Santee Cooper should do more to enhance fisheries' health

I noted a small blurb in the State News section of the Aug. 23 Post and Courier titled "Utility says saving fish may be pricey." Although the cost of fish passage is often expensive, the issue is one requiring much more thought and consideration than offered in this short news blurb.

While hydropower is viewed as a desirable form of alternative energy production, especially with our need to reduce carbon emissions, it does not come without its ecological price tag.

Dams for electric power cause major ecological system fragmentation including alteration of normal river and steam flows and blockage of ocean-river fish migrations that are vital support for economically important ocean recreational and commercial fisheries and ocean ecosystem health. Some of these impacts may be lessened by mimicking natural stream flow releases, and providing safe upstream and downstream fish passage.

Ocean-river migratory fish (also known as anadromous fish) such as shad, herring, sturgeon, and striped bass, spend young and adult lives in or near the ocean, and migrate far up rivers to spawn and complete their life cycles. Shad and herring are food for ocean fish, porpoise, and whales, but now have almost disappeared, leaving a starving ocean environment. Disruption of migratory pathways on almost all our major river systems has resulted in devastating reduction in stocks of anadromous species

In the case of the Santee-Cooper project, major ecological changes were made by diverting the Santee River (the second largest drainage east of the Mississippi) into the Cooper River (a former small coastal plain river) and Charleston Harbor. While some passage for shad and herring was added by the Corps of Engineers in 1986, passage is limited, and sturgeon are totally blocked.

The Santee-Cooper system is one of two in the country that has a "land-locked" shortnose sturgeon population. This species is endangered largely due to blockage of its upstream and downstream spawning migrations and declining population

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hydropower relicensing process (in which Santee-Cooper is currently involved) is an opportunity to restore economically important ocean-river fisheries which were not considered when the project was built in 1938-1941. Section 18 of the Federal Power Act of 1935, as amended, states that the FERC "shall require the construction, maintenance, and operation by a licensee at its own expenses of such ... fishways as may be prescribed by the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Commerce. ..."

Such a prescription is needed and warranted to sustain the endangered shortnose sturgeon and other diadromous fish stocks.

The Santee-Cooper dams are somewhat uniquely located far down the river system in the coastal plain. For this reason, these dams were considered a "keystone" fish passage location for the Santee River system in an inter-resource agency basin-wide fish passage plan filed with the FERC many years ago.

Although safe upstream and downstream passage of diadromous fish is often difficult and therefore expensive to engineer, consideration of the economics of depressed fisheries (the loss of some anadromous fish stocks may affect ocean fisheries) and the loss of an endangered species (shortnose sturgeon) should more than balance the cost.

Steve Gilbert

Key Court

James Island