PUD commission approves transponder tags for survival study

EPHRATA — The Grant County Public Utility District will again test its waters next spring to determine how many fish are making their way through the district's two dams.

The PUD Commission approved a contract Monday with Biomark, Inc. of Idaho to supply the district with transponder tags to use in a spring study of Chinook salmon survival.

PUD Natural Resources Director Stephen Brown said the tags, called Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT), are inserted into a fish's nose. Brown said that when the fish passes through a magnetic tunnel at the dams, the district is able to identify each of the fish individually utilizing the bar code technology. Equipment at the dams will record data

on each fish passing through each dam's passage area. The system detects more than 95 percent of tagged fish passing through the detectors, according to the PUD.

Brown said the purpose of the program is to compare survival results in different areas of the Priest Rapids Project. He added that one of the goals of the study is to have a 93 percent of the fish survive the trip from the top of the Wanapum reservoir to the bottom of the Wanapum dam.

Although the study won't begin until the spring, the PUD will start tagging the fish at the Priest Rapids Dam later this fall. Brown said the PIT tags can also be looked at on fish returning to the dam from previous years.

The commission approved purchase of 130,000 PIT tags at a total cost of $274,300, which comes out to a cost of $2.11 per PIT tag.

The commission also approved a contract to have Biomark provide the tagging services the fish themselves at a cost of $117,000. The study will look at 126,000 juvenile Chinook salmon, and will cost about 90 cents per fish.

Brown said the PUD has been holding its PIT tag tests since the 1980s, but the PUD has been performing this type of study for the past five years.

Also at Monday's PUD Commission meeting, the commission approved a five-year memorandum of agreement/contract with the the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance at a cost of $180,530 each year. The PUD's

membership costs in the alliance are reimbursed by the Bonneville Power Administration.

The commission approved an office rental agreement to rent office space at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Ephrata for a cost of $1,218 per month.

The commission voted to increase the contract with dam safety firm Acres International by $75,000. The increase puts the contract total at $225,000.

The commission also approved payment of a six-month contract to fund Maximus Hosting Services to maintain the PUD's Maximus fleet maintenance database. The contract was approved for $5,400. The fleet maintenance

database is a computer software program used to manage records on the PUD's vehicles.

Commission members voted to to transfer a total of $168,000 between projects in the 2004 budget, including $25,000 for vegetation control and $85,000 to purchase computers for the remote dispatch center in Moses Lake.

The PUD commission will also conclude its series of public meetings concerning the district's proposed 2005 budget this week. The final meeting is tonight at 7 p.m. in the Royal City High School Cafeteria.