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Salmon Run Controversy: Follow the Money by Ed Morrison Seattle Times, January 31, 2010

In a letter published on Jan. 28 ["Environmental issues: Salmon runs," Northwest Voices], Ed Morrison, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, Portland, claims that the premise in "Getting past the dams" is wrong. The premise of the original editorial is that the court-ordered spill program on the middle and upper Columbia and Snake River dams has a measurable impact on salmon survival. In her letter, Flores distorts the opinion piece.

What made me respond is the source of this letter. In the case of Northwest RiverPartners, you need to follow the money. This organization's board members work for the following groups: Avista Utilities, McMinnville Water and Light, Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities, Inland Power, PNGC Power and Flathead Electric Cooperative [among others].

These are the "RiverPartners." They are mostly utility companies who continue to stonewall scientific evidence that the dams on the middle and upper Columbia and Snake rivers have a large impact on salmon survival. Fish scientists and courts battles have consistently held that this impact is quite real.

It's OK to believe that energy generation and utility company profits are more important than salmon survival. It's not OK to distort the science that clearly shows we have to make choices between these competing factors. Personally, I'll vote for the salmon.

Factors affecting sockeye salmon returns to the Columbia River in 2008, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, 2/09

Table 5. Estimated outmigration of sockeye salmon smolts from the Sawtooth Basin in Idaho
and adult returns passing Lower Granite Dam. Last two columns added by bluefish.

Out-migration Year	Estimated Sockeye Juveniles	Adult Return Year	Adults Passing Lower Granite Dam	Index SAR (%)	Adults Arriving in Stanley Basin	Index SAR (%)
1998	96,669	2000	299	0.31	257	0.26
1999	24,664	2001	36	0.15	26	0.10
2000	5,298	2002	55	1.04	22	0.42
2001	7,356	2003	14	0.19	3	0.04
2002	16,958	2004	113	0.67	27	0.16
2003	9,603	2005	18	0.19	6	0.06
2004	9,749	2006	15	0.15	4	0.04
2005	68,855	2007	46	0.07	4	0.01
2006	109,779	2008	805	0.73	636	0.58
2007	88,398	2009			838	0.95

Note: Last two columns added by bluefish. NW Science Center may be changing the Column 5, Index SAR, as they have recently learned of some errors in the assumptions regarding column 2, Estimated Sockeye Juvenile data.

bluefish notes: a SAR of 2.0% is considered the minimum necessary for a self-sustaining Sockeye poplulation.

Report Conclusion: In summary, the results discussed here provide a consistent pattern to explain the large return of adult sockeye to the Columbia River in 2008. Based on these results, we conclude that the factors responsible for the high return largely acted on fish downstream of Bonneville Dam and during the marine component of their life cycle, and not in the river upstream of Bonneville Dam.