Washington Fly Fishing Forum banner

Have you answered Newhouse's "Do You Support Our Dams?" Survey yet?

4K views 69 replies 26 participants last post by  Salmo_g 
#1 ·
#18 ·
You are right...removing Hell's Canyon and Grand Coulee will restore 60% of the native spawning grounds. Why are we wasting our time with these trivial dams. Go for it.

By the way to restore the largest WA sockeye run we need to remove Northgate Mall and Ballard locks.

We need to prioritize and get on with it.

To replace Grand Coulee we need wind machines in West Seattle, Medina, Queen Anne and Bellevue.

Works for me!
 
#23 · (Edited)
I will support any dam removal that is not living up to its mitigation responsibilities, when the disadvantages outweigh the benefits, or when deemed socially or economically unfeasible. However, let me provide a few items for some to ponder. Hydro is about the only entity out there that actually even comes close to mitigating for their impacts. Don't believe me? Name another one?

Let's say we took away all the hydro projects. We are suddenly in need of a large quantity of energy. No problem you say, there are alternatives...fine. There are not a lot that can be developed that are as clean or efficient as hydro. Wind and solar. Not sure that will get us where we need to be.

Let's look at WDFW. The average person has no idea how much funding goes into WDFW as a result of hydro. You think their financial situation looks grim now...wait until all their hydro funding is gone. And say goodbye to hatcheries. Where do you think the funding for hatcheries comes from? So we don't need hatcheries you say...they are detrimental to wild fish anyway. Okay. But the tribes are guaranteed fish to catch by the governments. So now they are solely fishing over wild stocks. I'll wager some of you that fished the March 1 or the upcoming April openers caught/will catch fish that were funded by hydro...yes even in lakes. I'll bet most of you didn't know that?

Next is habitat. Where do you think funding for habitat conservation/restoration comes from? Where will the money for land acquisitions come from? Suddenly you have more land being developed in critical areas, with more wells being drilled and water taken from the ground. Where will funding come from for restoration to pay for all the development that occurred over the last 10 decades? All those who came in, took what they wanted for short-term financial gain and left are gone. Who will pay for irrigators and orchardists to revamp their water-delivery systems when needed because they don't do it themselves? Anybody eat fruit from the Wenatchee, Entiat or Methow areas? One reason why fruit is so inexpensive is because the orchardists are being subsidized by hydro.

What about the data that are collected now? Much of what we know about salmon and steelhead come from hydro-funded research and monitoring programs. If we only relied on state and federal government funding from non-hydro sources, we would know a lot less about fish. I was in a meeting yesterday in Penticton, BC. Much of the BC provincial government information on kokanee was obtained through tribal research, that was paid for as a result of reintroducing sockeye through hydro dollars.

Salmon and steelhead are struggling in areas with great habitat and no dams. No dams on the Fraser. But yet Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead just got assigned to the COSEWIC process in BC so they are not doing very well. Does anyone really think that salmon and steelhead will simply recover miraculously on their own when needing to travel hundred of miles up the Columbia or Snake, even without the dams, when Hoh steelhead are barely hanging on with headwaters in a national park and only swimming tens of miles upstream to spawn?

There are not many fish biologists who will claim that dams are beneficial to fish and those that do are wrong. However, there are probably about the same number of fish biologists who work for traditional non-hydro entities who wouldn't admit to themselves in the mirror (they may not do it in public) that hydro is a huge boost to our fisheries and one of the few entities who actually pay for their impacts on fish. I'm not trying to convince you hydro is great for fish. I'm just trying to let the average WA resident and fly angler know that there is a lot more to hydro than most people think and to be careful what you wish for. Next thing you know, we'll all be buying generators and solar panels and we can install them ourselves with all the extra time we have because we won't be fishing...in rivers or lakes, unless its for warmwater species. Sadly, it won't be much different than now...except our diesel, electric, and apple bills will be a lot higher.
 
#24 ·
[QUOTE="BDD
There are not many fish biologists who will claim that dams are beneficial to fish and those that do are wrong. However, there are probably about the same number of fish biologists who work for traditional non-hydro entities who wouldn't admit to themselves in the mirror (they may not do it in public) that hydro is a huge boost to our fisheries and one of the few entities who actually pay for their impacts on fish. [/QUOTE]

Great posting...my posting is kind of smart a$$ed on purpose but I get frustrated by the lack of "big picture" reality.

About 10 years ago I saw the results of a Department of Energy study that took the cost of all of the Col and Snake River projects funded by hydro rate payers and divided it by the number of adult returning salmon.

The cost per returning salmon? $750!
 
#26 · (Edited)
As a pluralistic society we don't all use the same metric to measure the value of dams. It's archaic thinking that every dam is a good dam that needs to stay. And it's delusional thinking that every dam must be removed. It's near certain that every dam will degrade over time and become non-functional if not maintained.

This survey is about the 4 lower Snake River dams. Whether they are worth keeping and operating depends what yardstick is used to measure their worth. The legislators who are contemplating federal legislation to keep the dams in place and bypassing the God Squad (CEQ) are examples of the kind of thinking that all dams are good, regardless of the costs and regardless of who is paying the costs. There is no objective measure of these dams value. The original costs are sunk costs, although it's possible that BPA is still paying off amortized original costs for them, at least in part. Whether the ongoing costs of maintenance and operation is worth the cost to taxpayers and ratepayers is at least debatable.

The impacts of the dams to fish is not. The dams have destroyed and adversely modified critical habitat by ordinary ESA criteria. And unlike the first 5 mid-C dams, the 4 lower Snake dams are owned by the federal government, operated by the Corps of Engineers, and the energy is marketed by BPA, and they are not required by law to fully mitigate their adverse impacts to fish and wildlife.

More likely than not, salmon and steelhead will not recover upstream of the 4 lower Snake dams with the dams in place. What is uncertain is whether they would recover with the dams removed or breached.
 
#27 ·
As a pluralistic society we don't all use the same metric to measure the value of dams. It's archaic thinking that every dam is a good dam that needs to stay. And it's delusional thinking that every dam must be removed. It's near certain that every dam will degrade over time and become non-functional if not maintained.

This survey is about the 4 lower Snake River dams. Whether they are worth keeping and operating depends what yardstick is used to measure their worth. The legislators who are contemplating federal legislation to keep the dams in place and bypassing the God Squad (CEQ) are examples of the kind of thinking that all dams are good, regardless of the costs and regardless of who is paying the costs. There is no objective measure of these dams value. The original costs are sunk costs, although it's possible that BPA is still paying off amortized original costs for them, at least in part. Whether the ongoing costs of maintenance and operation is worth the cost to taxpayers and ratepayers is at least debatable.

The impacts of the dams to fish is not. The dams have destroyed and adversely modified critical habitat by ordinary ESA criteria. And unlike the first 5 mid-C dams, the 4 lower Snake dams are owned by the federal government, operated by the Corps of Engineers, and the energy is marketed by BPA, and they are not required by law to fully mitigate their adverse impacts to fish and wildlife.

More likely than not, salmon and steelhead will not recovery upstream of the 4 lower Snake dams with the dams in place. What is uncertain is whether they would recover with the dams removed or breached.
Although I have liked a lot of posts on WFF over the years, this is the first one that I have actually "liked". It is worthy of breaking my own personal "don't like anything on WFF" rule. It's like when Pharaoh broke his own rule by using the name "Moses" on his deathbed which he previously forbade in The Ten Commandments.
 
#32 ·
Longputt, there is a fundamental difference between federal dams and federally licensed dams by FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). Federal dams have no inherent legal mitigation obligation, zero, none, nada, except whatever Congress decides to impose under the various editions of the federal Water Development Act. Congress authorized the Mitchell Act in response to salmon losses from Columbia River dams, but any objective analysis would describe the mitigation as partial, at best. Then came the Lower Snake Compensation Act well after completion of the 4 lower Snake federal dams. Whether the benefits of that have measured up to "complete" is very likely debatable. But with federal projects, you get what Congress decides, unlike in a civil case of loss due to cause and effect.

In the case of federally licensed dams, the Federal Power Act (FPA) applies. Enacted in 1927, they never saw a dam they didn't like, and would issue terms and conditions to make most any, even a loser of a project, profitable for its owner. Over time, rational sense gradually infused amendments to the FPA, partly by the prodding of several key lawsuits. So FERC in its Mead Decision in (year?) came to its senses and concluded that "mitigation proportional to impacts" of a project is a logical and rational way to go about dam licensing, and it isn't the federal government's responsibility to make every dam a profitable one. That is the job of the license applicant, to propose projects that are engineeringly, economically, and environmentally feasible.

So when the five mid-C PUD dams came up for re-licensing in the 1990s and early 2000s, the standards for nearly everything had changed from when they were originally licensed, including fisheries mitigation. And that is why we have seen such dramatic and significant improvements in upstream and especially downstream fish passage come about. While perfect accounting is impossible, the intent of the mid-C licenses and mid-C Habitat Conservation Plan is that there will be as many salmon and steelhead with the dams in place as there would be if the dams were not there at all.

Perfect accounting is impossible for many reasons, but among them are: the federal dams are not held to the same standard, and they kill mid-C fish, variations in ocean survival, the Blob, PDO, irrigation diversions and return flows, land use and development, and the usual host of suspects.

Sg
 
#35 ·
Longputt, there is a fundamental difference between federal dams and federally licensed dams by FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). Federal dams have no inherent legal mitigation obligation, zero, none, nada, except whatever Congress decides to impose under the various editions of the federal Water Development Act.

Perfect accounting is impossible for many reasons, but among them are: the federal dams are not held to the same standard, and they kill mid-C fish, variations in ocean survival, the Blob, PDO, irrigation diversions and return flows, land use and development, and the usual host of suspects.

Sg
Thank you. This is a fascinating management structure. I always worry when Congress is accountable to Congress, as it seems in this case. I've always felt like the Col and S river management had no clear goal. Can we measure progress? What is progress?

I think I'll stick to fishing! We caught a bunch of walleye today (on hardware) in water provided by the South Columbia Irrigation District (Oh No let's not start that!)
 
#33 · (Edited)
Yeah, poor Douglas PUD got the short end of the stick with only one dam. I guess there just wasn't enough real estate for them to squeeze in another to make it an even half dozen.

Salmo, your knowledge of the eastside hydro history is impressive, considering you spent your career on the westside.

Got my chores done this morning, wife is down making a late breakfast for us, which is starting to permeate upstairs. Not a stitch of wind and bluebird day. It's too nice to be inside talking about dams...I'm going fishing, even if they are hatchery stocked trout, funded by hydro dollars.
 
#36 ·
Washington is a net exporter of power. We have a huge amount of excess power that gets sold across state lines and up into Canada. BPA handles all the electricity sales, and you can check out their spreadsheets to get an idea of how much power they sell outside of WA. While the Snake dams in question have a generating capacity of about 1000 MW, they don't consistently generate that much power. Their capacity factor runs about 40%, meaning they only generate about 40% of their capability over the course of a year. Grand Coulee alone has the capability of producing 6000 MW. So even with the removal of the lower Snake dams, if the remaining dams ran at a higher capacity factor, the power wouldn't even be missed.
As for agriculture, there's still water in the river without the dams. Yes, intake structures for irrigation would need to be modified. But that was done when Wanapum pool had to be lowered a couple years ago due to a crack in the dam. So, it can be done.
And don't think you're paying for the dams? Check out Blaine Harden's book: A River Lost. Pretty eye-opening.
 
#37 ·
Washington is a net exporter of power. ........We have a huge amount of excess power that gets sold across state lines and up into Canada..................... Grand Coulee alone has the capability of producing 6000 MW. So even with the removal of the lower Snake dams, if the remaining dams ran at a higher capacity factor, the power wouldn't even be missed.....
Think globally, act locally....

Eastern Washington has a huge amount of excess power. We export it to western Washington and Oregon, plus California.

Western Washington produces LESS electricity than Grand Coulee Dam and 75% of it is from thermal sources. It is time for western Washington to start generating its OWN electricity. We are still pissed about you folks stealing it to build all those planes during WWII. Those Boeing factories were suppose to be moved to Wenatchee.

The power will be missed.'''' In western Washington. I prefer to keep the dams than destroying another 200,000 acres of endangered shrub-steppe habitat with Industrial Wind Areas on OUR side of the mountains. Put the windmills in western Washington they will generate power in winter when YOU need it rather than spring when it is wasted.

After western Washington replaces the electrical output from the Snake River dams...hey they can come out.

When did you move over from the coast to Richland??
 
#40 ·
Well, then build Industrial Wind areas in western Washington if you don't like nuclear.

My point is we have destroyed enough ecosystems in eastern Washington through windmills and to a certain extent dams. It is time for western Washington to generate their own power instead of "exporting" the environmental costs and reaping the economic benefits by sending electricity from east to west.
 
#41 ·
Maybe you should move if your that butt hurt. Western Washington has several power generating dams, and they have done their share of environmental damage too. Crying about what our forefathers did is a wast of time.
I think there is plenty of opportunities for wind farms in WW, the problems is all the trees, something EW has few of.(jk)
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top