Posted By: Kimberly James February 25, 2016 Environmental groups want the U S Army Corps of Engineers to find emergency methods to stop massive salmon die offs in the Columbia and Snake Rivers causing by warming water. They want to avoid massive fish kills like the one in 2015 that’s likely to be an increasingly difficult issue of regional concern. A NOAA biologist puts the warm water salmon die off in 2015 at half the entire run; more than a quarter million fish dead from warming waters. Clean water act requires Columbia River temperatures to be 68 farenheit or lower to protect native salmon and steelhead; they pushed past 70 in July. Dams are the target once again – ideas being bandied by the Corps, NOAA and state agencies including Washington’s are closing surface collectors, which suck in warm top waters to help young fish passage. Another is catching and trucking fish at dams early in the year before waters heat up. Northwest Power and Conservation Council is likely to weigh in next; they represent interests from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.
Environmental groups have called on Columbia to find emergency methods to prevent massive salmon die-offs in the the US Army Corps of Engineers and Snake Rivers, which are being caused by warming water, in a bid to avoid last year's catastrophe when high water temperatures killed hundreds of thousands of salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean. They warned that 96% of endangered Snake River sock-eye salmon died before ever making it to the Lower Granite Dam in 2015.