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Jim Chandler on Idaho Power’s Plans to Improve Fisheries and Water Quality in the Snake River Jim Chandler: I manage the fish and water quality programs in the Environmental Affairs Department at Idaho Power. I started with Idaho Power 32 years ago, right out of graduate school. I worked as a fish biologist, and as time progressed, I moved into a supervisory role, implementing various fishery programs. Recently, the water quality and fish teams were put in one group, so now I focus on managing our fish and water quality programs. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about Idaho Power. Jim Chandler: Idaho Power has a large service territory, mostly covering southern Idaho and a portion of eastern Oregon. We have 17 hydroelectric projects, 12 of which are along the mainstem Snake River. Hydroelectricity usually accounts for more than 40 percent of our generation portfolio. The department’s primary focus is to work on the licensing, compliance, and relicensing of those hydro projects, 15 of which are licensed by FERC. Most of those projects have undergone some level of relicensing work, and we are currently in the process of relicensing two: American Falls and our largest, the Hells Canyon Complex (HCC), which includes Brownlee, Oxbow, and Hells Canyon Dams. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your fish hatchery program.
Located along the Idaho-Oregon border, Hells Canyon Dam and Reservoir are the farthest downstream of Idaho Power’s hydroelectric facilities.
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Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
8 | HYDRO LEADER | May 2022
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF IDAHO POWER.
he Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) relicensing process for several of Idaho Power’s 15 FERC-licensed hydroelectric projects has spawned fresh thinking about how to manage fish passage and water quality. Nearly 60 years after an agreement to change its mitigation program to a hatchery program for Chinook salmon and steelhead trout, Idaho Power is finding new approaches to keep populations healthy and address issues like high temperatures, dissolved oxygen (DO), dissolved gas, and connectivity. We speak with Jim Chandler, the environmental manager at Idaho Power, to learn more.
Jim Chandler: Our hatchery program started in the early 1960s. When plans were finalized to move ahead with the construction of Brownlee Reservoir and Dam, the uppermost and largest of our three HCC reservoirs, there were fall Chinook salmon, spring Chinook salmon, and steelhead spawning and rearing above the Brownlee Dam site. The initial plan was to pass those fish above Brownlee and collect juveniles during their downstream migration in a big net collection system in Brownlee Reservoir, and the net was built upon the completion of Brownlee Dam in 1958. However, it became clear that although trapping adults below the dam and transporting them above it to let them spawn naturally was successful, the downstream migration collection of juveniles did not work. Those small juvenile fish could not migrate through a large reservoir like Brownlee. They rely on water currents to orient them and help them migrate downstream, and in a reservoir the size of Brownlee, they were disoriented and were not able to find their way to the collection facility in sufficient numbers to sustain and maintain adult returns. A decision was made in 1964 to transition the passage program to a hatchery program. We developed four Idaho Power hatcheries, which primarily rear steelhead and spring Chinook salmon. As we progressed with implementing the
