A watershed issue: the role of streamflow protection in Northwest river basin management.

• Author: Benson, Reed D.
• Position: Symposium on Northwest Water Law

1. INTRODUCTION

   The recent crash of salmon, steelhead, and trout populations has drawn attention to the altered state of Northwest rivers. Columbia Basin salmon runs once numbered perhaps sixteen million fish; today, they hang by a thread.(1) The issue of how to save the salmon has become exceedingly large, complex, and contentious, possibly more so than any other issue in the region. These ancient species are extremely important to the economy, ecology, and culture of the Northwest, and their decline raises fundamental questions about the problems confronting the region's rivers and the plans to restore these rivers to health. While hydropower dams may be the biggest single problem on the Columbia and Snake Rivers,(2) dams are only part of the trouble with rivers in the Northwest. Many fish stocks are in serious peril even without the harmful effects of large dams. These stocks include resident fish such as the bull trout (which allegedly deserves an Endangered Species Act listing)(3) as well as salmon runs on coastal streams.(4) The region must look beyond dams if it is to restore its fish populations and rivers.

   There is increasingly wide recognition of the need to look comprehensively at the problems facing rivers, from excessive water temperatures to nonpoint source pollution to dewatering. Much recent attention has been directed to the concept of the "watershed"--the entire basin drained by a particular river or stream--and to the need to address the whole range of factors affecting watershed health. Today, people ranging from federal agency heads to family farmers are discussing watershed planning, watershed restoration, and watershed management.

   This focus on watersheds fits within the broader context of "ecosystem management," an approach to natural resources management that considers a broad range of ecological as well as societal factors.(5) In other words, the watershed/ecosystem approach promises comprehensive resource management that takes account of both natural and human values--a truly holistic stew.

   Conceptually, comprehensive- resource management at the watershed or ecosystem level makes a good deal of sense. In the Northwest, however, this concept is confronted with a very serious and difficult problem: state water law and the prior appropriation doctrine.

   Water is the key ingredient in healthy, productive, functioning ecosystems. Especially in the arid and semi-arid country east of the Cascades, water is life itself. Water nourishes all manner of organisms that inhabit rivers and riparian corridors. Water is also biologically and economically crucial to human survival. Any attempt to implement truly comprehensive "ecosystem management" must include management of water to meet both human and environmental needs.

   In the Northwest, however, water is not managed that way. Instead, water is governed by a system of appropriative rights that allows private users to take all the water out of a stream to meet their needs, leaving nothing for the needs of other people or the environment. Thus, state water law does not fit well within a comprehensive approach to managing resources that considers the interests of all people and all species in maintaining sustainable ecosystems. Rather, northwestern states manage water under the simple directive of prior appropriation: "first in time, first in right."(6)

   For this reason, many Northwest streams are completely dried up at certain times of year; many others are drastically lowered, with major impacts on water temperature, pollutant concentrations, the quantity and quality of aquatic habitat, and other values. Most of the water diverted and consumed goes to irrigated agriculture.(7) Lacking adequate water, many Northwest rivers cannot support the fish, birds, plants, and other creatures that depend on them. A watershed is simply not healthy if all the water is removed from its rivers. The four major Columbia Basin states (Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington) have taken steps to protect some of the remaining flows in certain rivers. For most reaches of most rivers, however, instream flow protection is nonexistent or inadequate to protect aquatic life. Moreover, neither streamflow protection measures nor state water planning pro grams are well connected with many "watershed management" activities of government agencies and local groups, although some notable exceptions exist. For both legal and political reasons, watershed management efforts generally concentrate more on land use and riparian improvements than on water quantity. However, such efforts cannot be fully comprehensive or successful unless they effectively address the need for instream flows.

   Part II of this Article examines existing watershed management activities in the Northwest, sampling watershed efforts at the federal, regional, state, local, and tribal level. This Part also discusses possible reasons for the popularity of the watershed approach. Part III explores the role of instream flow protection in Northwest watershed management. Instream flows are important to watershed health, as recognized by many watershed management plans. State laws provide for instream flow protection and water planning at the river basin level, but these measures often are not connected with watershed management efforts. Streamflow protection, however, can be integrated into the watershed approach and may be crucial to the success of comprehensive watershed management. Part IV concludes with some cautionary notes about the future of streamflow protection and watershed management in the Northwest.

2. WATERSHED MANAGEMENT: THE POPULAR CHOICE

   Throughout the Northwest, government agencies at every level, as well as many private citizens, are beginning to advocate a watershed approach to natural resource management. The following section identifies some of the better-known "watershed management" efforts in the region and discusses some of the reasons why the watershed approach has be come popular.

   1. Watershed Management Efforts by Various Agencies

      "Watershed management" comes in all shapes and sizes, from multi-agency efforts to manage all federal forest lands west of the Cascades to volunteer watershed councils that concentrate on one small river basin. The following pages sample such activities in the Northwest.

      1. Federal Efforts

         1. U.S. Forest Service/U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

            Federal natural resource agencies in the Northwest have embarked on some ambitious and high-profile attempts at ecosystem management. The key agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and BLM, manage much of the land in the Columbia River Basin. What ecosystem management actually means to these agencies is somewhat difficult to comprehend.(8) Whatever the concept may mean, the federal land management agencies seem committed to it, as the theme of ecosystem management runs strongly through the Eastside Project and its interim PACFISH strategy to protect anadromous fish habitat on public lands east of the Cascades,(9) as well as the Clinton Forest Plan for managing federal lands west of the Cascades.(10)

            PACFISH is essentially a watershed management program for federal lands that provides habitat for Pacific anadromous fish. The program sets riparian goals, as well as riparian management objectives, standards, and guidelines. PACFISH also identifies key riparian management areas and watersheds, and calls for watershed analysis and restoration.(11) Because it applies only to federal lands, however, even PACFISH stops short of truly comprehensive watershed management.

            Although the Clinton Forest Plan looks broadly at a huge geographic area extending from the Canadian border to San Francisco Bay,(12) it emphasizes the protection of land within certain key watersheds.(13) These key watersheds were selected either for contributing to anadromous salmonid and bull trout conservation or because they are sources of high quality water.(14) The Forest Plan aims to protect these areas through actions based on watershed analysis--"a systematic procedure for charaCterizing watershed and ecological processes to meet specific management and social objectives."(15)

         2. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)

            NMFS released its Proposed Recovery Plan for the endangered Snake River salmon in March 1995.(16) Like the Forest Plan, the Proposed Recovery Plan aims to restore the health of an entire ecosystem, rather than focus on particular endangered species:

            The goal of the Proposed Recovery Plan is to restore the health of the

            Columbia and Snake River ecosystem and to recover listed Snake River salmon

            stocks. Many of the recommended actions will directly benefit other species

            such as other salmon stocks, sturgeon, and bull trout. Implementation of the

            Proposed Recovery Plan should also conserve biodiversity, a factor that is

            essential to ecosystem integrity and stability.(17)

            The Proposed Recovery Plan is wide-ranging, addressing the tributary, mainstem, and estuarine ecosystems; harvest management; and artificial propagation.(18) In evaluating the problems of the tributary ecosystem, NMFS recognized that many factors have played a role in the decline of the Snake River salmon: "Land and water management actions, including water withdrawals, unscreened water diversions, stream channelization, road construction, timber harvest, livestock grazing, mining, and outdoor recreation have degraded important salmon spawning and rearing habitats."(19) The Proposed Recovery Plan's prescription for measures to address these problems is correspondingly comprehensive.(20)

            To address problems of salmon habitat in Columbia-Snake tributaries, NMFS concluded that "[a]n ecosystem-based approach that considers en tire watersheds and river subbasins is needed. Such an approach will en sure that all the physical, biological, and chemical processes and conditions that contribute to the development of productive salmon habitat are maintained."(21) The Proposed Recovery...