The reservoir sits at eighty per cent, and downstream is asking why

Storage is high for the date. Releases have sat at the agreement minimum since the second week of July. Both facts are published and neither is disputed.

What is disputed is whether the minimum was ever meant to be the operating target rather than the floor. The agreement says "not less than" — which the utility reads as a threshold and the fisheries office reads as a starting point.

The panel meets in October. Until then, the distance between those two readings is roughly the flow of a small river.

It matters most in the third week of August, which is when the temperature trigger becomes live. If storage is high and releases are at the floor when the trigger fires, the utility has to move a great deal of water quickly, and moving a great deal of water quickly is its own problem downstream.

The fisheries office has asked for a graduated schedule that anticipates the trigger rather than reacting to it. The utility says that is a matter for the panel. The panel meets after the trigger window closes.

Both parties have been here before. In 2019 the trigger fired in the last week of August with storage at eighty-four per cent, and the release that followed scoured two spawning beds that had been rebuilt the previous autumn. The utility's own report called the ramp rate 'suboptimal'.

The fisheries office asked then for the same thing it is asking for now. The panel agreed then that the question was reasonable and referred it to a working group, which met four times and produced a document that recommended further study.

The difference this year is that the office holds the gauge data, so the argument is at least being had over one set of numbers rather than two.