Announcement of Columbia River Basin Scoping Process for New EIS

On Friday, September 30th, 2016, the Federal government announced the schedule for the upcoming scoping process for a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for 14 dams in the Columbia River Basin.

While it is important during this process for citizens to provide comments urging that the 4 lower Snake River dams be breached ASAP to save endangered salmon, steelhead, and orcas, we must remind ourselves of a few things.

1.  The Army Corps of Engineers went through this process in the late 1990’s and published the EIS for the 4 lower Snake River dams in 2002.  It took 7 years and cost $33 million.
2. The Army Corps of Engineers included breaching in that EIS and said it would have “the greatest probability of meeting the government’s salmon survival and recovery criteria”.  
3. The EIS also had 3 other alternatives:  1. Doing nothing, 2. Maximum transport of juvenile fish, 3. Major system improvements.  The Corps predicted that alternatives 2 and 3 would be slightly worse than doing nothing.  They were right.  Fish recovery has not taken place.
4. The Corps then chose the alternative slightly worse than doing nothing based on flawed economic data that showed inflated costs for breaching and reduced benefits of breaching.
5. This new EIS will be published in 2021.  Salmon, steelhead, and orcas may not last that long.  Extinction is a real possibility in the next 5 years.

There is no reason to believe that this new EIS will turn out any differently.  It is a real possibility that breaching will not be in the new EIS.  And if it is, there is no reason to believe that they will choose to do it.

So we must not sit by complacently and believe that anything is going to change as a result of this process.  We need to push for breaching ASAP and that means NOW.  Not next year, not in 2021.  Time is of the essence.  For even more reasons why, read this excellent paper.