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It's Time to Breach the Dams by Bonnie Schonefeld Idaho Mountain Express, February 28, 2018

Idaho sports anglers, wake up! Idaho's wild salmon and steelhead are in rapid decline. Don't care about wild fish? Then consider this: The Bonneville Power Administration, which pays much of the cost of fish hatcheries, is billions in debt and has exhausted its $917 million reserves. Guess who pays much of the cost of producing those hatchery fish you love to catch?

BPA claims it may need to take "an intellectually honest" look at breaching the lower Snake River dams, among BPA's highest cost producers. Fish Passage Center research shows lower Snake dam removal and increased spill for juvenile fish at four downstream Columbia River dams would result in a 400 percent increase in adult Snake River salmon and steelhead!

Here are the choices: BPA ratepayers pay ever-higher prices for electricity while Idaho's salmon and steelhead runs collapse, or the lower Snake River is returned to its natural flow. With the first alternative, ratepayers, sports anglers and rural communities all lose, as does BPA itself. Taxpayers also lose by spending millions of dollars annually to subsidize declining Snake River barge traffic.

Economic reality and fish biology -- as well as common sense -- say it's time to breach the lower Snake River dams.