Design of Studies for Development of BPA Fish and Wildlife Mitigation Accounting Policy Phase II, Volume II, 1985-1988 Technical Report.

The incremental costs of corrective measures to lessen the environmental impacts of the hydroelectric system are expected to increase and difficult questions to arise about the costs, effectiveness, and justification of alternative measures and their systemwide implications. The BPA anticipate this situation by launching a forward-looking research program aimed at providing methodological tools and data suitable for estimating the productivity and cost implications of mitigation alternatives in a timely manner with state-of-the-art accuracy. Resources for the Future (RFF) agreed at the request of the BPA to develop a research program which would provide an analytical system designed to assist the BPA Administrator and other interested and responsible parties in evaluating the ecological and economic aspects of alternative protection, enhancement, and mitigation measures. While this progression from an ecological understanding to cost-effectiveness analyses is straightforward in concept, the complexities of the Columbia River system make the development of analytical methods far from simple in practice. The Phase 2 final report outlines the technical issues involved in developing an analytical system and proposes a program of research to address these issues. The report is presented in the Summary Report (Volume 1), and the present volume which consists of three technical reports: Part I, Modeling the Salmon and Steelhead Fisheries of the Columbia River Basin; Part II, Models for Cost-Effectiveness Analysis; and Part III, Ocean Fisheries Harvest Management.