, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to issue a report on the impacts of streamflows on winter deaths of fish in the Methow basin, an official said recently. The document could influence provisions in a delayed new water rule for the basin now being considered by Department of Ecology. Moreover, National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service consider findings in developing and reviewing recovery plans for endangered steelhead and spring-run Chinook salmon, and threatened bull trout. The basin water rule has been held hostage, so to speak, by the unfinished business of completing a local, state and federal pact, the "memorandum of agreement," that would guide fish recovery plans. DOE unveiled a proposed water rule at a public meeting in February of 1999, just as NMFS was preparing to list spring-run Chinook as endangered in the basin, after an earlier listing of steelhead trout. USFWS listed bull trout as threatened in 1998. DOE withdrew the rule later last year, after NMFS forced the Forest Service to withhold permits for irrigation on federal land. NMFS also increased pressure on county and state officials to reach an agreement on fish recovery plans based on achieving target streamflows. In pulling the rule, DOE said it would remove a provision allowing conversion of seasonal irrigation rights to year-round use through wells and community water systems. The agency said it wanted more information on the impact year-round water use would have on fish during winter months. Growth opponents have argued that converting irrigation rights would promote development. Proponents say conversion would enable more efficient use of water for domestic use and allow ranchers the flexibility to contribute water to a "water bank" or trust water rights program. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officials believe that adequate water for fish in the winter is important to species survival. WDFW regional director Jeff Tayer said Feb. 1 that the agency is proceeding with a winter mortality study based on "IFIM," a stream modeling program that translates as "instream flow incremental methodology." Tayer said last fall that much of the data for the IFIM study was already available. As described on the U.S. Geological Survey web site, IFIM was developed by USFWS to address fish concerns resulting from dams that proliferated for smaller hydroelectric projects in the 1970s and 1980s. Earlier methods used minimum streamflows as a standard for protecting fish. But research evolved away from streamflows to address needs of specific fish species in various life cycles related to fish passage, spawning and rearing habitat, the USGS site notes. "Instream Flow Incremental Methodology was intended to integrate the planning concepts of water supply, analytical models from hydraulic and water quality engineering, and empirically derived (fish) habitat versus flow functions...(to produce) simulations of the quantity and quality of ‘potential habitat’ resulting from proposed water development. "IFIM has developed over a period of 15 years into a river network analysis that incorporates fish habitat, recreational opportunity, and woody vegetation response to alternative water management schemes. Information is presented as a time series of flow and habitat at selected points within a river system," according to USGS. The IFIM study in the Methow is being managed by Hal Beecher, a WDFW biologist who Tayer says has experience in the IFIM method. District biologist Heather Bartlett of WDFW said before Tayer was contacted by the News that she was not aware of the agency’s winter mortality study. Bartlett would be involved in a different proposed study that would sample strontium levels in steelhead-rainbow trout to determine which are offspring of anadromous species. Strontium is accumulated in the ocean and passed from the female parent, replacing calcium in a ratio of one to one, Bartlett said. Although unaware of the IFIM study, Bartlett said, "winter mortality is above 60 percent but it’s not so much a problem of human intervention, such as irrigation, as of natural occurrence." A critical question in the IFIM study, and its influence on the new water rule, will be the fate of the current "2cfs" reservation for water use in each of the basin’s seven major stream reaches from Mazama to Pateros. Some DOE and federal officials have suggested certain reaches of the basin may be "overallocated" in terms of water rights in certain reaches. But data uncovered by the county water planning unit has revealed outdated and overlapping water right claims that tend to inflate the estimate of local water use. Opinion | Sports |
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