The goal of this project is to facilitate both the estuary/ocean subgroup (EOS) and the Expert Regional Technical Group (ERTG) for estuary habitat restoration, as organized under the federal Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP*).  This project will aid the action agencies in estuary-related aspects of implementation of the 2008 Biological Opinion (BiOp) on operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System (National Marine Fisheries Service 2008 ).

Comprehensive research, monitoring, and evaluation (RME) and estuary habitat restoration by the Action Agencies (Bonneville Power Administration [BPA] and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [Corps]), as stipulated in the 2008 BiOp, are ongoing in earnest in the lower Columbia River and estuary.  Specifically, the BiOp’s Reasonable and Prudent Alternative (RPA) action 37 called for the Action Agencies to convene the ERTG to use “…habitat metrics to determine the estimated change in survival…” resulting from off-site mitigation actions in the lower river and estuary.  RPA actions 58-61 deal directly with estuary RME.  The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been contracted annually by BPA to facilitate the EOS since 2002 and the ERTG since 2009.

*CEERP is an acronym coined in 2011 for the joint BPA/Corps efforts to restore LCRE ecosystems that started with the 2000 Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) Biological Opinion (BiOp) (NMFS 2000) and now is responsive to subsequent FCRPS BiOps, the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, and various Corps restoration authorities.