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Home / Washington Business - November/December 2003 / Save the Dams, Save the Jobs, Save the Communities |
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Save the Dams, Save the Jobs, Save the Communities |
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Written On: November/December 2003 |
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Written By: By Richard Davis |
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Removing the four lower Snake River dams to preserve salmon runs would add $300 million to electricity bills, $40 million to transportation costs, eliminate 37,000 acres of prime irrigated cropland, wipe out a minimum of 2,300 jobs and reduce annual personal income by $278 million.
And possibly not save a single dammed salmon.
The US Army Corps of Engineers, which produced the economic estimates, calculates that the annual cost of breaching the dams is equal to an average of nearly $300 million per year over 100 years. The economic effects would fall heavily on rural Eastern Washington and the Columbia Basin.
Three critical industries would suffer closing or relocations if the dams were to be removed, according to the Corps. Primarily aluminum manufacturing would be hit by higher electricity rates. Wood products producers would incur higher costs to ship logs, wood chips, pulp paper and lumber. And food processors would be damaged by the loss of crops grown on lands irrigated from the lower Snake River.
The Corps’s detailed analysis remains the single best assessment of the consequences of dam removal, effectively refuting a more recent RAND Corporation study saying the dams could be removed with minimal consequences.
The Washington Research Council reviewed both the RAND and Corps studies for AWB, and concludes the RAND study seriously misrepresents the impact of dam removal.
According to the WRC, RAND minimizes the adverse economic effects by treating Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington as a single economy, using the $400 billion four-state economy to bury the substantial adverse regional impact. The Corps applies a more detailed regional analysis.
RAND also understates the effect dam removal would have on electricity costs. The Bonneville Power Administra-tion, which markets electricity generated by the dams of the Columbia River Power System, including the Snake River dams, continues to pay on the debt incurred for dam construction. Breaching the dams does not extinguish BPA’s obligation to pay the debt, yet RAND ignores this ongoing cost.
The Northwest Power Planning Council dismisses the RAND report. In a letter to RAND, NWPPC chair Frank Cassady wrote, “… it lacks important northwest-specific information and perspectives.”
A NWPPC press release puts a finer point on it: “RAND has been used, perhaps unwittingly, to advance special-interest policies in the Pacific Northwest. This can only harm RAND’s reputation as an objective research institution.”
Meanwhile, Columbia River salmon returns are setting modern day records, challenging the contention that salmon runs cannot coexist with the dams. Nine federal agencies in the Columbia Basin, including the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Environmental Protection agency) have concluded that there is no scientific justification for breaching the dams to save salmon at this time. Other, more cost-effective, strategies may produce better outcomes, they believe.
The governors of the four Northwest states want the dams to remain, and call the campaign to breach them “polarizing and divisive.” According to the best available research, it’s also misguided and unnecessary. Removing the dams would impose devastating economic consequences on an important segment of the Northwest economy, destroying some communities, while offering no assurance of salmon recovery.
Copies of the Washington Research Council report can be found at:
http://www.researchcouncil.org/Reports/2003/snakeriver/snakeriver.htm.
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