Bonneville Power Administration funds mitigation programs
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Editor,
Questions around water issues on the Flathead Indian Reservation include the Bonneville Power Administration. The BPA is a power marketing authority, so what are they doing on the Reservation buying up river bottom land? Or are they? The answer lies in compensatory mitigation.
The BPA is guided by several federal statutes that instructed the creation of a fish and wildlife plan to mitigate for the construction, inundation and operation of federal dams. The year 1933 saw the creation of the enormous Grand Coulee Dam, the Bonneville Dam, and the Bonneville Power Administration. In Montana, construction of the Hungry Horse Dam was completed in 1953. By then fisherman across the Northwest, tribal and non-tribal, were worried about the prophetic destruction of fish migrations in the Columbia River system. From the mouth of the Columbia River to the top of Lolo Pass (Brushy Fork) was the longest salmon and steelhead migration in the world. It was destroyed by dams.
The Hungry Horse mitigation program is a cooperative effort with the State of Montana and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, which intends to meet resident fish mitigation obligations for destruction of the passage of bull trout and other native fish. In 2005 the BPA gave CSKT $3.49 million and continues to pay for the duration of the program. (A similar mitigation program has been completed for wildlife.) In 2011 the BPA provided funds to the tribes so they could purchase 172 acres of stream habitat with pure genetic breeds of native fish.
Money from the BPA is used to buy deeded property as well as purchase of lands with a conservation easement; in which case the land and concomitant development restrictions stays in the ownership of the existing landowner and any successive owners. Easement lands are protected through a project sponsor: a non-government organization such as Five Valleys Land Trust, the State, or the Tribes. Bonneville will remain a power marketing authority in the Northwest, but will not hold title to property on the reservation.
Linda Helding
Arlee
