Dam removal under protest

Dams are coming down, the inexpensive power sources are going away, and several editorials have been written about the subject. Quoting a news release from USA Today (Feb. 16, 1998), where PacifiCorp officials say it will be cheaper to remove the 85-year-old Condit Dam than to build and maintain fish-passage facilities, that the power-generating company must install $30 million in fish-ladders in the 125-foot-high structure to comply with federal guidelines....Removing the dam would cost less than $16 million. "We told you so!" says a press release from NW Council of Governments & Associates. "The environmental strategy is to make the cost of salmon compliance so high that it is economically unfeasible. That justifies removing the dam. This strategy will be used on the smaller dams.

The Elwha dam on the Olympic Peninsula has received approval of funding to be taken down just recently, in order to accommodate the salmon.
What is never discussed, continues the press release, is the flood control provided by the dams, the lost jobs, and the lost generating capacity. Hydro-generation costs are approximately 7/1000 centers per Kilowatt compared to 1 1/2 cents per Kw at a coal or gas fueled generation plant. Hydropower is the cleanest, cheapest, most efficient, and environmental friendly source of electricity. Our national population is growing at approximately 4 percent annually. Where will the required electricity come from? the Council wants to know.

In an editorial in the Oregonian on Jan. 6, 1998, the region's New Year's resolution should be to save the lower Snake River dams. From its calculations, the newspaper concluded that the four hydropower dams produce 1,200 megawatts of energy, the equivalent of a large nuclear plant. If the region were forced to replace this lost power with fossil-fuel generation, 1.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide would be released in the air, the equivalent of adding 825,000 cars driving 11,000 miles a year at 20 miles per gallon.