We recommend that you read The Los Angeles Times article dealing with the controversy over hydroelectric dams’ impact on migrating salmon, Kim Murphy, Boom in Hydropower Pits Fish Against the Climate, Los Angeles Times, July 7, 2009, at p. A12. Check it out at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hydro-power27-2009jul27,0,2321552.story
This time, it’s the Rocky Reach Dam on the Columbia River that is in the environmentalists’ sights. But what the article makes clear is that 90% of the young migrating salmon and 94% of steelhead trout are able to cross that dam, using new fish ladders. This has dispensed with the need to shut off the turbines (and waste water in the process) to allow the salmon to get across the dam without getting killed. It also added to the power production of the Rocky Reach Dam some 1.75 million additional megawatt-hours, the equivalent of 702,204 metric tons of carbon. Nonetheless, environmentalists are still demanding that dams be breached to restore rivers to their natural condition.
For our earlier comments on this subject go to https://gideonstrumpet.info/?p=251