Breaching The Dams, A Controversial Solution To Saving Salmon

18 Pages 4531 Words

Breaching Dams - A Controversial Solution To Saving The Salmon


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Introduction........................................ 1
The Army Corps of Engineers Role..................... 2
The National Marine Fisheries Services Recommendations.. 2
Proponents Of Breaching............................. 3
Technical Requirements And Cost Of Breaching.......... 4
Opponents Of Breaching............................. 5 Conclusion........................................ 5










Bibliography....................................... 6


BREACHING DAMS - A CONTROVERSIAL SOLUTION TO SAVING THE SALMON


Introduction
A big controversy in Washington today is whether we should breach our dams to save our salmon. Opponents are squaring off over a controversial proposal to save salmon by breaching four dams on Washington’s Snake River. Each spring, millions of young Chinook salmon in the Snake River have to get past four killers as they make their way out to the open sea. They go by the names of Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Ice Harbor. These dams, erected in Washington in the 1960s and 1970s to generate power for the Pacific Northwest, can be just as deadly as any predator, smolts can get pureed by turbine blades or plunge over spillways to their deaths. Survivors are delayed by sluggish water behind the dams that might cripple their ability to adapt to salt water.

The Army Corps Of Engineers Role
The Army Corps of Engineers, which is supposed to run the dams while protecting the salmon, has spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars to try to reduce the annual slaughter by capturing smolts and trucking or barging them to the Columbia River, upstream of Portland, where the fish have a chance to get to the Pacific Ocean. This strategy is failing, experts say. According to tagged fish studies, less than five percent of the barged salmon survive to return to their spawning grou...