salmon that returned to Redfish Lake in Idaho. I know that the counts into the Umatilla River Basin are up into the thousands where they used to be nil.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Let me just jump in and observe that in the Umatilla Project they did not have the fish ladders originally, but they changed the projects to incorporate those, is that right? Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Or they barged around or they did something to allow the fish to move, right?

Mr. KEYS. Well, the fish returning to the Umatilla at one time. could not get up the river. They got to Three Mile Diversion Dam and could not get past. The return of the fish is a combination of water in the river, putting ladders and screens around the diversion dams, actually improving the channel in some places. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indians Reservation have had actions with their hatcheries, with transportation, all of those actions have resulted in a tremendous return into the Umatilla River Basin.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Well, if we talk about the mainstem, according to the biological opinion, the return of Snake River sockeye salmon to Red Fish Lake is determined by trapping at Red Fish Lake creek in spawning ground surveys. You are familiar with this survey? Mr. KEYS. Yes, sir.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. It shows that in 1985 they observed 12 adults, it looks like the high point was in 1986 at 29 and then since 1987 it has been four in 1988, one in 1989, zero in 1990, four in 1991, one in 1992, eight in 1993, one in 1994. Is this what we are spending our billion dollars a year for?

Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, the Snake River sockeye is only one of the species that were listed. The Chinook, the Coho and so forth are also part of that. I have not seen figures that show how much per fish that we are spending.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Keys, let me just ask you. You may not be able to answer this as a regional director, but just as a citizen, a person who has been involved in water issues for a life's career with the Bureau, are you satisfied with how this situation is resolving itself?

Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, as I said when we started, my job as a Federal person is to uphold the law of the land. The Endangered Species Act is part of that law of the land. We work with the other Federal agencies, we do not employ scientists to tell us how many fish are necessary to justify the thing. We work with the National Marine Fisheries Service as our scientists to tell us how to make our projects compatible with the operation of the river so that the fish can come back, and that is what we are trying to do.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. My job is to help make the law of the land. Since you are responsible for upholding the law of the land, with your experience, what suggestion would you make to get some reasonable return for our money, and to allow people to do what is supposed to be done in this region; namely, develop the agriculture and sustain it? What needs to be done? The law of the land, if this is the law of the land, is obviously unreasonable. What needs to be done? Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, I cannot tell you whether the law of the land is reasonable or not.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. That was my assessment, and my assessment is that it is not.

Mr. KEYS. I understand. If I had-if I were king for a day?

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Yes, give me that.

Mr. KEYS. I would say that the solution to the salmon thing has about half a dozen different vital components. The first one is fix the dams. If you take the Corps of Engineers facilities on the mainstem and on the lower Snake River and make them compatible with the passage of fish up and downstream; if you take from the state of Idaho a reasonable amount of water to help move those fish through those facilities; if you take from the state of Montana and the operating facilities on the Columbia River adequate water to move those fish down the river; if you implement a reasonable hatchery policy that does not saturate with weaker fish; if you consider the harvest limits that would be reasonable to allow people to make a living on the ocean as the people make a living from the agriculture in this part of the basin; you put all those together I think we can address it under the law that we have now.

[Applause.]

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Well, I guess my time is up, but you know, it is unfortunate this has gone on for years without resolution, why has it not happened?

Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, I cannot answer that. I would tell you that the Bureau of Reclamation is doing its part in this thing to do three things. One is to help return the fish. The second is to meet its contracts with all of those people that have contracted with us for water delivery. And the third is to meet the other laws that we are involved with.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Ms. Chenoweth is asking unanimous consent to have a couple of minutes to ask a question. Any objection? [No response.]

Mr. DOOLITTLE. All right, go ahead.

Ms. CHENOWETH. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Keys, you mentioned a series of situations that could possibly help and that you would recommend. One was the 427,000 acre feet flow augmentation from my state. For the record, are you looking at this 427,000 acre feet as an ongoing issuance of water from Idaho?

Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, Ms. Chenoweth, yes, the 427,000 acre foot figure is one that we have looked at that we think we can sustain over a long period of time without affecting the ability to deliver the water to those contracts that we have, and yet it is enough to move through at the right time, whether you have a drawdown situation or an augmentation situation, at the right time, it can be part of that solution.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Cooley.

Mr. COOLEY. Mr. Keys, before going to Congress, I served in the Oregon State Senate and I was on the Columbia Gorge Task Force for a couple of years, you probably know that. And you know, we spent two billion dollars right out of Bonneville and additional other funds, as you say now anywhere between half a billion and a billion dollars per year. We have been doing it for seven years, this is a seven year project. In seven years, we really truly have not mitigated anything.

Now the thing is that we are now being asked to put a fish cap on and we are talking about another half a billion dollars per year plus all the others that are going through the process. How do we have any assurances that all of this money is going to be spent over the next seven years, which will cause rate increases to the utility users in the northwest, it will cause some problems with irrigation, I do not care how you cut it, one way or the other. And another thing is that we are hearing from the scientific community, not from the Federal agencies but the scientific community, that drawdowns are not going to accomplish anything. So how can the agency keep pushing the issues of drawdowns when it has not basically worked and all the other things going on have not really truly worked. Barging seems to be the only thing that has had any kind of scientific result coming through. When you get criticized by your own people or even the agency heads-we had a meeting with Secretary Babbitt here not too long ago and he said that the American public should request some kind of return for their investment. And we were specifically talking about the Columbia River and the money we have spent. How do you answer these questions as a member of the agency and head of this area?

Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cooley, I have to answer that in two ways. First, it is the process that is there. In the biological opinion that we are operating under now and from 1995 to 1998 will be operating under, there are provisions in there for annual review of what we are doing, what good it is doing, how it should be changed during that period and what we ought to try to do after it is over. That is the first thing. In other words, annual review of what is coming out from the investment that we are putting in.

The second is I think you have built me up to be a lot larger than I am. Reclamation is one of the small players in this game, and certainly to make the call on drawdown, if I had my way about it, we would have probably tested it several years ago to see whether it would work or not. We did a test on one reservoir, and all it did is bring up a lot of other questions. We do not know whether drawdown will work or not. There are some scientists that say yes and some that say no. I do not know myself. I do not think a full drawdown of the system is in the cards these days. There are some partial drawdowns being considered; John Day reservoir down to minimum irrigation pool or spillway pool or some level in between, drawing the lower Snake River pools down to some level, not all the way to spillway. There are some proposals in there and I do not think anybody is pushing for a full drawdown of the system these days.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. All our time is up. Mr. Keys, I just cannot resist asking another question. Do we have figures for these other runs of salmon, species of salmon?

Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, yes, there are figures available for the Chinook runs that are part of the Endangered Species Act.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Could you provide those to the Committee as well?

Mr. KEYS. Mr. Chairman, I will either provide them directly or have the National Marine Fisheries Service provide them, whichever you would prefer.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Well, either one is certainly fine with me.

Mr. KEYS. We will provide them from our agency then.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. All right. Thank you. With that, I would like to thank the members of the panel for their testimony. We will ask you to respond to any additional questions that the members may have, which would be forwarded to you, and then to respond on a timely basis in writing. We will hold the record open for that to occur. Mr. Keys, you are going to be available with the third panel to come back and answer questions?

Mr. KEYS. Yes, sir, we are here to the bitter end.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. All right, the panel is excused. Thank you. We will call up panel number two.

On panel number two, we have Don Sampson, Steve Sanders, Steve Eldrige, Joyce Hart and Reed Benson.

We will begin with Mr. Sampson, who is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Mr. Sampson.

STATEMENT OF DONALD SAMPSON, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF TRUSTEES, CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE UMATILLA INDIAN RESERVATION

Mr. SAMPSON. Thank you. That is Umatilla water we are drinking here.

Mr. DOOLITTLE. It tastes like good water.

Mr. SAMPSON. Good afternoon, I am Donald Sampson, and I am Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Here with me today to help answer any questions is Antone Minthorn, who is Chairman of the Tribes' General Council.

The Tribes oppose H.R. 2392 because it will not resolve the waterspreading problem in the Umatilla Basin, and in fact, will make it worse. The Tribes support drawdowns as necessary for restoring salmon to the Columbia-Snake Basin.

With regard to waterspreading and H.R. 2392, H.R. 2392 is unnecessary. We already have a solution to the waterspreading problem for the Umatilla Basin. This solution was developed cooperatively and agreed upon by all of the parties in 1992. In this basin, we resolve our conflicts through cooperation.

Our cooperative solution simply requires that irrigators involved in waterspreading go through the normal process for obtaining Federal water. Most irrigators in the Umatilla Basin either have developed their own irrigation systems or have gone through the proper process to get Federal water. H.R. 2392 would give special rights to those few irrigators here who did not follow the rules.

H.R. 2392 undermines our cooperative solution. It would literally demolish the cooperative agreements that the people of the Umatilla Basin worked so hard to create. The existing solution ensures that the impacts of waterspreading on our Treaty resources will be mitigated. In contrast, H.R. 2392 ignores the impacts to salmon, a resource now enjoyed by hundreds of our neighbors and, of course, one of our Treaty resources.

This legislation would have significant impacts on the people of the Umatilla Basin. It is a shame that politicians in Washington, D.C. are considering such legislation without first taking the time to understand what the local situation is.

Representative Cooley, we believe there are several things you should have done before developing this legislation, much less introducing it. First, you should at least take the time to tour the Umatilla Basin, to get to know the people, to see what great successes we have accomplished here, and to see what the remaining problems really are.

Second, you should have met with the Tribes to discuss this issue and learn our perspective. As a Federal Representative, you have a legal fiduciary trust responsibility to protect our treaty resources. The first time we even heard about this legislation, however, was last week when the press called us to ask us how we felt about it. Despite repeated requests, your office still has not provided us with a copy of your bill, and we had to get it from a Representative from another state.

Third, since your bill would amend the Umatilla Basin Project Act, you should have consulted with Senator Mark Hatfield. The Umatilla Basin Project is a model solution to the conflict between our reserved water rights and legal irrigation water use. Senator Hatfield is the father of the Umatilla Basin Project. He has fought hard for the people of the Umatilla Basin to see that this cooperative solution is a success.

Waterspreading and the Umatilla Basin Project are two separate issues. The Umatilla Basin Project was adopted by Congress after literally years of negotiations between all involved parties in the Umatilla Basin. Your bill would undermine the credibility of the Umatilla Basin Project by attaching a controversial and unbalanced legalization of waterspreading, without any community involvement, let alone consensus.

If H.R. 2392 is passed, it will not resolve waterspreading, it will rip the lid off the controversy which we have already dealt with. Because it ignores the impacts to the fishery and to the instream flows, it likely will result in litigation.

This bill is a classic example of the Federal Government taking an action which will adversely affect Oregonians' water rights. We have been working together cooperatively in the Umatilla Basin for nearly two decades to solve our problems. We cannot afford to have the Federal Government come and unilaterally undermine our cooperative solutions.

In the area of drawdowns, salmon define the Pacific northwest, yet they are nearly extinct. Discussions of salmon recovery in the Columbia and Snake Rivers must recognize this fact. The primary reason for this crisis is the mainstem hydroelectric dams.

There are three principal plans for how to operate the mainstem hydroelectric dams to recover salmon runs the Treaty Tribes' Spirit of the Salmon Plan; the Northwest Power Planning Council's Strategy for Salmon and the National Marine Fisheries Service's Endangered Species Act Recovery Plan. All three plans call for the drawdowns of the four lower Snake River dams and of John Day dam.

The reason for this consistency is simple-for salmon to recover, salmon habitat must be recovered. The mainstem has been converted from a clean, free-flowing river into a series of stagnant reservoirs, interrupted by eight fish-eating dams, which kill salmon by the millions. The dams and the reservoirs must be fixed to restore