Breaching The Dams, A Controversial Solution To Saving Salmon

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nds. ( Lovett,574). Wild salmon from the Snake River Basin have declined nearly ninety percent in the last 30 years, and every population has either been driven to extinction or is so threatened it is shielded by the Endangered Species Act. Now the federal government is considering a drastic and controversial solution: tearing down the Snake River dams.

The National Marine Fisheries Services Recommendations
The lead agency for ensuring the salmon’s protection under the act, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), has asked the Army Corps to recommend a course of action to save the endangered fish. Their options boil down to these:
1) Leave the river as it is.
2) Step up efforts to haul smolts around the dams.
3) Modify turbines and spillways.
4) Drain the reservoirs and tear out the dams’ earthen portions to allow the Snake River to flow freely.
An NMFS report gave little support to the last option - a remedy that could cost up to $1.2 billion - saying it is “more likely than any other” option to help salmon recover. ( Lovett,574). In Washington and Oregon this year’s salmon runs have been the strongest in many years. The perverse reality is that the main threat to the anti-dam movement is the possibility that salmon runs will continue to recover over the next five years. Anti-dam forces say this can’t happen because the dams are the real problem, and if the salmon stock does somehow recover, it will be an anomaly, like one cold summer in the midst of a global warming trend, or, more to the point, like this year’s huge returns of salmon up and down the Northwest coast. Nonetheless, the anti-dam movement now has a short term stake in whatever is bad for the fish.( Fallows,20).

Proponents Of Breaching
The NMSF study comes on the heels of a much stronger statement f...