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Missing Mark on Dams by Michael Dauer Seattle Times, August 17, 2011

In a July 7 letter to her constituents, Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers indicated that the removal of the Snake River dams would have an impact on the local flooding issue in Colfax and Pullman, trying to instill fear in constituent's minds by comparing this region to the recent catastrophic Mississippi flooding.

Cathy, neither Colfax nor Pullman is located on the Snake River, and as such flooding therein would not be affected by any action taken with the four dams on the Snake.

I also think she missed the mark with regard to her agenda that dams equal jobs in her district, citing jobs at both Boeing and Kaiser Aluminum while overlooking that neither company has had a significant presence in Washington's 5th District since 2002, when Kaiser shuttered its doors to thousands of employees at Mead and Trentwood (including my dad).

Unlike her outdated argument for cheap energy bringing jobs to the region, removing the dams (or more importantly restoring wild spawning salmon and steelhead populations) may in fact do just that. Not only is there the promise of tourism dollars, there are restoration projects on the scale of CCC projects that built some of the Columbia and Snake dams in the first place.