EWEB shifts course.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Eugene Water & Electric Board is sending the right signal by saying it will revisit its proposal to trap and haul threatened fish around the Trail Bridge Dam.

Now, EWEB officials should go one important step further and change the formal license application to be submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission later this month to list a fish ladder as the utility's preferred option.

The change will require some last-minute scrambling by the staff that is coordinating EWEB's efforts to secure a new license for the Carmen-Smith Hydroelectric Project on the Upper McKenzie River.

But the potential payoff is significant: Amending the application to list a fish ladder as the preferred option at the dam would send a clear message to EWEB customers, state and federal agencies and environmental organizations that EWEB is fully committed to doing what's best for the McKenzie's threatened fish runs.

The change also would ensure that EWEB officially acknowledges that its first choice is a fish ladder and not the cheaper, less effective trap-and-haul approach.

Even though EWEB officials say they plan to give full consideration to a fish ladder, leaving trap-and-haul as the preferred option gives it unwarranted official standing and makes it more difficult to change once a formal application is sub- mitted.

Still, it's encouraging that EWEB General Manager Randy Berggren said Wednesday that EWEB has made a new commitment "to aggressively look" at ways to build a fish ladder for upstream fish. That should be welcome news to state and federal fisheries officials, who over- whelmingly favor a fish ladder over a trap-and-haul system that studies have shown can delay the movement of fish upstream and increase the risk of stress, injury and death to fish.

Berggren deserves credit for backing away from the utility's puzzlingly abrupt decision last month to propose trapping and hauling because of cost and safety concerns. So does EWEB President Sandra Bishop, who brought the board's - and the community's - attention to the issue last month by casting a lone vote against a resolution authorizing EWEB to proceed with its license application.

Now, the utility will focus its attention on two ladder options: one that would run over the dam instead of through it - and another that would run along an embankment and tunnel through an adjacent hillside into Trail Bridge Reservoir. Presumably, neither of those options would affect the structural integrity of the dam, although it remains to be seen which would provide the most effective fish passage and how much each would cost.

Berggren told EWEB commissioners and city councilors Wednesday that the trap-and-haul strategy should be regarded merely as a "placeholder" in the license application, as EWEB officials consider the best way to build a fish ladder.

While it's reassuring to hear that EWEB, a utility nationally recognized for its progressive environmental policies, is once again pursuing a fish-ladder solution at Trail Bridge Dam, there's no need to retain trap-and-haul as a "placeholder," when it's already clear that a fish ladder is the best choice.

EWEB commissioners should change its license application. Now. Not later.