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Breach the Lower Snake River Dams. They Never Should Have Been Built to Begin With by Scott Levy Idaho Statesman, December 15, 2023

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I read Public Power Council's Scott Simms bellyaching over the "intolerable uncertainty" of placing Lower Snake River (LSR) dams on a path for removal.

Most importantly, the LSR dams should never have been built. Their benefit cost ratios never came close to Army Corps' requirements for justification. But building a redundant power source for plutonium production of Oppenheimer's atomic bomb was justification enough for the Corps to fake a benefit cost analysis.

Now with decades of unnecessary delay and Idaho's forest starving from lack of salmon, wheat shippers have preserved a $40k per barge taxpayer subsidy -- fattening their political influence over powerful Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell -- at the expensive of degrading Idaho's Salmon River forests that once sequestered half of the region's carbon dioxide from our overburdened atmosphere.

Let us look forward to a better world, where salmon restoration and Treaty obligations are satisfied. Breathe in the fresh oxygen our restored forests offer. Feel the healthy soil growing beneath our feet. Bless this day and our daily bread (not shipped to faraway lands) and give thanks to our collective cooperation.

Related Pages:
Time to Ask Courts to Order Removal of Lower Snake River Dams by Scott Levy, Everett Herald, 12/24/21
Make the Request by Scott Levy, Lewiston Tribune, 11/23/21
Held in a Stranglehold by Palouse Wheat Growers by Scott Levy, Idaho Mountain Express, 3/22/23
The Fate of the NW Largest Energy Provider May Decide Future of Our Salmon by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 12/28/17
New Plans for Some Threatened Salmon Will 'Not Get Us to Recovery,' Feds Say by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 12/12/17
5 Things We've Learned About the Pacific Northwest's Endangered Salmon by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 10/7/17
Acidic Oceans and Warm Rivers that Kill Idaho's Salmon Might be Norm in 50 Years by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 10/7/17
Remove 4 Dams, Leave These Fish Alone, and They May be Able to Replenish Themselves by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 9/10/17
Everything We're Doing to Replace Vanishing Salmon Might be Killing Them Off Faster by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 9/7/17
Is Snake River Shipping Worth Enough
to Keep Dams that Harm Salmon? by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 8/6/17
A Changing Electrical Grid May Make Snake River Dams Expendable by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 8/6/17
With Shipping Down on Snake River, Farmers Worry About Dams' Future by Scott Levy, Bellingham Herald, 8/7/17
Northwest Salmon, the Stuff of Legends, Still Struggle to Survive by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 7/8/17
Nature Again Turns Against Returning Fish that Already Face Long Odds by Scott Levy, Idaho Statesman, 5/20/17