From: Joyce Parks
Date: January 1, 2018
To: The White House
Dear Mr. President:
We have been trying to raise the economic situation throughout the NW. We have 4 very old dams that are killing the livelihood of thousands of folks along the Snake and Columbia Rivers. If these old, outdated, high maintenance dams, were breached, they would help create jobs giving upward mobility to thousands. They are earthen so it would be a very low cost project to breach. They produce little energy, less than 3% of a regional power grid that currently produces an annual excess of 16%. It is very simply math – they are costing the taxpayers approx. $197 million per year and rising. Restoring the rivers to their natural flowing waters would increase salmon, steelhead trout runs and other species. Fisherman could once again enjoy their favorite sport bringing tourists to enjoy all the recreational activities the flowing rivers alone would create. The recreational & local economy would increase significantly creating over 4,000 new jobs; both seasonal & and full time. I will try to attach a 1 page scorecard graph so you can easily see the difference between dams and no dams.
However, we seem to be having a little problem reaching a federal agency, U.S. Corps of Engineers. We have been trying to get this information & supporting documents to the Chief of the U S Corps of Engineers: LTG Todd T. Semonite. We can not get past his staff. There is to be a meeting on January 12th/FL, & many of us really want LTG. Semonite to have the most available data to be fully informed, but are up against a wall. Can you take a look at this on our behalf? All the work has been done and we need no more studies to waste more money on. We would love to see you sign an Executive Order breaching these dams on TV.
Thank you for your time to read this as I tried to keep it short knowing your schedule is packed. We never heard anything back from your predecessor so we remain hopeful. Maybe this will be one.
Grateful
Joyce D. Parks
