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.

Continue reading “Once more into the breach”

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 The only fiscally responsible action at this point is to decommission four outdated dams that never have, and can’t, provide enough benefit to pay for themselves.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 Tribune

Credit northern Idaho for electing to Congress some of the nation’s most notorious fiscal tightwads – Steve Symms, Larry Craig, Helen Chenoweth-Hage, C.L. (Butch) Otter, Bill Sali and Raul Labrador.

And they followed up with jeering the loudest against the usual suspects of federal waste – whether it was paying $435 for a hammer, $600 for a toilet seat or $7,000 for a coffee pot during the Reagan era.

For some, it was the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, pouring nearly $400 million into a bridge linking 50 residents of Gravina Island to the town of Ketchikan – famously dubbed the “Bridge to Nowhere.”
For others, it was the king of congressional pork, the late Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., spreading $1.5 billion on his “Corridor H” project, otherwise known as the “Highway to Nowhere” because it stops 10 miles short of the Virginia state line.

How many of your own neighbors railed against the Obama administration allocating $500 million to the solar cell manufacturer Solyndra – only to have the company file for bankruptcy and fire all its employees?

You yourself may have grumbled at least a bit about the White House backing a $2.85 billion “cash for clunkers” plan that did nothing more than encourage people to buy new cars a little sooner than they otherwise would have.

So imagine what someone from Tupelo, Miss., Galveston, Texas, or even Red Bank, N.J., might think if he had read Eric Barker’s recent Tribune profile of former Army Corps of Engineers Deputy District Engineer Jim Waddell.

As Waddell told Barker, he was skeptical 15 years ago that his agency had accurately weighed the relative costs and benefits of maintaining the four dams on the lower Snake River vs. breaching the structures.

Ongoing dam costs were listed as one-time in nature. Some cost estimates were wildly optimistic, others were ignored entirely.

Waddell has since gone back and penciled out two examples:

Rehabilitating all 24 turbines at the four dams would cost $776 million – more than twice what the corps expects.

Operating and maintaining the dams – on average – would cost $217 million a year, or $160 million more than the corps figured.

Waddell next expects to scrutinize how the corps scored the benefits these dams deliver – but recent headlines would suggest he’s likely to find the operations produce far less than projected.

For instance, container shipping volume at the Port of Lewiston is down 80 percent during the last two decades – as companies turn to transportation options that will give them access to markets back East or to the Port of Seattle. It’s likely to drop even further in light of Hanjin Shipping plans to withdraw service from the Port of Portland on March 9.

The dams generate about one-third of their hydropower capacity while the region has more than replaced that amount of power through wind turbines.

Not only would enraged taxpayers zero in on Waddell, they may recall another former insider who emerged as a critic. Until a decade ago, fisheries biologist Don Chapman was employed by the Northwest’s electric power utilities to defend the dams. Once retired in 2005, Chapman changed his tune – contending that with global warming, Snake River salmon would not survive unless the dams were breached.

Deep in debt, the federal government has only so much money to update aging ports and waterways – not to mention providing water storage in response to climate change. How long will it take before people hungry for limited federal infrastructure dollars begin asking why money is being lavished on an inland navigation system that is so seldom used it fails to meet the corps’ definition of a “negligible use” waterway?

They might even turn the tables on us by naming it a “Port to Nowhere.” – M.T.

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 containerized freight traffic on the lower Snake River.

Container shipments from the Port of Lewiston peaked in 1997 and have been on a dramatic and steady decline ever since. This week’s events underscore how inconsequential lower Snake River shipping has become as port managers scramble for alternatives, including the possibility of shipping via an existing railroad.

The following news article appeared in today’s Lewiston Morning Tribune.

Port container traffic on hold indefinitely

By ELAINE WILLIAMS of the Tribune

The permanent withdrawal of a key overseas shipper from the Port of Portland has put container traffic at Idaho’s only seaport on hold indefinitely for the first time since it started in 1978.

Hapag-Lloyd confirmed Tuesday it’s no longer calling on the Port of Portland and will serve its customers through other locations, such as the Port of Tacoma, according to a prepared statement from the German-based shipper.

“We regret any inconveniences for customers and also any negative impact on the port. Our offices are prepared to offer alternative options.”

Hapag-Lloyd handled the ocean going portion of the journey for more than 90 percent of the containers that originated in Lewiston.

The only remaining container carrier at the Port of Portland is Westwood, and it’s unlikely it will be able to absorb Hapag-Lloyd’s customers from Lewiston since it visits different destinations, said Lewiston Port Manager David Doeringsfeld.

“At this point in time, the Port of Lewiston is not shipping any containers on water,” he said.
Doeringsfeld said he and the port commissioners are trying to grasp what the effect will be and to create a strategy to respond. They will discuss the issue at their meeting today.

The port employs seven people, four at the container yard and three in the administrative office, including one part-time worker.

Doeringsfeld declined to discuss what will become of the employees connected to the container dock.

The container yard was projected to generate about $4,000 in revenue this year after expenses of about $295,000, Doeringsfeld said. In both instances, those figures are roughly half what was originally forecast because the port didn’t predict a slowdown of labor on the West Coast during a contract negotiation where a tentative agreement has been reached, Doeringsfeld said.

Costs would have been more except the port found other jobs for container employees to complete while containers weren’t moving, such as performing maintenance on port-owned buildings.

When the work the employees were doing wasn’t related to the container yard, it was charged to other areas of the budget, Doeringsfeld said.

Those figures come from a $1.9 million budget where gross revenue from the container dock is one of the largest sources of income. The port had expected about $450,000 each from rentals and property taxes as well as $260,000 from Inland 465, a huge warehouse in this fiscal year.
What the port can do for its customers who mostly ship dried peas and lentils is still being determined, Doeringsfeld said.

One possibility is shifting that business to rail, but making the service available is complicated. The Lewiston-Clarkston Valley’s only line, the Great Northwest Railroad, is a short line that would have to negotiate agreements with the carriers it connects with in Washington – Union Pacific or Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

“That’s something that takes months, not weeks,” Doeringsfeld said.

The port also is exploring the possibility of recruiting other business to its container dock, but has no signed contracts at this time, Doeringsfeld said.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the dock will remain inactive, since those agreements are often finalized about 30 days in advance, Doeringsfeld said.

Even though business at the container dock has come to a halt, the port still believes its investment of $2.8 million to more than double the length of its container dock with $1.3 million in federal money was a good choice, Doeringsfeld said. “We will continue to market this asset to promote job creation.”

Losing the container business is a blow, but Doeringsfeld said containers represent only about 15 percent of the tonnage shipped from the Port of Lewiston. The remainder is bulk grain that leaves the Lewis Clark Terminal at the Port of Lewiston.

Overall barge shipping on the Snake and Columbia rivers continues to play an important role in the economy of the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, Doeringsfeld said.

Clearwater Paper, for instance, barges chips and sawdust for its Lewiston mill to the Port of Wilma just west of Clarkston from Columbia City, downriver of the Portland area.

As the Port of Lewiston determines its next move, many are watching closely, including environmentalists.

Taxpayer subsidies play an increasingly important role at the Port of Lewiston, said Greg Stahl, a spokesman for Idaho Rivers United in Boise, which supports removing the four lower Snake River dams.

“How much economic benefit is this really generating for the amount of outlay?” Stahl said. “In any free-market scenario, it appears the port wouldn’t even exist, at least at this point.”

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 Goose, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor dams on the lower Snake River are still on the list of wasteful infrastructure that need to go. They ran in in the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, The Olympian in Olympia, The Stranger in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest Inlander in Spokane.

The ads ask Washington state residents to contact Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Washington Democrats, to ask for lower Snake dam removal. Achieving support from the Washington state senators is an important part of the political puzzle that will ultimately lead to getting rid of the four salmon-killing dams.

Patagonia has a long track record of backing environmental causes. In 2013 the company released the acclaimed documentary DamNation, which puts a spotlight on the nation’s growing trend of dam removals, with a particular focus on the lower Snake River’s wasteful dams. The company organized a letter to the White House and additional elected officials calling for removal of the four wasteful Snake River dams. More than 70,000 signatures were delivered to the White House in January, but if you haven’t yet you still have a chance to sign. Please sign today.

Thanks to Patagonia for putting its money where its mouth is and continuing to raise awareness about government waste on the lower Snake River. And thanks to DamNation’s producers, editors and story tellers who continue to help raise awareness nationwide about the worthwhile work of ending taxpayer waste and restoring our rivers.

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, 548 dams were removed in the United States, nearly double the number removed from 1996 to 2005.

Among their findings, the co-authors made two key points that are extremely pertinent to the discussion about dam removal on the lower Snake River.

1. Accumulated sediment dissipates much faster than scientists once estimated.
2. Anadromous fish repopulate their native streams very rapidly, sometimes within days.

The following article was published by Oregon Public Broadcasting today, April 30, and can be found here.

Rivers recover rapidly once dams are gone, study finds

By Cassandra Profita

A new study sums up what scientists now know about the environmental effects of removing dams from rivers.

It concludes that rivers and fish respond quickly after a dam is removed, and the results are mostly positive.

“Heraclitus has said you can’t step in the same river twice,”said study co-author Gordon Grant. “Well, you don’t get exactly the same river back after you take a dam off it that you had before, but you can come pretty close. In some cases, it can even be difficult to identify in just a few years where the dam was.”

Rivers often disperse the extra sediment from behind a dam within weeks or months of dam removal, the study finds. Migratory fish move swiftly to recolonize newly accessible habitat – at times swimming past the former dam site within a matter of days.

The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, compiles the findings of more than a hundred studies on individual dam removals.

Grant, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service, said the number of dams removed has shot up in the past decade. In the U.S. 548 dams were removed from 2006-2014 compared with 298 dams removed from 1996-2005.

That recent round of dam removal has included projects on Washington’s Elwha and White Salmon rivers and Oregon’s Sandy River.

“We wanted to step back from the fray and assess: What have we learned?” he said. “What works, what doesn’t, and what sort of guidance does the past give us in looking towards the future?”

Grant said the effects of dam removal definitely vary depending on the size of the dam, the size of the river, and how much sediment was stored in what size reservoir. But he and his colleagues did find some common lessons.

Before dam removal had been studied, Grant said, scientists thought it might take decades for rivers to disperse the accumulated sediment. But that was not the case in almost all the documented cases. In most cases, it was only a matter of weeks or months.

“Rivers appear very nimble in terms of being able to digest these meals of, in most cases, sediment that has been stored behind these structures, some of which have been in place for close to a hundred years,” he said.

Study co-author Jeff Duda, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, is studying the effects of dam removals on the Elwha River in Washington – the largest dam removal in history.

He said the Elwha has been the biggest test case to date of how a river handles large deposits of sediment released by dam removals. That project started in 2011 and removed the last part of the Elwha Dam last August, releasing 21 million cubic meters of sediment altogether.

“We’ve seen the river downstream handle that input of sediment, and it’s now coming back,” Duda said. “For awhile, it was running pretty muddy, and still does during high flows, but if you go out there during periods of low flow it runs pretty clear again. So, the river is adjusting.”

Duda said scientists are still tracking the long-term effects on fish in the Elwha, but it didn’t take the fish long to reoccupy the habitat above the dams.

“We saw fish here just upstream of Glines Canyon Dam within days of the final blast,” he said. “If you give the fish a chance, if they’re migratory, they will recolonize the streams above dams.”

Overall, Grant said, fish seem pretty well adapted to handling the short-term, large volumes of sediment moving downstream after a dam removal, as it’s similar to what they might see during a flood or volcanic eruption.

“Generally, the fish are reasonably evolutionarily designed to handle disturbances of that kind,” he said. “What we don’t know, though, is whether you get back the sort of fish community you might have had before the dam.”

Researchers found removing a dam can release contaminants stored in sediment, and it’s a good idea to check for that before removing a dam, Grant said.

In a case of “good dam removals gone bad,” he said, the Fort Edward Dam removal on New York’s Hudson River released so much contaminated sediment that the river was later placed on the Superfund list of the nation’s most contaminated sites.

While there have been many positive results documented from dam removals, Grant said, the benefits of dams for water storage and energy – especially in light of climate change – may continue to drive people to build new dams.

“The future of dam removal has to be viewed against this context of a lot of places in the world where dams are still viewed as important steps in development as low-carbon energy sources,” he said. “Our removals in the U.S. are offset in terms of total dams by a lot of new dam construction in South America, Southeast Asia and India.”