Spinning Snake River tales

In response to constituent concerns, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers recently demonstrated a stunning lack of knowledge about the lower Snake River dams, which she describes as irreplaceable energy producers for Eastern Washington and the entire Pacific Northwest.

Fact: Over the last seven years, the energy from these dams has been replaced by wind power more than three times over. She follows her erroneous statement with claims about how much of the Northwest’s energy comes from Columbia-Snake hydropower, ignoring the fact that less than 3 percent of this energy comes from the lower Snake dams.

McMorris Rodgers also perpetuates the myth that 97 percent of Snake salmon and steelhead smolts survive passage through the eight dams blocking their route to the sea. Fact: 48 percent of wild salmon smolts and 54 percent of wild steelhead smolts do not survive their trip from Lower Granite down through Bonneville dam, after which avian predators eat 14 percent of the survivors. Annually, at least 10 million salmon and steelhead smolts die before reaching the ocean.

McMorris Rodgers either ignores the facts or is the captive of special interests currently propagating misinformation about these dams. She does her constituents no favor in either case.

Linwood Laughy

Kooskia, Idaho