Two petitions are circulating this summer that can help bring about change for Northwest salmon, Puget Sound orcas and taxpayers whose dollars are being wasted supporting a broken status quo on the lower Snake River of eastern Washington. Though seeking the same outcomes, the petitions ask for different political tactics. The White House petition, which has […]
In its 2002 Lower Snake River Juvenile Salmon Migration Feasibility Report, the Walla Walla District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers vastly understated the costs of maintaining and operating four dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington State. The report concluded that modifications to these dams would result in the recovery of 13 species of […]
When dams come out, rivers heal and fish return–and it happens very fast. That’s according to a new study published this week in the journal Science. The study, co-authored by Forest Service Hydrologist Gordon Grant and U.S. Geological Survey Biologist Jeff Duda,was based on the growing number of case studies available. From 2006 to 2014, […]
Outdoor clothing company Patagonia took aim squarely at the lower Snake River’s four salmon-killing dams in ads released in Washington state newspapers April 23, 24 and 25. The ads, which feature the tagline “Don’t hold back,” show three completed dam removals on the Elwha and White Salmon rivers while also showing that Lower Granite, Little […]
Commercial shipping on the lower Snake River continues to decline–dramatically. The Port of Lewiston confirmed yesterday and officially announced today that it was indefinitely suspending container shipments after an international shipper said it would no longer use the Port of Portland on the Columbia River downstream. The Port of Lewiston’s business had constituted the only […]
The Lewiston Morning Tribune gleans what we’ve been saying all along: Decades of taxpayer waste are contributing to a failed system on the lower Snake River. The only fiscally responsible action at this point is to decommission four outdated dams that never have, and can’t, provide enough benefit to pay for themselves. By Marty Trillhaase, Lewiston Morning […]
This Seattle Times guest opinion from three of the leading orca researchers in the Pacific Northwest points to a longstanding problem that’s gaining visibility in 2015. Endangered southern Pacific orcas depend heavily on chinook salmon from the Columbia and Snake rivers, and chinook salmon populations have been decimated by dam construction. Not only do the lower […]
The Lewiston Morning Tribune sat down with civil engineer and former Army Corps of Engineers employee Jim Waddell to dig into cost-benefit issues that enshroud the lower Snake River and its cost-heavy dams.