Preparing for Emergency Fish Passage Using Past Experiences to Maximize Future Success

The challenges, setbacks, and successes of emergency fish passage resulting from the fracture at Wanapum Dam, on the Columbia River, provides lessons for how to respond to future emergencies.  Key challenges of unforeseen emergencies are the compressed time for planning and implementation and the uncertainty of solutions.  Preparing for emergencies can extend the time and increase resources available for responding to emergencies.  Immediately after an emergency occurs it is important to assemble teams to develop, approve, and evaluate strategies to pass fish, and develop a clear decision framework with quantitative decision targets as early as possible.  Implementation of plans and strategies to pass fish must consider and balance factors such as weather, safety, material delivery schedules, staff availability, and seasonal and diurnal fish movement patterns.  Furthermore, monitoring must be conducted with sufficient rigor, timeliness, and applicability to inform decision making and to evaluate the performance of fish passage.  New information and unforeseen problems require the ability to adapt a fish passage plan.  The experiences of emergency fish passage associated with the Wanapum Dam fracture can be leveraged to help others that want to prepare for, or respond to, an emergency that requires fish passage.