Judge's Order May Boost Snake, Columbia Dam Spills To Aid Salmon

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"With Snake and Columbia river salmon runs dipping mysteriously low -- low enough to reignite talk of breaching electricity-producing dams -- a federal judge today plans to begin personally overseeing the rivers' hydropower system.

So few salmon have materialized this spring -- 160,000 fish are no-shows, about two-thirds of the total expected -- that fishing for the spring chinook run was severely curtailed. Puzzled fishery managers are searching for the cause.

That's the sobering backdrop to a key court hearing today before U.S. District Judge James Redden, who is expected to order federal agencies to start operating the dams in a more fish-friendly way. In the past, the judge has simply bounced the agencies' salmon-recovery plans back for more work and let them keep running the hydropower system as before. The dams help keep the lights on across the Northwest -- but also kill young salmon as they pass through on their way to the ocean. Partly because of the low salmon counts and partly because environmentalists and fishermen are making headway in court, the idea of knocking out four dams on the Snake River is again getting a push.

It's still a long shot, a highly controversial notion rejected by both Democratic and Republican administrations. The Seattle City Council's endorsement of the concept focused Eastern Washington's ire on city leaders like little else in recent years. Those trying to resurrect the dam-breaching idea say they think they'll be able to show it makes good sense economically as well as environmentally. That's a tall order, because more than electricity is at stake. The dams make it possible to barge wheat and other grains down the rivers at a low cost, and provide a handful of mega-farms with irrigation water."

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/227965_salmon10.html