I read your information concerning salmon and other issues concerning the breaching of four dams on the Snake River. I appreciate your information, but you did not address what I listed as major problems to improve salmon recovery without dam breaching. These are:
THE COST OF $33 BILLION ADDS TO OUR BLOATED NATIONAL DEBT: We can not afford the cost!
SEA LIONS: I understand that there are over 300,000 Sea Lions that eat a lot of salmon and come all the way in to the Bonneville Dam and eat at the fish ladders. That population must be greatly reduced. I know that trying to transfer some has not worked as they come back in a few days to gorge themselves.
INDIAN TREATY VIOLATIONS: Indians use gill nets and sell to the public in violation of the treaty. This must stop!
TRANSPORTATION OF GRAIN TO THE WEST COAST: Using alternate trucking is not realistic and very costly to the growers. It also adds diesel pollution by using trucks..
LOST ELECTRICITY: While nuclear power is the second least expensive way to produce electricity, environmentalists have already come out strongly opposing any nuclear power. The regional Thorium reactors are a very safe, efficient way to produce electricity. Battery storage is also very costly and can not store for more than a few hours when there is no wind or sunshine. Yesterday, I passed by one of the oldest wind farms between Rawlins and Laramie. It is generally very windy in that area, but I have driven by Arlington twice in the last four years when it was calm with no energy produced. The same is true in Idaho at American Falls, etc.
ILLEGAL FISHING: I doubt that the 12 mile limit along the coasts is being enforced. Fishing fleets have the technology to locate schools of fish. They can process on board and sell to US retailers. The limit must be enforced to stop illegal fish harvesting!
SEA GULLS AND TERNS ON AN ISLAND IN THE COLUMBIA RIVER: Both are non-endangered species. I understand that they eat hundreds of thousands of juvenile fish. That population must be greatly reduced.
ENVIRONMENTISTS DEMANDS: They will never be satisfied until we have free flowing rivers, there is an active plan to transform the US into a Socialist/Marxist country. They largely control the EPA. I have lost two good jobs due to their unscientific mandates and controls. The EPA is controlled by career environmentalist’s bureaucrats.
Please consider rectifying the problems list above before breaching four vital dams!
3 replies on “An Open Letter to Rep. Mike Simpson: Breaching four dams on the Snake River to supposedly save the salmon”
I’m a conservative voter and pretty much hate everything about the current federal administration, but I have to point out the flaws in your arguments to keep the four LSR dams in place.
First, they are old, and require heavy maintenance to provide VERY little power, and almost zero recreation. The amount of silt buildup at each also requires expensive barges and lift equipment to remedy. Unlike the other, much larger dams in the Columbia River system, these four do NOT provide enough “clean & renewable” power to earn their keep.
Second, the grains could move just as efficiently by rail, on existing track. There is no need to add more trucks to the highways.
Third, the feds have already blown through $16+ Billion doing crap that doesn’t work, and just makes the power company FEEL better, about destroying several native fish species in the Idaho and PNW ecosystems. What they’ve been doing, for sixty years, isn’t working. And they know it.
Before the last of those four deadbeat dams was completed, the annual return of steelhead and salmon was ten times the best numbers seen since. It’s time for real change.
How are you going to replace the 10 Billion KWH’s of electricity produced annually and moving 10 Million Tons of product and good will cost 10* more via railroad. I understand that you love fish but answered absolutely none of concerns of the reasons the fish population has dwindled that were raised by Dr. Arp. There is no guarantee the fish will ever return. You have to ask what is more important fish or people?
Mike Simpleton is a sell out and needs to vacate the office.