Dearth of Data: PGE’s Steelhead Reporting Leaves Public in the Dark
Bent rods provide a world of excitement, but only anecdotal data on the overall health of Deschutes River steelhead runs. The big picture data—collection and dissemination—is the responsibility of PGE, and the company is not providing the level of detail it once did.
Public Resource, Public Information
In the state of Oregon, game fish that reside or pass through public waterways are a resource that belongs to the public. On many rivers in Oregon and Washington, it doesn’t take much in the way of internet sleuthing to find out the status of the current year’s Chinook, sockeye, coho or steelhead runs. Rivers like the Columbia, with multiple managing partners, diligently, and for much of the year, daily, report passage through dams. Websites like The Fish Passage Center or the University of Washington’s DART site provide anglers and river-curious onlookers with a wealth of information on current year run status, run histories, current and historical temp data, and a glimpse into the process and sometimes contentious politics behind fisheries management. All this is done out of respect for the rules around management of a highly-valued public resource. Unfortunately, this is not the case with Portland General Electric and its Pelton-Round Butte Project.
Data Downgrade
In January of 2025, PGE changed the way it is reporting steelhead returns. Deschutes River hatchery steelhead are marked by a clipped adipose fin and/or a maxillary clip on the left or right jaw line. Left-marked fish are “project origin” steelhead, or those that were reared, released and returned as part of the reintroduction effort. In a move that makes discerning the success of the steelhead reintroduction effort much more difficult, PGE is no longer differentiating between left and right maxillary marked fish. The new category lumps project origin fish in with right-maxillary marked fish, and PGE lists all these steelhead as “released into the upper basin.”
Further muddying the waters, juvenile steelhead outmigrating through Lake Billy Chinook are also not differentially marked in a way that would allow for scrutiny of reintroduction success. Beginning in 2020, between 30,000 and 40,000 of the 100,000 steelhead smolts reared as part of the reintroduction effort have been trucked around Lake Billy Chinook and released directly into the lower Deschutes River. These trucked smolts do not ever encounter the collection facility at the Selective Water Withdrawal Tower, nor do they have to face the perilous swim through Lake Billy Chinook. (In 2023, of the remaining 60-70,000 juvenile steelhead that attempted the journey from upstream of the Lake to the collection facility at the Tower, only 19.9 percent were collected. The median travel time for these fish was 42 days. For comparison’s sake, many juvenile hatchery steelhead released into the Clearwater River in Idaho make it to saltwater near Astoria in less time.)
This year’s modest bump in project origin steelhead might well be the result of the trucking protocol that was started in 2020. Unfortunately, there’s no way to glean this information. Project origin trucked steelhead are not marked differently than those that survive the swim through Lake Billy Chinook.
Muzzled Messenger?
What data is available has become more difficult for the public to see. On PGE’s website, a graph illustrating annual totals for return of sockeye, Chinook and steelhead was last updated in 2018. Currently, PGE only publishes monthly Deschutes fish reports on its website, and again, has combined non-project origin steelhead returns with project origin returns in these monthly reports. By comparison, at its Clackamas facility, returning steelhead numbers are reported daily.
Why the obfuscation? PGE isn’t providing a rationale. By all appearances, the dearth of data seems to be an attempt at damage control. Even with the bump in this year’s numbers, reintroduction success looks a long way off. Though managed to a large extent by PGE, these fish belong to the people of the state of Oregon. Withholding information, or willfully creating scientific uncertainty, does not serve the public interest well.
The DRA is working with PGE and ODFW to provide access to what should be public information about the current status, as well as future prospects, of steelhead on the lower Deschutes.
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