I, for one, would appreciate a balanced article on this issue.

All of the advocacy organizations mentioned in the article (Save Our Wild Salmons, Working Snake River for Washington, Northwest Power and Conversation Council, Citizens for Progress) want the dams breached.

Where is representation of the other side of the story. In my occasional trips out there, I have NEVER met anyone who thinks that taking out the dams is a good idea. I know that there are organizations that support this view, but one wouldn't get that sense reading this article.

OK, so let's say for the sake of the argument that the four federal dams get removed. Lo and behold, the salmon that may pass through the lower Snake River run smack dab up against the Hells Canyon complex of dams owned and operated by Idaho Power...dams with no fish passage facilities. What next campers?

RE: LotusRally - but isn't that one of the main messages in this article? That there are a growing number of people - more than 50 businesses and community leaders from eastern Washington saying "yes - we want to have this conversation - an informed discussion focused on the solutions and meeting the needs of people - farmers and fishermen, ratepayers and communities." Dam removal may not happen in the end, but perhaps we will finally make decisions based on an accurate assessment of the costs and benefits of all the options. And, we may find ways to leverage this issue to address other pressing issues in eastern Washington or in the state.

The strategy of collectively sticking our heads in the sand is a loser all the way around.

The salmon crisis is hurting fishing and recreation communities throughout the Northwest, and the ongoing uncertainty about how we will restore them is hurting a whole lot of other businesses and communities at the same time.

We need our political leaders in Washington to join with other leaders in the region to have a honest informed conversation, make potentially hard choices, and find ways to meet the needs of our people in the region. Rather than pretend this problem doesn't exist, we need to confront it and tackle it. This is exactly the type of leadership I expect from our elected officials, but for now at least, it is nowhere to be found.

Re: Pinbeak: Removing the four lower Snake River dams would provide wild salmon and steelhead to thousands of river miles in NE Oregon, central Idaho and SE Washington-more than 5500 river miles of prime salmon habitat in Idaho alone. You are right that the Hells Canyon complex completely blocks salmon access to many rivers upstream of those dams. But the Salmon, Clearwater, Grande Ronde, Wenaha, Imnaha and other drainages are downstreams of the Hells Canyon dams.

I live in eastern Washington and there is real and growing interest in having a more honest and informed discussion on the lower Snake River dams. More people and businesses are recognizing the value of quality of life, recreation, and clean rivers to the regional economy, as a means of attracting new businesses and professionals to our region. Agriculture and other traditional industries will always be extremely important to the Inland Northwest, but to stay competitive it is in our region's best interest to protect those qualities and amenities that make this part of the world so special.

Farmers and others have legitimate concerns about maintaining affordable and efficient transportation for their livelihoods. These issues absolutely must be addressed if in the future the dams were removed. The problem is that there is no informed discussion occurring right now on whether there are alternatives that would work for farmers--and even potentially work better.

What transportation system will growers need 20 years down the road? What crops will be grown and where will they need to ship out of? The lower Snake River corridor works well for shipping soft white wheat to Port of Portland, but is of little help shipping some other crops, many other goods, or, perhaps most importantly, getting goods to the Puget Sound ports. We should at least be asking the question of whether some of the billions being spent on failed salmon recovery efforts and Snake River dam maintenance might benefit the region more if invested in a modern rail system and other transportation improvements.

This is a question that at least should be asked and should be researched. It would certainly be in the salmon's interests, but it also would be in the best interests of farmers, Spokane, Clarkston-Lewiston, etc. The region would at least be in a better position to have an informed discussion and decision-making process, rather than maintaining a status quo built on unquestioned assumptions.

Ok, let the conversation resume: The last time I dived into this issue, which was some years ago, I started out in favor of dam removal, but changed my mind. Here's why:
True,those dams should never have been built in the first place. They came when all the best dam sites were taken, but the nation was still in a dam-building frame of mind, so we built them anyhow.
That said, they have become part of the landscape and of the ecosystem. I suspect most of those who favor removal have never seen them. They're huge, and removing them will cost more than the original construction. Nobody has ever taken out dams this size, and we don't know the short or longterm consequences of removal -- especially the impacts of enormous amounts of silt that have accumulated behind the dams. As a result, scientists don't know if removal would actually bring back those salmon runs, or how long it might take.
Meanwhile, the greens too easily dismiss the importance of the power generated by those dams -- about four percent of the regional supply, power than can only be replaced by burning more oil or coal. Doesn't sound like a good idea.
While some folks in Eastern Washington support removal, most do not. And the project would worsen the state's east-west divide. One could argue that, if we really want ot save salmon runs, then let's take out the Ballard Locks, which kill more innocent fish than the Snake River dams.
Finally, we are about to take out two older dams on the Elwha River near Port Angeles. While the Elwha dams are dwarfed by the Snake River projects, it will be the most ambitious removal project yet, and we will learn things that that will inform the continuing debate over the Snake River.
Meanwhile, environmental quality depends on our collective ability to make wise decisions based on a realistic, eyes-open assessment of costs and benefits. Blowing up Snake River dams doesn't appear to pass the test.

@pugetsoundman - "but isn't that one of the main messages in this article? That there are a growing number of people - more than 50 businesses and community leaders from eastern Washington saying "yes - we want to have this conversation"

I know more than 50 businesses and community leaders in eastern Washington and I am only in the Lewiston area a couple of times a year.

My own prejudice here is that I don't like small, vocal groups trying to set the agenda, particularly when they try to portray it as some kind of organic, local uprising, particularly when they seem to be trying to pitch their agenda to people outside of the area and get those people outside of the area to, say, demand action from a Senator.

BTW, Ross Anderson's four paragraphs providing more balance than the entire original article. Thanks for writing it, Ross.

Unfortunately, people on both sides of the issue are making guesses (educated, but guesses nevertheless) about all kinds of important questions. How much would removal cost? What would have to be done with the silt? Just what would be required in the way of transportation improvements to make the farmers whole? Washington's senators joined Larry Craig for years in staunchly opposing independent studies by the National Academy of Sciences try to answer these questions. Wouldn't such studies be useful to resolve the question?
Second, it appears pretty clear that wild salmon runs will not survive if the dams stay in place. Despite more than $10 billion spent so far, the federal agencies have not managed to get one of the 12 or 13 listed runs even close to de-listing. Not even close. So let the pro-dam advocates be honest and admit they're choosing extinction for the fish, and explain (as some try to) why that makes sense. But pretending we can have it both ways is an enormous waste of time and money.
Third, let's recognize that it's not just salmon who'll go swirling down the drain if a solution isn't found. Southern Resident killer whales, the ones who spend the summer in Puget Sound, are endangered. They depend primarily on chinook (perhaps 70 - 80 percent of their diet). They now suffer from toxic prey, and inadequate quantities of it. By far the best bet for producing significantly more chinook is the lower Snake drainage. Without more chinook, the orcas will be history.

"Meanwhile, the greens too easily dismiss the importance of the power generated by those dams -- about four percent of the regional supply, power than can only be replaced by burning more oil or coal. Doesn't sound like a good idea."
That assessment is not in line with the NW Power and Conservation Council's sixth 20-year plan. The Council finds that the region can meet all its needs, including growth, and remove the lower Snake Dams, without increasing carbon emissions.
The Council foresees region-wide population rising about 1.2% a year through 2030, plus new and bigger TVs and other electronics and expanded air conditioning use pushing up per-person use 0.2% per year. As a result, the region will need another 7,000 average megawatts (aMW) of electricity – fully one-third of total current use. The plan calls for meeting 85% of those growing power needs by using less of it … by switching to more efficient lights, appliances, motors, computers, heat pumps, etc. The Council estimates that acquiring the energy efficiency in the plan will create 47,000 new jobs for the region.
Renewable portfolio standard (RPS) laws in Oregon, Washington and Montana mandate enough new renewable energy resources to cover the remaining 15%. Some new natural gas generation will be needed toward the end of the period to help integrate the (mainly wind) renewables and in some scenarios to substitute for coal-fired generation.
The Council expects that this combination of cheap efficiency and RPS renewables will continue and even increase the region’s current power surplus, allowing us to affordably move away from coal-fired generation and salmon-endangering lower Snake River hydropower without having to build much new conventional generation. (See Chapter 14 of the Sixth Plan, figures 14-1 through 14-3)

As this article points out, there is a large web of interests and groups involved in the issue of declining salmon and steelhead populations on the lower Snake River. The leadership of Senator Murray and Senator Cantwell are essential in facilitating a discussion among these groups, some of which have already stated in a letter written to the senators that they are ready to discuss solutions on issues such as agriculture, energy, transportation, and conservation. The people are ready to talk; now it is time for our elected leaders to listen.

I don't think the article reflects the Rand Study accurately. The Rand Study says the benefits of dam removal are predicated on the installation of alternative energy and energy efficiency improvements.

However, alternative energy is several times more expensive and requires a considerable amount of annual maintenance. The overall cost of energy would be much higher than at current.

Further, much of the alternative energy (wind, solar) will be outsourced to China because of China's monopoly of rare earth elements needed to make some of the components. That is a net outflow of US dollars. That is NOT good for America.

Randy, I don't deny that it's a challenge to define how "expensive" Snake River power would be to replace. But it's expensive to have, too. Example: Chief Joe dam just got a new turbine in March. It cost 120 million. They plan to replace 10 turbines in the next four years. That is pretty darned expensive. Lewiston, Idaho is going to flood if something isn't done about sedimentation. The two options the Corps has proposed: Dredging until the end of time, or raising the levees, bridges, roads, etc., and further walling off downtown. That's expensive. The town of Astoria is among many that used to be wealthy from salmon fishing, processing, and selling. It now has crushing unemployment and increased addiction and domestic violence problems. The cost of subsidized barge traffic, as Mr. Chasan's article points out, could be seen as an expense. And then there are the billions spent on ineffective salmon recovery measures. And, of course, the dams came with a 50-year shelf life, more or less (even concrete's not forever) - so let's not forget the maintenance and replacement costs that go along with decaying infrastructure. If one includes all the costs of dam breaching and all the costs of dam retention, it might well be that breaching is cheaper. Of course, if Murray and Cantwell won't let independent studies be done, how can we make a wise and informed decision?
PS I wasn't aware that any wind-power components need to be outsourced to China - I thought that was just an issue with solar.

I would like to address several points that are misleading. Before doing so, I am from E Washington, I have seen all four dams many times and travel that country frequently.
1. Ross A says: "That said, they (the dams) have become part of the landscape and of the ecosystem."
This is simply not true. The four dams have altered the ecosystem radically and by several measurements, have degraded the the benefits and services that the lower Snake River (LSR) can deliver to people. For example, the reservoirs have replaced over 1200 acres of riparian corridor with rip-rap rock structure (40% of all of the reservoir banks) that deny birds mule deer, native fish and waterfowl the cover and critical habitat that they need to thrive. As a result the USACE has documented precipitous declines in many of the bird, fish and mammal communities that thrived there before the dams. The reservoirs continue to rob the landscape the critical functions that a "normal" flowing river provides. This, in turn, robs people of a unique recreational asset that would benefit the entire region were it functional.
2. RA says "While some folks in Eastern Washington support removal, most do not"
Again, this is not a true statement... it is a red herring... dam removal could take many forms... if these dams were traded for investments in transportation that benefited ag growers and an energy infrastructure that put the region in an economically advantageous position, many in Eastern WA would likely support dam removal.
3. RA says: "One could argue that, if we really want ot save salmon runs, then let's take out the Ballard Locks, which kill more innocent fish than the Snake River dams".
Not true. Talk to any federal or WA, OR, or ID State Biologist and they will tell you that the tremendous genetic diversity of the four listed stocks of salmon and steelhead represent that last great reservoir of salmonid genetics in the lower 48. We are talking about genetics that have existed in rivers for millions of years, survived ice ages and floods. To compare the impact of the Ballard Locks and the four LSR dams is like comparing the economic diversity in Wilbur WA to Seatle WA. Apples and Oranges. Additionally, such a comparison completely ignores the benefits of healthy wild salmon runs to the Nez Perce Tribe and the communities of Idaho.
4.LotusRally says: "My own prejudice here is that I don't like small, vocal groups trying to set the agenda..."
Then perhaps you prefer massive, unresponsive and out-of-touch federal agencies setting the agenda. To date the BPA/NOAA/USACE have had a death grip on the issue, ignoring sound science in favor of politics, spending billions of dollars with poor result, and suffocating dialogue at every turn to protect a status quo (barge travel/hydro-power) that severely restricts the benefits potentially delivered by the Snake RIver. The true cost of these actions has hurt communities from AK to OR to ID and all over WA to say nothing of the ecological damage they have wrought on our region.
Washington State needs real dialogue, real cost benefit analysis, and we need to let the light of new ideas in on this issue.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council is not an advocacy group and does not support removing the four lower Snake River dams, as suggested in LotusRally's comment above. The Council's Sixth Northwest Power Plan shows how 85 percent of our regional growth in demand for electricity over the next 20 years can be met with improved energy efficiency (conservation), with the remainder from renewsble resources, primarily wind, and a small number of new thermal power plants, most likely fueled with natural gas. If the region is successful with the conservation, consumer bills do go down slightly over time, but that is because of the low cost of conservation, not dam removal.
John Harrison, NPCC

Via e-mail, RDH writes:
"While I appreciate 75% of your website’s material (and that’s a “good thing’’) … the article on removal of Snake River dams by Daniel JACK Chasan prompted me to suspect: Chasan must live and breathe in the city, as he’s clueless about the real world. Where DO these people come from that want to disassemble America??

“Save Our Wild Salmon”?? Surely, he jests – as the quickest, most equitable, and surest way to restore wild salmon runs in the PNW is to eliminate Indian gill netters – period -- or didn’t that occur to him?? Ever seen the ‘indigenous peoples’ net barricades across our PNW rivers … ???"

"Indian Gillnetters" is truly a red herring. The treaties signed granted the whites to 50% of the fish, not the other way around. You have own a resource to grant rights to it, and the native people had those rights.

Key to any discussion is that historically railroads gouged farmers for moving stuff, the old long haul vs short haul rates etc. The dams with barges and the roads with trucks give it a 3-way split which keeps the market more competitive. If the farmers owned the rail line rights as a collective maybe they could keep the freight rates reasonable. It is in all of our interests to keep those prices competitive.

Any person who would like to engage in an informed discussion about Salmon should read "King of Fish" by David Montgomery. http://www.amazon.com/King-Fish-Thousand-Year-Run-Salmon/dp/0813342996 (or from your local library).

The breaching of the Elwah river dams will provide some interesting data on Salmon recovery. However they are an independent issue from the Snake River dams. Rather we need to look at the total cost of the Snake River dams, including the negative externalities of both their existence and removal. As far as I can tell, they need to go. But I'm a salmon fisherman and it biases my view.

University of Washington professor and MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant award winner David Montgomery addressed the problem of the lower Snake River dams in his book "King of Fish". To summarize, the plight of the salmon in the Pacific Northwest mirrors the history of the salmon in continental Europe, England, Scotland, the Japanese island of Hokkaido, and New England. Without exception in all these locations, political considerations dictate continued exploitation of the resource until the stocks are beyond recovery. Political considerations always dictate discounting scientific based management and result in overfishing or habitat destruction.

The only place where this has been avoided is in Alaskan wild-salmon runs where Federal law mandated no more than 50% harvest of returning stocks and in Scotland where private river ownership could control habitat and place limits on harvest.

In his book, he explains that a successful salmon fishery requires ALL of the following:
- good habitat, which mean free-flowing streams unimpeded by dams and extensive estuaries in which salmon may breed and mature. In the Pacific Northwest, it also requires deep pools created by snags which are left in rivers to permit cooler waters for chinook salmon.
- eliminating open ocean capture of salmon. Since it cannot be determined where a fish originates when caught on the open ocean (or Puget Sound for that matter) salmon fishing needs to be restricted to the mouth of rivers as fish return.
- no more that 50% capture of returning salmon.
- elimination of hatcheries which only serve to raise larger fry which out compete natives for food resources

One can quickly see how such common sense approaches conflict with the politics between commercial and recreational fisherman, conflict with property rights advocates, and conflict with accepted wisdom that hatcheries can compensate for overfishing and habitat degradation.

It is certain that the cost of the lower Snake river dams would be high. But the benefit is one that last in perpetuity. Cost Benefit Analysis is valid only for short time frames because our knowledge to ascertain the trade offs are only valid in the short run. It would be much better to make the decision in the framework of what is the right decision for my great-great grandchildren.

It is worth noting that the lower Snake dams were forestalled for more than a decade by concerns about their impacts to fish populations. State and federal fisheries biologists quite emphatically predicted the troubles that would come.

The Chief of the Army Corps maintained in 1952 that "there will be no difficulty at this project in the proper handling of the fish problem, although he acknowledged that "there is the killing of the little fry going downstream; we have not been able to solve that." As Montgomery says, "Once again, the plan was to figure something out later." (As relayed in King of Fish, by David Montgomery)
And that "later" never seems to come.

Can we assume that all those in favor of removing the dams are in favor of removing the Seattle seawall and the rest of the artificial waterfront infrastructure to allow a estuary to be reformed. Now repeat that in Tacoma, Everett just to be consistent.

The four lower Snake River dams are a disaster for west coast fisheries, and were always projected to be so, but were built by Congressional fiat regardless. Here is a quote from a report back in 1949 from the Washington Department of Fisheries on why these dams should never be built, and sheds light on why -- when you take all the environmental and fisheries damage they have done into account and do not blithely ignore it -- they should and can now be removed and replaced by unsubsidized rail transportation and true renewable energy that does not cost so much in jobs elsewhere:

“Another serious threat to the Columbia river fishery is the proposed construction by the U.S. Army Engineers of Ice Harbor and three other dams on the lower Snake river between Pasco., Wash., and Lewiston, Idaho, to provide slackwater navigation and a relatively minor block of power. The development would remove part of the cost of waterborne shipping from the shipper and place it on the taxpayer, jeopardizing more than one-half of the Columbia river salmon production in exchange for 148 miles of subsidized barge route.... This policy of water development, the department maintains, is not in the best interest of the over-all economy of the state. Salmon must be protected from the type of unilateral thinking that would harm one industry to benefit another.... Loss of the Snake River fish production would be so serious that the department has consistently opposed the four-phase lower dam program that would begin with Ice Harbor dam near Pasco.”
-- From the State of Washington Department of Fisheries Annual Report for 1949.

Anyone who says these four lower Snake River dams should be kept "at any cost" has never totaled up all the costs! The effort to mitigate for their salmon impacts alone far exceeds their actual economic benefits. -- Glen Spain, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA)

Until we stop netting bank to bank, nothing is going to recover.

The Snake River system offers the most significant chance for salmon recovery in the Northwest, as the Snake historically provided over half the chinook and steelhead in the entire Columbia basin. Recall that the Columbia itself was the greatest producer of salmon on earth - making the Snake even more important.

It's true that the lower Snake dams should never have been built; we might blame the cold war mentality that dominated the decades following WW2 (power production for Hanford was needed to make nuclear weapons), but we also must blame ourselves for our heedless approach to nature. The US Army Corps reported that the dams would return only 15 cents on the dollar.

I would ask people to take a long-term perspective. The lower Snake dams are industrial facilities; all industrial facilities have a limited lifespan. Make your own prediction of how long those four dams might remain in place. But eventually, due to siltation, obsolescence, safety, or act of nature, they will come down. THEY WILL COME DOWN.

Replacing the seawall in front of Tacoma, Everett and Seattle won't fix the Salmon problem in these areas. The streams are long gone, or decked over. Fixing the culverts on the streams that do empty into the sound would help. The tribes sued the state and won and yet it's still a long backlog of projects being poorly funded.

On the one positive side, the Nisqually river delta estuary was recently un-diked and that should help the King run there.

As for net fishing, it's not how you do it, it's how many you take vs how many are let by after you remove the net. And the tribes are entitled to 50% of the catch. I would prefer that they use a fish weir so that they can sort the fish alive and release the largest ones to breed. But it's their choice. Same for sport fisherman, there should be a slot limit (minimum and maximum size)

Second issue on net fishing is the removal of ghost nets. It's in everybody's interest to remove nets which are "lost" but still fishing. This removal project has only been partly funded. More money spent here could in the long run improve fish runs.

Oh and yes, the dams will have to be replaced or removed sometime. Concrete does not last forever. The question is whether we wait until there are no native fish stocks left or not.

"bank to bank" netting has little to do with recovering ESA listed fall chinook, steelhead, spring/summer chinook or the sockeye in the Snake RIver Basin. This is well documented in the scientific literature. It is just as well documented that the real problems with recovering these fish have to do with losing out-migrating smolts to delayed mortality as a result of the hydro system... most notably the four LSR dams.
As Gary P stated, sea walls in Everett, Tacoma and Seattle, will not aid in recovering Snake Basin runs of wild fish. Nor is it realistic economically. Removing the LSR dams to recover what are arguably the greatest genetic pool of salmonids in the lower 48, is at once realistic and beneficial for communities in Eastern Wa, Idaho and even those in Oregon and Alaska who depend on a reliable runs of spring/summer chinook salmon.
As Idahofisherman (& GaryP) stated, the dams will come down. Their life span and that of the levees along their reservoirs is relatively short (approximately 75 years). It is simply a matter of when and how. Sooner rather than later is essential with proper investments to make the economic transition seamless and position Eastern WA communities in a place to take advantage of the opportunities presented by a post-LSR dam landscape and economy.

So you could remove the dams expecting to find the ancient, cold, rapid and smaller river that must lay below. However, as one person pointed out, there are now vast beds of silt where the untouched river once ran.
Why think small and retrogressive? If the original river is what is sought, why look beneath? Think big. Thing above. Think.
The country needs jobs like it did in the 30's. The salmon and the future need a cold, smaller and faster river. Start at the highest free flowing water and reconstruct a small, fast channel from there, damn crest to dam crest, until you reach the unrestricted flow to the open ocean.
Engineer a way to guide the fish to the waters they need and sacrifice the needed water from the dam ponds. Fishladder? No! Fishriver! Hundreds of miles long, scenic, and man-made natural! Impossible? So was Grand Coulee and all the rest.

One major issue that the article fails to address is the fact
that the silt behind all four dams will be allowed to flow into
the reservoir behind Bonneville dam. That would cause a whole
new world of problems.

One should not underestimate what a huge task it would be to remove the dams, and it is most likely less expensive to maintain the dams for the next 100 years than to rebuild and restructure the entire Snake river ecosystem.

However it seems that the Corps of Engineers plans to study the potential breaching of one or more dams (see the "Discussion Forum" on http://snake.seareport.net/)

In the same Forum you can also find an article about the fact that over $40 have just been awarded for Snake River Dam and Lock repair projects.