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Federal Officials Set To Release Salmon Recovery Study Today by N.S. Nokkentved The Times-News, December 17, 1999

TWIN FALLS -- Just over 50 years ago, federal officials were ready to sacrifice Snake River salmon runs to fully develop water resources in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Today federal officials are expected to release an environmental study of ways to bring those now-endangered fish back from the threat of extinction.

In 1947, the Columbia Basin Inter-Agency Committee reported the Interior Department's conclusion that "the overall benefits to the Pacific Northwest from a thorough-going development of the Snake and Columbia are such that the present salmon run must if necessary be sacrificed."

The report shows that federal officials have known for decades the lethal potential of mainstream dams on salmon -- "even with full use of fish ladders and all protective devices." It notes that the four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington -- built in the 1960s and 1970s -- would be a threat to Snake River salmon.

The dams and the attitude that salmon shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of development -- along with logging, mining, agricultural and irrigation practices, over-fishing and ocean conditions -- together have earned Snake River salmon a place on the federal endangered species list.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to release at a Portland news conference today a five-year, $20 million draft environmental impact statement on breaching the four federal dams. The impact statement looks at three alternatives:

• Existing conditions -- Migrating salmon pass the dams through turbines and some are collected and barged or trucked past the dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

• Major system improvements -- Improve surface bypass collection systems, fish guidance, turbines, structural changes to reduce harmful levels of gasses dissolved in the water below the dams and possible increased river flows and spills.

• Natural river -- Removing the earthen portion of Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams on the Snake River in Washington state, creating a 140-mile free-flowing river.

Fisheries scientists have said that including breaching the dams in any recovery plan would give the salmon their best chance.

Federal officials also say that if the dams are not breached, they would be looking for more water to increase flows in the lower Snake and the Columbia River estuary. And even if the dams are removed, they would continue to rely on stored water from Idaho.