Council Weighs Fish Options Removing Dams Called Best For Recovery But Would Cost Jobs

A fish advocate contends removing the government’s four Lower Snake River dams in southeastern Washington would be the most effective, cost-efficient way to save endangered Northwest salmon runs.

But Port of Lewiston manager David Doeringsfeld told the Northwest Power Planning Council on Wednesday that the ports of Lewiston, Clarkston and Whitman County would lose at least 1,100 jobs without the barging business that the dams allow.

And Pat Barclay of the Idaho Council on Industry and the Environment said breaching Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor dams would cost the Northwest some 4,000 jobs and $108 million in annual income.

“There aren’t enough Micron Technologys to go in to make up for the jobs you’d be losing if you took those dams out,” Barclay said.

The Northwest Power Planning Council heard from two panels representing salmon and steelhead recovery interests on one hand and industry on the other.

Both sides agreed that economic considerations are important in determining how best to save anadromous fish runs in the Columbia and Snake river systems. But they disagreed about the potential impact of removing the dams.

The council’s Independent Scientific Advisory Board last September recommended lowering the 90-mile downstream pool between John Day and McNary dams to the natural river level to help get more migrating juvenile salmon to the ocean more quickly each year.

Idaho Gov. Phil Batt has said he agrees with establishing “a more normative river configuration” for salmon and steelhead recovery, including drawing down the John Day reservoir to its minimum operating pool. And the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates eight hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, wants to continue barging young salmon around dams and modifying operations to make the dams more fish-friendly.

But Boise fish advocate Reed Burkholder wants to go much further by tearing out the Lower Snake dams that create upstream slackwater pools slowing smolt migration.

Burkholder said the Port of Lewiston provides fewer than 300 jobs, and that the grain shipped from there by barge through the dams’ locks could more efficiently be transported by rail and truck.