Dam Stupid

Thanks to Craig's power outage, and hard work by sport and commercial fishing groups, the environmental community, and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the amendment got stripped. And Sam Mace of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition is sounding more sanguine than when I interviewed her three years ago.

"The conservation community, fishermen and others have made a lot of progress in conversing with our opponents -- shippers, farmers, eastern Washington communities," she says. "The question has shifted from 'Will dam removal work?' to 'Yes, we know dam removal will save the Snake River salmon, but how do we replace the benefits those dams provide?' That's a really big shift. We've been sitting down with individual farmers to talk about what an alternative transportation system would look like under a free-flowing river.

"And we're making inroads with leaders in the Spokane business community, who are beginning to realize that there is a huge opportunity to trade an outdated, silted-in barge corridor for a modernized rail system and highway upgrades that will provide a competitive economic edge for our region in the future," she continues. "With the feds proposing to pay $8 billion for a 10-year plan they admit won't restore the fish, eastern Washington and north Idaho could get a nice chunk of transportation pork for a fraction of that."

To use Judge Redden's words, the federal government has created a "train wreck." Even if he doesn't vacate the final plan, it's conceivable that he or one of his successors will issue an order to breach the dams. In one of its "information sheets" the Corps disgorges a bunch of alleged "myths" that it attempts to counter with alleged "facts." Mostly, it gets them reversed. For example: "Myth: On the lower Snake River, the choice is fish or dams."

But this is precisely the choice. Judge Redden seems to be joining the scientific community in this realization.

Ted Williams lives in central Massachusetts. His column appears in each issue of  FR&R. To post a comment about this article, click here to go to Ted's Conservation Blog. To order Ted's latest book, click here.