Columnist Paula DelGiudice: Plan would assist salmon recovery

Paula DelGiudice

Friday, March 31, 2000 | 10:30 a.m.

Paula DelGiudice's outdoors notebook appears weekly. Reach her at PDelGiudice@compuserve.com.

The deadline for submitting written comments on the Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service draft plan for protecting Snake and Columbia River salmon is today. It's important that people throughout the country submit their comments on this plan. Salmon in the Pacific Northwest are an important national treasure, much the same as the Everglades, the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River and any of their inhabitants.

The centerpiece of recovery and protection for the salmon in the Snake River is the breaching of four dams on the Lower Snake River: Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor. The dams were built to provide an inland seaport in Lewiston, Idaho. Building an inland seaport in Lewiston to transport commodities made about as much sense as it would to turn Las Vegas into a seaport. The environmental costs of the ill-founded project have been outrageous.

As soon as the last dam was completed in 1975, the fate of the salmon runs in Idaho was sealed. Annual returns of 100,000 wild adults in the 1960s fell to an average of 10,000 in the 1990s. Salmon seem to be able to survive some of the dams in the watershed, but these last four dams were barriers the fish just couldn't overcome. Scientists believe that if the dams aren't removed that these remaining runs of fish will be extinct by 2017.

It's interesting to note that prior to the advent of the large number of dams on the Snake River, salmon once spawned as far upstream as the streams in northern Elko County in Nevada. While the removal of the four Lower Snake River dams won't change that, it would assure the continuation of these valuable fish runs.

Removal of the dams will have several impacts, but none that can't be overcome.

There are alternate ways to transport goods to market. Proponents of breaching the dams advocate new investments in transportation infrastructure to better support any additional traffic, such as highway and rail improvements. There would be some loss of electrical power associated with the removal of the earthen plug that abuts each concrete structure. It is estimated that residential rates would increase between $1 to $5 a month if the energy source was lost. However, it is also estimated that conservation of electricity could easily make up the amount of energy lost.

What really makes the initiative to breach the dams look not only plausible but desirable is the amount of money that is spent each year on "Band-Aid" approaches to saving the salmon. For more than 20 years the federal government has experimented with fish-saving schemes to help salmon survive the deadly dams. They have barged the fish around the dams, they've trucked the fish around the dams. They've built fish ladders at the dams. Despite spending $3 billion since 1981 on these fix-it solutions, the populations of salmon continue to plummet.

Now the Clinton Administration must produce a long-term recovery plan for Snake River salmon and will select one of three options:

* The natural river option, which calls for the removal of the earthen portion of each of the four dams and the "mothballing" of the concrete structures.

* The status quo option of trucking and barging salmon around the dams.

* The status quo-plus option of accelerating salmon barging and trying to engineer the dams and reservoirs to be safer for salmon.

The extinction of Snake River salmon will have significant impacts on the region. One is the impact to the federal government when it must pay claims to Native Americans for abrogating treaties with Columbia Basin tribes.

In 1855-56 the United States signed treaties with the tribes, guaranteeing them the "right of taking fish" in return for millions of acres of land. Experts believe that a potential claim for abrogating the treaty would hover near billions of dollars.

Restoring salmon populations would positively impact the economy of the region by providing increased salmon fishing by sport and commercial fishers. It is estimated that the gain could be up to $500 million annually.

Aside from the economics, the breaching of the four Lower Snake River Dams is an opportunity for man to fix a monumental mistake that devastated our precious natural resources. When those opportunities come along, it is our moral imperative to not let them pass by.

You can address your comments recommending dam removal as the centerpiece of any option to: Brigadier General Carl A. Strock, Department of the Army, Walla Walla District Corps of Engineer, Attention: Lower Snake River Study, 201 North Third Avenue, Walla Walla, WA 99362-1876, e-mail: salmonstudy@usace.army.mil, or fax: 509-527-7832 or National Marine Fisheries Service: Federal Caucus Comment Record, c/o BPA-PL, 707 West Main Street, Suite 500, Spokane, WA 99201, e-mail: federalcaucus@bpa.gov. Make sure to request that they become a part of the official public comment record. Send a copy of your letter to Senators Reid and Bryan at U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510.