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Home / Washington Business - November/December 2005 / Choices: Fish, Crops, Electricity, Transportation |
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Choices: Fish, Crops, Electricity, Transportation |
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Written On: November/December 2005 |
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Written By: by Ron Dalby |
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Should we rip out the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers?
Like it or not, we can never return the Columbia and Snake rivers to the natural state described in the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition two centuries ago. Captain William Clark commented at length in his journal about the hordes of salmon filling the river, so many that within a few days the men of the expedition were sick and tired of eating salmon morning, noon and night.
That was then; this is now. For three decades a series of eight dams—four on the Columbia River and four on the Snake River—have created essentially a chain of lakes linking Lewiston, Idaho, to the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Groups like the Save our Wild Salmon Coalition and others are convinced that the solution to dwindling numbers of salmon and steelhead is simply to rip out these dams—or at least the four Snake River dams. And while that may indeed allow a few more fish each year to make it to Idaho, it almost certainly will not bring back the millions and millions of salmon seen by Lewis and Clark.
According to the Columbia River Alliance:
"The overriding reason salmon have not recovered, despite the billions spent trying to help them, is that ocean conditions have been poor. Warm weather patters caused by El Nińo winds in the Indian Ocean have made ocean temperatures in the Pacific too warm. Salmon cannot survive in too warm water, and neither can the nutrients salmon consume. The Pacific Ocean south of the Washington-Canada border has not been able to support high salmon populations. While we are experiencing warm [water] temperatures, cold water and many nutrients have been pushed toward Alaska. This is one of the reasons Alaska’s salmon population is booming."
The Columbia River Alliance, according to their position paper at www.cyberlearn.com/cra.htm, believes in the existing practice of barging juvenile salmon smolt downstream past the dams. In their 1997 estimate, barging smolt cost $150 million a year whereas just drawing down the river behind the Snake River dams—another option under consideration—would cost more than $500 million.
Removing the dams, according to the Columbia River Alliance, would create tremendous social upheaval. While they don’t appoint a dollar cost to this upheaval, you can assume they believe these costs will be massive.
"Removing the dams would dramatically impact the people of our region. It would eliminate the ability of boats and barges to go to Lewiston, Idaho, the world’s most inland seaport. Farmers from throughout the Midwest use the Port of Lewiston to transport their crops to market. Goods needed by the people who live in interior Idaho and Montana are shipped by barge to the port for distribution.
"The social costs of removing the dams are not only borne by navigation interests, but [by] those of irrigated agriculture, local communities, travelers who recreate on the reservoirs, and anyone who uses electricity to light or heat their homes."
Finally, the Columbia River Alliance notes a 1996 study which found that the smolt transportation program produced 2.9 times as many hatchery-produced adult salmon. Wild fish, they claim, survive in even greater numbers using the barge system.
Fish aside, a dollar cost that is easily calculated is the value of the electricity produced by the dams. According to the Bonneville Power Administration, the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers produced 1.6 million kilowatt hours, about 85 percent of the electricity used in the Pacific Northwest in 1996. In 1997, BPA valued that electricity at more than $2.5 billion. Today’s value would be significantly higher.
BPA goes on to note that, "Economists generally agree that the current 'velocity' of money in the U.S. economy is two or three. To derive the actual value of the benefits the BPA system provides, one would have to multiply $2.5 billion by two or three which gives the range of $5 billion to $7.5 billion. This is the true economic contribution of hydropower to the northwest economy."
BPA concludes its position paper by stating that: "The proposals to remove or modify the lower Snake River projects and John Day [Dam] would add an additional 15-20 percent to the price of our power." (See www.cyberlearn.com/bpa.htm.)
The most objective review of the Columbia-Snake rivers situation comes from the National Marine Fisheries Service as published in their position paper at www.cyberlearn.com/nmfs.htm.
"There are many causes of the salmon stocks' decline in abundance: dams, water use, over harvest, habitat destruction, hatchery impacts, and other human-induced factors all play roles in reducing the Snake River salmon populations. Ocean conditions have also been a significant factor in the decline of salmon populations. As noted by the Snake River Recovery Team, no single factor is responsible for the full extent of the decline, and no single action will restore the fish. No 'magic bullet' or single-purpose 'fix' exists to restore the salmon populations to their former levels of productivity and abundance."
The common thread running through the groups quoted above is the desire to find a solution that makes possible the survival of the salmon and the economic and recreational system that has developed around the Columbia and Snake rivers dams. Contrast this position with zealots like the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition (SOS). The following is on the first page of their Web site, www.wildsalmon.org.
"The Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition is a nationwide coalition of conservation organizations, commercial and sportfishing associations, businesses, river groups, and taxpayer advocates working to restore self-sustaining, healthy, harvestable, and abundant wild salmon to the rivers and streams of the Pacific Northwest. We believe the most effective method of achieving our goal is by removing the four Lower Snake River dams."
This rather blunt statement does not suggest much opportunity for compromise, nor does it seem to consider the livelihood of the thousands of people who live along the Snake River from Pasco, Wash., to Lewiston, Idaho. These people rely on the reservoirs behind the dams for their water supplies whether just for drinking, to irrigate crops, or to support various industries that create employment in the region.
Courtroom Drama
SOS, Indian tribes, commercial fishermen and others who want to return to the days of old have received a boost from U.S. District Court Judge James Redden in Portland. His decisions indicate that he, too, is in favor of dam removal or, at the very least, of drawing down the river behind the four Snake River dams. SOS is so proud of Redden’s recent rulings that the first two items under accomplishments on its Web site brag about his recent decisions.
Redden’s most-publicized decisions involve shutting down the electricity-generating turbines at several of the dams for months during the summer in an effort to improve smolt survival. Thus, hydroelectric power that could have been produced was not.
On a more fundamental level, FOSS tugboat captain Kevin Gabriel blames Redden for halting dredging activity on a particularly shallow, narrow stretch of the Snake River a few miles upstream from Pasco. According to Gabriel, this section should be dredged annually and hasn’t been for several years now. The water is getting dangerously shallow and may ultimately limit commercial traffic on the river.
At his most recent salmon hearing in early October, Redden trashed two years of work by the National Marine Fisheries Service saying that the plan developed at his instructions over the last couple of years was illegal in four different ways. He gave NMFS another year to get it right, warning that the four Snake River dams may well be breached by his orders if he doesn’t like what they come back with.
Redden will probably not be able to breach the dams immediately with a stroke of his pen because there will undoubtedly be a series of appeals, possibly extending all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. There is also the possibility of congressional action in Washington, D.C., as another means of dampening the effect of Redden’s ultimatums. It is significant, though, that the only ones who seem to win in his court room on this issue are those who demand the most extreme measures—breaching the dams.
We could breach the dams tomorrow, but that would be a very short-sighted, feel-good-for-the-moment approach to benefit relatively few at considerable cost to many. Breaching the dams is designed to serve but a single, so far unprovable purpose: Salmon runs will rebuild if we take away the dams.
The flip side of dam removal is that doing so in pursuit of the pie-in-the-sky goal of bringing back millions of salmon will wreck a transportation system, destroy agriculture in the region, and significantly raise rates for electricity through much of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Thus the key questions becomes: Is it worth risking everything for the possibility that a few more salmon might make it all the way to Idaho?
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