By Arie Callaghan, District One Commissioner
Everyone wants robust salmon runs, and a clean habitat and environment. Whether or not you’re a supporter of tribal, sport, or commercial fisheries, there is agreement that the runs aren’t what they used to be. I don’t think there is one sweeping answer to this problem, but a very vocal few have settled on one: Get rid of dams.
Study after study have been done on both sides of the breaching issue, many asking the question: will breaching be the answer to salmon recovery? No matter how many of those studies are done, no one seems to have a concrete answer, which leads me to my point:
If we are going to remove dams, we better know what the positive impacts are going to be because the negative ones are pretty clear. The Public Utility District (PUD) specializes in energy sales, so let’s start there. When those dams are out, they aren’t coming back.
That means hundreds of megawatts of energy are removed from the grid. Unless supporters of breaching have another equally reliable, and affordable resource to replace hydroelectric power, it cannot be a real option.
While we can certainly theorize about the impacts of breaching on salmon runs, there are a couple of things that will certainly happen to the regions surrounding the dams. Their removal would have a devastating effect on those local economies. Communities and industries depend on river traffic for transporting products downriver. Farmers use that water for irrigation.
Millions of dollars are spent on recreation in the reservoirs behind the dams. All that will be gone if breaching is the chosen path, and again, there aren’t a lot of answers as to how they could be replaced. Seems like a lot to lose on an outcome that is uncertain.
We certainly need to take measures to make sure that salmon are there for current and future generations to enjoy, but let’s take a scientific and common sense approach. If we get this wrong, the impacts will go way beyond the rivers, impacting countless communities and residents. That’s too big an impact to leave to hope and an uncertain outcome.