Today's intersection: Obama and salmon

When will spikes in human misery finally compel action on the failures of anthropogenic biomanipulation on the environment? 

Harken back to 2011 and President Obama's State of the Union address.

Today, the US Army Corps of Engineers counts almost 90,000 dams in its database. The Snake River through Idaho, Oregon and Washington that was dammed to deny Indigenous salmon fishing is now the 4th most endangered as drought seizes the region. 

In 2011 this interested party wrote, "President Obama: protect this resource then expand it into the entire upper Missouri Basin by connecting public, private, and tribal lands. Then dismantle the main stem dams in favor of geothermal energy."

We can have both hydropower and robust salmon runs, but need to totally rethink the four dams on the Snake. They are aged, obsolete and their costs exceed their benefits. Despite millions of dollars spent per year on salmon rehabilitation efforts, such as hatcheries, fish ladders, and trucking smolt past dams, Snake River salmon and steelhead are barely returning at 5-10% of goals, and have been for decades. These dams have crushed salmon and steelhead runs and all efforts at a work- around have failed. The dams have turned what was once a fast-flowing cold-water river into a slow-moving series of warming ponds. Salmon have fed people and created wealth for thousands of years, and could continue to do so. Dams, on the other hand, have a finite lifespan. [We can balance hydropower and salmon by removing obsolete dams]

One impetus for some exploration of America's Blue Highways and the Pacific Northwest is a continuing discussion so it seemed only logical that some familiarization with the Columbia River basin would give this interested party some insight about the relationships of western forests to each other.

Removal of the Fort Edward Dam on New York’s Hudson River released so much contaminated sediment that the river was later named a Superfund site. A similar fate would befall the Missouri River if dams were not dredged before being decertified and removed; but, migratory fish would recolonize newly accessible habitat within a matter of days. The Corps has cancelled Spring Pulses on the Missouri River not just because of low flows but because the silt is so poisonous it would kill the very species it says it's trying to preserve. 

Zebra mussels have invaded the Oahe Reservoir in occupied South Dakota because the state agency that exploits wildlife, fish and parks is corrupt by design.

Pallid sturgeon are living dinosaurs but when the Missouri River dams were built it sealed the fate of the now endangered fish. Scientists and the US Army Corps of Engineers have learned that unless newly hatched pallid sturgeon have several hundred miles of unimpeded waters they cannot survive. Rivers often disperse the extra sediment from behind a dam within weeks or months of dam removal. 

Water managers in the Colorado Basin are freaking out, too.

Hey, Joe: tear down these dams and rewild the West.

Learn more at the Idaho Capital Sun.