This GOP congressman wants to remove 4 dams to save Idaho's salmon. It'll cost billions.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

ENVIRONMENT

This GOP congressman wants to remove 4 dams to save Idaho’s salmon. It’ll cost billions.

BY ROCKY BARKER IDAHO STATESMAN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
FEBRUARY 06, 2021 10:00 PM

An Idaho Republican congressman wants to end the salmon wars by removing select hydroelectric dams, replacing the electricity lost, paying communities and businesses, and giving American Indian tribes more power.

A $33 billion Pacific Northwest energy and infrastructure proposal would end litigation over endangered salmon and authorize the removal of four dams on the Snake River in Washington beginning in 2030. U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of East Idaho released the plan after asking more than 300 groups what they would need if the dams came out.

Power marketed by the Bonneville Power Administration from the four controversial dams would be replaced. Shippers and farmers would get funds for alternatives to the barge shipping on the Snake and compensation for closed barge facilities. Lewiston in Idaho and the Tri-Cities in Washington would get billions for economic development.

Farmers across the Pacific Northwest, including those in Idaho’s Magic Valley, would get billions of dollars in incentives for water-quality projects. Farmers in Washington that now pump out of the reservoirs behind the Snake dams would get millions in compensation that they could use for altering their diversions. ... The plan would be funded by a federal infrastructure bill.

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[WhiteTara]

1. this is good news and sounds well

thought out.

[kurtcagle]

2. I'm surprised it's a Republican

Yes it will be expensive, but it has some very interesting implications. We have a hatchery here in Issaquah (about 15 miles from Seattle) and the decline in both Chinook and Coho Salmon has been alarming.

[hatrack]

3. A Republican? Did he fall and hit his head?

I mean, I'll take it, but . . . weird.

[OnlinePoker]

4. Serious question as these dams were all built in the 50's to 70's

The damage to the salmon habitats these 4 dams caused happened 50 years ago at a minimum (the same goes for most dams in the PNW). Why are they being blamed for the current, precipitous decline in salmon stocks?

[mountain grammy]

5. Because it's easier than saying Climate Change..

But he's reaching out and getting answers whether he likes them or not. Removing the dams is a step not requiring the acknowledgment of the effects of climate change.

"He also talked with federal, state and tribal scientists, environmental groups and angling groups who said the other major problems facing the salmon — cyclical poor ocean conditions and warming rivers because of climate change — could not be reversed easily."

[hatrack]

6. Because the decline hasn't been precipitious - it's been going on for decades . . .

Since the dams are run to maximize barge traffic, salmon are an expensive afterthought. Sometimes they're not even an afterthought. When Grand Coulee Dam was built, it was clearly understood that building it without fish ladders would wipe out the entire fishery upstream of the dam = and it was built without fish ladders anyway. Presumably, we'd all be eating steak.

Anyway, natural rise of the rivers in the spring, which in an undammed river would carry the fry down to the ocean in a week, or maybe two, no longer happens. Instead, they're barged downriver at great expense after being produced in hatcheries at great expense and if they do make it to the ocean and mature, they have to climb eight fish ladders to make it back to their home territories.

Things have improved (somewhat) since 1992, when Lonesome Larry was the only sockeye to make it back to Redfish Lake in Idaho; 20 years later, populations there were around 1,000 fish.

But the impact of warming is going to mean another hit to salmon, one that's also likely to impact the hydroelectric output of the four Snake River dams, all of which are run-of-the-river units that are sensitive to reductions in flow. They're not high gravity-arch dams like Hoover or Glen Canyon, and even those dams are having output trouble in the current drought.

Removing those four dams may be the only chance the remaining Snake/Salmon river populations have left at this point, since warming doesn't seem likely to slow down anytime soon.