Lower Snake River Compensation Plan Office

Congress authorized the construction of four dams on the lower Snake River in 1945. When construction funding was appropriated by Congress in 1954, only adult fish ladders and other minor dam modifications were funded to mitigate for anticipated adverse impacts to salmon and steelhead.

In the mid-1960s, after Ice Harbor had been constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (CoE) and Lower Monumental and Little Goose construction was underway, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS now NOAA Fisheries), and state fisheries agencies began to assess the need to compensate for fish and wildlife losses caused by construction and operation of the lower Snake River dams. The assessment was done under the authority of the federal Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. A joint FWS/NMFS Coordination Act Report was provided to the CoE in 1972 which described the short and long term impacts of all four Lower Snake dams and recommended mitigation and compensation for both fish and wildlife. The report provided the basis for the Corps' 1975 Lower Snake River Fish and Wildlife Compensation Plan (LSRCP) report to Congress. A year later Congress authorized the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan (LSRCP) as part of the Water Resources Development Act of 1976 (90 Stat. 2917). A major element of the authorized plan was a program to design and construct fish hatcheries to compensate for some of the losses of salmon and steelhead adult returns.