Dams and salmon: Time to breach lower Snake River dams? Or is it a plan that won’t work?
Is it finally time to agree that the four lower Snake River dams should be breached to save salmon runs?
Perhaps no other environmental issue has been more debated in the Northwest than this one. Politicians are increasingly weighing in on the side of breaching — even while power, farming and shipping interests warn of dire consequences.
The nonprofit Columbia Basin Badger Club first addressed this issue in 2009, and at 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 16, we will return to the issue from a different viewpoint — that of veteran Northwest journalists who have covered both sides. The hourlong forum will begin at noon and be presented online through Zoom.
Rocky Barker, retired environmental reporter for the Idaho Statesman, points out that Northwesterners have spent some $18 billion to mitigate dam impacts on salmon after repeated rulings by federal judges that the agencies operating the dams are violating the Endangered Species Act.
Yet, Barker says, “It’s just not good enough. Spring chinook, sockeye and steelhead are all trending toward extinction in the Snake River watershed that includes the best remaining pristine habitat left in the lower 48 states.”
The Statesman has editorialized that breaching the lower Snake dams in Washington to restore salmon runs and mitigating the impacts on power supply, grain transportation and irrigation would be cheaper and more effective.
Barker says the political tide is turning with recognition that dam breaching also is an issue of tribal justice. And he says fisheries biologists believe restoring wild salmon access to quality high elevation spawning habitat would reverse the loss of these fish runs.
“Now is the time for all of us to come together and do the hard work of securing our future and ending the salmon wars,” he says.
But Ken Robertson, the retired executive editor of the Tri-City Herald, says, “The blunt and inarguable answer to Northwesterners who want to breach the lower Snake River dams to save the salmon is really quite simple: It won’t work.”
He maintains that studies show only about half the young salmon smolt that migrate downstream from the handful of Snake River tributaries not also blocked by dams in Idaho’s Snake canyon never reach the Pacific Ocean.
While people debate how many would make it to the ocean without the lower Snake dams, Robertson says many also don’t make it because of natural predation and warm river temperatures made worse in low-water years that are becoming more common with climate change.
And, Robertson says, “No matter how many more survive the trip to the ocean, the brutal fact is that currently only 1% survive to return. Likely even fewer fish than that will return as the impacts of climate change take their toll.
“Breaching the dams consequently is an attempt to solve the wrong problem. It’s ocean conditions that are the real problem,” he says.
Robertson points to a 2020 study led by David Welch that found salmon survival along the entire West Coast of North America has fallen by 65%.
“Whether a river has dams, no dams, is in the wilds of Northern British Columbia or in Northern California, the statistics are remarkably the same,” he says. “These numbers are the clincher for me.”
Registration for the one-hour online forum can be done at columbiabasinbadgers.com. Nonmembers are charged $5 while club members can attend free. An informal half-hour called Table Talk will follow where audience members can share thoughts.