Photo by Rick Swart<br> Brothers Lance (left) and Summer Smith of Kennewick, Wash., spent the afternoon Monday fighing for trout in front of the Wallowa Lake dam. The structure, built in 1918, is considered unsafe and will be rebuilt if bills sponsored by Oregon Senators Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden and Representative Greg Walden can garner the approval of both houses of Congress.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week approved a bill by Oregon’s senators to authorize up to $32 million in federal funding for repair of the privately owned Wallowa Lake Dam and for water conservation and fish restoration in the watershed.

The bill, S. 1883, by Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., both members of the committee, is opposed by the Bush administration because the northeastern Oregon dam is owned by local irrigators.

But the senators and Rep. Greg Walden, sponsor of a similar measure in the House, say the project has multiple benefits and is in keeping with the Bush administration’s policy of encouraging local collaboration and decision-making on natural resource issues. Local irrigators and communities developed projects, including eventual restoration of sockeye salmon to Wallowa Lake, with the participation of numerous state and federal agencies and the Nez Perce Indian tribe.

“The projects authorized by this bill provide a positive approach, supported by local interests, to resolving the water challenges facing the Wallowa River Basin,” Smith said. “The cooperative efforts of all the parties involved are now one step closer to being rewarded.”

Wyden praised the committee for supporting the effort “a prime example of people working together to fix local problems with locally-based, creative solutions.” “I anticipate the full Senate’s approval,” he said.

The act would authorize the secretary of the interior, acting through the Bureau of Reclamation, to participate in the rehabilitation of the Wallowa Lake Dam and in the implementation of the Wallowa Valley Water Management Plan.

Oregon members say Wallowa County residents face a potential disaster because the 1918 dam is unsafe. It has been operated at reduced reservoir levels in recent years. But at a June 6 Senate subcommittee hearing, Department of Interior officials consider the need to repair the private dam and improve water and fish conditions in the Wallowa and Grande Ronde river basins as state and private responsibilities.

Also, the Associated Ditch Companies and other project beneficiaries would not be required to repay the federal government funds as mandated by reclamation law, they said.

Oregon’s senators said they were willing to modify their bill, but last week’s committee action left it unchanged. Smith has said the federal government’s interests include preserving endangered salmon and meeting tribal treaty rights.

If the bill passes Congress, actual funding would have to be approved separately later in annual spending bills.

The project would cost a total of $38 million, including $7 million for repairing and strengthening the dam and the rest for hydroelectric facilities, fish passage and production, irrigation diversion fish screens and water conservation and exchange structures. The 20 percent share of the funding could come from local, state or regional sources, including the Bonneville Power Administration.

The dam provides water for about 600 irrigators and the town of Joseph, one mile north of the lake. A fire destroyed the power plant in 1950, and the dam was declared hazardous by the Oregon Department of Water Resources in 1996. Concerns about the dam’s safety in 1996 forced the lake to be lowered and required short-term structural improvements.

Sockeye salmon, which used to spawn in Wallowa Lake, became extinct by 1904 due to overharvesting and construction of an earlier small irrigation diversion dam, according to Nez Perce tribal officials.

The tribe, which supports the bill and has been working to improve conditions for fish in the basin, hopes to restore the sockeye to the lake. The rehabilitation project would allow Wallowa Lake to be filled again to 50,000 acre feet and provides for installation of fish passage facilities.

The bill would also benefit restoration of endangered spring and fall chinook and steelhead in the Wallowa and Grande Ronde river basins by freeing up more water for stream flows.

The project would install fish screens at three irrigation diversions downstream in the Wallowa River to reduce losses of endangered bull trout and spring chinook. Also under the plan, 4,000 acre feet of the increased lake storage would be set aside for a water exchange to reduce irrigation diversions and increase summer flows for bull trout and imperiled spring chinook in the Lostine River, a lower tributary.

Local irrigators fear if major water quality and fish habitat improvements are not undertaken, they face increased restrictions under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and tribal treaty rights.