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37 °F 5 Day Forecast Monday, December 8, 2003 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | eSouthernOregon | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend November 20, 2003 Savage Rapids removal passed Dam would come down after pumps installed By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune The federal government will get the authority to remove Savage Rapids Dam from the Rogue River and replace it with fish-friendly pumps under a bill passed by Congress late Tuesday. While the bill does not provide the estimated $18 million needed to replace the Grants Pass Irrigation District’s aging, fish-killing dam, it puts the project in line for federal money as early as next year. If signed by President Bush, the bill represents the next major step in a 15-year-old plan to improve the Rogue’s wild salmon and steelhead runs while delivering water to GPID’s 8,000 irrigators more efficiently. "For us to get authorization gives us credibility," GPID manager Dan Shepard said Wednesday. "This makes it real." Advertisement The bill specifically authorizes the Department of the Interior to install the pumps, then remove the dam once the pump system is proven to feed GPID’s water needs as outlined in a 2001 federal court decree. The decree, reached after years of fighting between the district and wild salmon advocates, also calls for the project to be done by 2006. Oregon’s two senators, Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Ron Wyden, along with some of Oregon’s congressional delegation pushed for the authorization, and both pledged to shepherd the funding quest. Earning authorization instantly puts the project in line for money from a host of federal sources, such as agency construction funds and even money unused in other federally funded projects. "This puts them in the agencies’ budget queue as well, and that’s a big step," Wyden spokesman Geoff Stuckart said. The Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board has already pledged $3 million toward the $5 million dam-removal portion of the project. GPID and the environmental group WaterWatch together are trying to tap into a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fund to cover the rest of the dam-removal cost, WaterWatch attorney Bob Hunter of Medford. The Corps is currently doing a feasibility study to see if the project fits a special aquatic-restoration program it administers. That would leave unsecured only funding for the pumps, which are estimated at $12 million to $15 million. Smith spokesman Caroline Espinosa said Congress could be asked to fund the pumps through the Corps budget, through the federal Bureau of Reclamation or some other agency. "Congress will supply the funds, but I don’t know how it’ll be done," Espinosa said. "But the process will start right away next year." The 82-year-old dam spans the Rogue near the Jackson/Josephine county line and each spring raises the Rogue’s surface level to push water into canals that ring Grants Pass. But federal studies conclude that the dam’s fish screens and ladders are considered the single largest impediment to the river’s adult and infant salmon and steelhead. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1970s estimated that Savage Rapids Dam results in 22 percent fewer salmon and steelhead in the Rogue than if the dam were gone. On an average year, that translates into 43,620 fewer spring chinook, fall chinook, coho, summer steelhead and winter steelhead in the Rogue, according to ODFW computer estimates in 1994 and 1995. A 1995 Bureau of Reclamation study concluded that removing the dam is a better and cheaper fix for fish than altering the current dam. After years of battling over the dam’s impacts and need, GPID and groups like WaterWatch have worked together closely since 2000 to get the dam replaced at no cost to the district. "It’s bipartisan and shows what people can do when they work together," said Hunter, the WaterWatch attorney. "We’ve been working on a solution, rather than beating each other up." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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