the film forum library tutorial contact

Gorton Floor Speech Blasts Dam Removal Columbia Basin Bulletin - July 30, 1999

New government cost estimates of breaching four Snake River dams provide additional proof that it would cause an economic disaster in the region, Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said this week.

In a Senate floor speech aimed at calling attention to three Army Corps of Engineers studies on the impacts on irrigation, barge transportation and power production, Gorton made one of his strongest cogent arguments to date against the proposal for restoring endangered salmon.

Although he addressed fellow senators, most of whom were absent as usual from the chamber, Gorton's aides had alerted Northwest news media in advance, indicating the speech was intended mainly for regional consumption.

Environmental groups have argued that removing the dams and paying for economic adjustments, such as replacement power, would be less costly for the federal government and the region in the long run.

But Gorton said the Columbia River hydrosystem is too valuable and need not be dismantled to "restore a vibrant salmon fishery."

"By applying adaptive management to our hydro system, we can and will preserve endangered salmon runs and our valuable hydrosystem," he said.

Drawing a contrast with the publicity given to breaching advocates and studies that support their position, Gorton said he was surprised by the lack of attention given to three Army Corps draft studies on the economic effect of breaching the four federal dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington. The reports are being incorporated into a draft environmental impact statement on dam removal and other salmon recovery options, which is due in October.

The speech was a departure from recent public comments by Gorton, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who also oppose breaching, that the proposal is effectively dead, at least for the final 18 months of President Clinton's term.

Gorton said he and other breaching opponents have been waging a battle "to defeat those who wish to remove the Snake River dams and thereby destroy a central piece of the Northwest economy and a way of life for millions of Northwesterners."

But he expressed frustration that despite evidence to the contrary, "still we hear the dam removal clamor from national environmental groups and bureaucrats in the Clinton-Gore administration." He also cited Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt's advocacy for "tear down dams from the California coast to Maine (to) the Northwest."

Gorton said the preliminary Army Corps economic studies alone should send "a clear signal" to "dam removal advocates everywhere that they should abandon their cause."

Calling them "compelling statistics," Gorton said the studies "further prove that removing dams in eastern Washington would be an unmitigated disaster and an economic nightmare."

“I simply can't overstate the importance of these studies and what they mean for the future of the Pacific Northwest, its economy and the livelihood of our families and communities," he said.

Summarizing the results of the three studies, Gorton asked, "So what do we get by removing the four Snake River dams? Shattered lives, displaced families and communities who will have seen their livelihoods destroyed, generations of family farmers penniless, industries forced to drive up consumer costs, air pollution, a desert that once bloomed with agriculture products goes dry, a far less competitive Northwest economy and a Northwest scrambling to repay a BPA Treasury debt with less revenue, and scrambling to buy or build higher cost polluting sources of power."

The estimate of the impact on the region's power supply - of $251 million to $291 million a year - would raise electric bills for Northwest families and senior citizens by $1.50 to $5.30 per month, Gorton said.

To replace the "clean" power generated by the four Snake River dams would require building thermal power plants, probably gas-fired turbines, which would pollute the air, he said.

Farmers who draw water from one of the dam's reservoirs would be put out of business and 37,000 acres of farmland would be lost, Gorton said, because another Army Corps study concluded there would be no economically feasible way to continue to provide irrigation water to them.

The loss of the four dams' locks would eliminate barge shipping on the lower Snake, increase truck and rail use, requiring new investments in infrastructure, and increase transportation costs for wheat and other grain, Gorton said.

"According to the report, barge transportation has saved, on average, $5.95 in per ton when compared with other transportation alternatives," because it tends to keep down truck and rail rates, he said. "Disturbing this competition would be one of the most important regional consequences of permanent drawdown."

He cited statistics from the Washington State Legislative Transportation Committee that costs resulting from road and highway damage range from $56 million to $100.7 million. Also, in replacing the barge transportation "more than 700,000 18-wheelers a year would be added to our already congested state roads and highways," Gorton said, citing Pacific Northwest Waterways Association information.

At the same time, Gorton said that based on a National Marine Fisheries Service analysis, breaching would not significantly increase the chances of salmon recovery compared to barging of salmon smolts around dams.

NMFS scientists in an April 14 report said the chance of recovery "for a few distinct salmon runs is only 64 percent if all four lower Snake River dams are removed, as against 53 percent by continuing to transport smolts around the dams - a difference that is barely statistically significant," Gorton said.

Beyond statistics, he said the four lower Snake River dams are also "part of our life, heritage and culture."

Chris Zimmer, spokesman for Save Our Wild Salmon, said the senator's "diatribe" did not consider overall trade-offs and benefits and employed obsolete transportation cost estimates.

Zimmer said salmon advocates expect upcoming reports to lower those transportation costs and to calculate economic benefits to Indian tribes and the commercial fishing industry of restored salmon runs.

He said the DREW process has tended to ignore ways of mitigating and managing economic costs, as well. "You add in mitigation benefits to tribes and commercial fishing, and the picture radically improves and undermines Gorton's doom and gloom economics," Zimmer said.