Tearing down four of its dams won’t just open up habitat to boost salmon populations. Supporters say a more free-flowing river will also improve water quality by removing the dam’s reservoirs where warm water pools, collects pollution from agricultural runoff and invites toxic algae growth and bacteria that can cause fish die-offs.
Opponents argue those reservoirs are vital to surrounding communities because they provide tax revenue, recreation opportunities and waterfront property values that will be lost when the dams are taken out
BUT MUH JETSKI DEALERSHIP
After first trying to relicense the dams in the early 2000s, PacifiCorp agreed to remove them in 2016 to avoid the cost of building fish ladders that would have been required to help salmon swim upstream.
PacifiCorp spokesman Bob Gravely said removing the dams at a cost of $215 million to the utility’s ratepayers was actually the cheaper option, and the electricity they generate is easily replaced — it’s less than 2% of the utility’s supply.
Helping the salmon is a latent function of saving the corpos money, but a function nevertheless!
Edit: I do wonder where they will make up that 2% electricity generation - will it be fossil fuels? If so, it would have made way more sense to just install those salmon migration ladders like they agreed to initially. Hydroelectricity is one of our most powerful weapons against climate change. It's actually a shame these are being destroyed.
