A Return to License Requirements for Water Quality Management on the Lower Deschutes River
For the first time in nearly a decade, operational requirements at the Selective Water Withdrawal Tower (SWW) and water quality management at the Pelton Round Butte Hydroelectric Project (PRB) will be guided by the plan approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the Project’s 2005 relicensing. We at Deschutes River Alliance strongly urge the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to finally get serious about holding the PRB operators to the water quality limitations set forth in the Water Quality Monitoring and Management Plan (WQMMP) that the license signatories agreed on to ensure the river’s water quality meets the biologically-based standards set forth in that document.
The original operational requirements for PRB and the SWW Tower were agreed to during the 2005 relicensing process. Those requirements came from the settlement agreement between PGE, DEQ, the Warm Springs Tribes, and a group of environmental organizations that was then approved by FERC and added to PRB’s operating license. The WQMMP detailed how the SWW would be managed to improve water quality in the both Lake Billy Chinook and the lower Deschutes River (LDR) while also allowing for fish reintroduction above the PRB dams.
Shortly after the license took full effect, however, PGE and DEQ began a series of agreements that significantly weakened the WQMMP’s requirements. Beginning in 2011, these so called “Interim Agreements” changed the temperature and dissolved oxygen limits previously agreed to for the LDR, allowing operation at the SWW to reduce water quality in the lower Deschutes more than its license allows for. Worse still, the agreements directly conflict with Oregon’s water quality laws and, in doing so, harm the LDR’s ecology.
Additionally, these interim agreements ignored clear procedures and goals previously agreed to by the license signatories. The PRB license includes specific provisions that allows for revisions. These interim agreements ignored those procedures and excluded the public from participating through public hearings or comments. Meanwhile, over the 10 years of interim agreements, PRB operations have consistently failed to meet license requirements and frequently violated minimum state water quality requirements.
Overall, the interim agreements failed to benefit the lower Deschutes in any way. All they have done is prevent the operators from being held accountable for their inability to meet their agreed-to requirements and foster a legacy of water quality violations and ongoing damage to fish, wildlife, and their habitats in the LDR.
Thankfully, it seems that the era of these interim agreements has come to an end.
As of this June, no new interim agreement has been signed for 2021. In response to a DRA public records request asking for any new agreement, DEQ responded that it was “not able to locate any records responsive to [DRA’s] request.” While the interim agreement process has previously been shielded from public participation, DEQ has also not informed the public that it intends to sign another agreement. Without an agreement in place, and with the previous agreement having expired in November 2020, the license’s requirements contained in the WQMMP will finally guide PRB operations to the benefit of fish and water quality.
The DRA welcomes this return to the protective, agreed-to, and approved, license-based mode of operation of the SWW. We will continue to demand that DEQ takes its decision to end interim agreements seriously and that it holds PRB’s operations to the license’s requirements. We will ensure that DEQ takes an active role in ensuring that the lower Deschutes River’s water quality is protective of its highest uses, include protecting its sensitive, native fish species.
3 Key issues are affected by returning to the original WQMMP requirements:
- The highest dissolved oxygen standard, protective of salmonid spawning through fry emergence, now applies year-round in the LDR instead of October 15-June 15.
- Temperature to be managed in the LDR as stated in the original WQMMP:
As required by the Federal Clean Water Act, the temperature standard that must be satisfied for the lower Deschutes River below the Project’s Reregulating Dam is the most stringent applicable standard, the State’s bull trout standard.
- A pH management plan must be developed by PGE & ODEQ to reduce pH when pH exceeds basin standards. Note, this is not a change from the interim agreements, but ODEQ and PGE have ignored this requirement from the very beginning of SWW operations when pH significantly increased in the LDR.