BRIDGEPORT, Wash. -- Since the Chief Joseph Dam was built in the 1950s on a bend of the Columbia River in north-central Washington, no salmon or steelhead have swum upstream of the structure.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation said Friday they may try to bring the fish back.
Tribal resource specialists will begin studying the possibility of adding a fish-passage system to the dam, which is operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The system would again give salmon and steelhead access to the 45-mile stretch between the dam and its larger upstream neighbor, the Grand Coulee Dam.
"Restoring salmon runs is a priority to the Colville Tribe," Joe Peone, a tribal resource director, said in a prepared statement. "Tribal leadership has made it clear that we will do everything we can to help restore chinook salmon and steelhead trout populations, as well as our historic fisheries."
Beginning this fall, tribal officials will conduct a six-month study to identify historic spawning areas and habitat characteristics on the affected stretch of the Columbia and on tributaries.
The southern border of the Colvilles' remote 1.4 million-acre reservation is formed by the Columbia, and the Chief Joseph Dam is at the reservation's southwestern corner.
The study also will examine fish-passage options at the dam, ranging from construction of a fish ladder to trapping fish and hauling them around the dam.
Those findings would be analyzed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the tribe said, adding that the corps has not yet committed to providing fish passage.
The Chief Joseph Dam was built about 20 years after the Grand Coulee, which already had been built without fish passage -- a fact that closed off the upper Columbia to salmon.
No fish ladder was added at Chief Joseph Dam, in part because little usable habitat was believed to exist between the dams, the Colvilles said.