Big Bear Falls Final Design and Construction Plan

This grant award provided funding for the engineering, design, and National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) permitting of the Big Bear Falls steelhead passage project. This is a key project for steelhead recovery in the Potlatch River Basin, as Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) monitoring has documented density dependent steelhead populations below Big Bear Falls. Improving passage at Big Bear Falls would double the amount of suitable habitat available within the watershed and modeling suggests a potential increase in production of up to 23,818 steelhead smolts annually. Funding was used to advance from conceptual to 90% design and for IDFG to work with Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) to advance the project through the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process. A cultural and ethnographic survey of the site was completed by the Nez Perce Tribe (NPT) and they recommended not proceeding due to the sacred nature of waterfalls and Idaho State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) concurred. Both BPA and IDFG attempted to negotiate a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with NPT to mitigate for adverse effects but were unable to come to an agreement and with no path forward, the remaining project funds returned.



This project was multi-FY funded from FY16 and FY18 awards. FY16 funds were expended within the time frame of that award.

This project would have benefited Snake River steelhead. Improving passage for migrating adult steelhead through Big Bear Falls would have created access to an additional 25 miles of known high quality spawning and rearing habitat upstream of the falls. The upper watershed has very similar habitat characteristics to the reaches in adjacent watersheds where we find the highest densities of rearing O. mykiss juveniles, in terms of flow regime, instream water temperature, dissolved oxygen, riparian habitat, and substrate.