SF Chronicle - After $8 Billion Down The Drain, Time To Begin Snake River Dams Demolition

[hatrack]

President Obama is playing for time before wading into one of the oldest - and most far-reaching - disputes in the West's water wars: the fate of four dams on the Snake River in Washington. But eventually he and his policy team should muster the courage to go with a sweeping but science-backed option: Take down the string of outmoded structures that impede salmon. It's a plausible stance that is already guiding demolition plans for four similar dams on the upper Klamath River on the California and Oregon border. A decision to breach a dam on the Snake could widen a trend already under way to re-evaluate water, power and environmental problems brought on by the aging structures.

Built more than a half century ago, the Washington state dams were designed to shunt water to wheat farmers, crank out electricity and provide a shipping waterway along the lower Snake River, flowing from Idaho into the Columbia River. But there was a hidden cost, one that's drawn debate for over a decade: a sharp decline in salmon that's left a dozen strains endangered or near extinction.

Under legal pressure, federal operators have spent an incredible $8 billion to save the fish. There have been new hatcheries, extra scientific monitoring and dam improvements. Other steps border on comedy: salmon fingerlings are carried by barge through shipping locks or driven, limo-style, by tanker trucks downriver to avoid turbines and harmful spillways.

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The judge has also signaled he will consider breaching the dams if other solutions aren't convincing. For months, the Obama team has deployed a flying squad of experts to sound out the participants in the complicated, history-heavy saga. There's a glimmer of hope in the hurried finale. All sides - Indian tribes, farmers, environmentalists, power agencies and riverside cities - want a solution, not a prolonged fight. The pressure of a judicial dictate is obliging the warring sides to get together on a compromise plan that the White House can join as well. But, please, no more half measures that don't do the job. Tearing down the dams, which could take 10 to 15 years, could work if done right. Farmers could draw irrigation water from the free-flowing river. The power output - only 5 percent of the region's needs - could be replaced by system upgrades and conservation. Grain shipments might travel by rail instead of barge operations.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/16/EDHN1975DF.DTL#ixzz0ONTlSpTG


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/16/EDHN1975DF.DTL#ixzz0ONTZrEOT


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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/16/EDHN1975DF.DTL

[pscot]

1. I'll believe it when I see it happen

And maybe not even then. This has been a bitter fight. I can't believe the pro-dam crowd are just going to walk away.

[IDemo]

2. Seconded

This has been a political hot potato since I have lived in Idaho (40 years). I will believe dam removal when Helen Chenoweth's ghost stocks my back yard fish pond with salmon from a black heel-e-o-copter.