snake river dams irrigation

All Rights Reserved. We then use the Clean Water Act’s citizen suit provision to enforce NPDES permits and demand compliance by facilities that otherwise pollute our waterways in violation of the law. Sightline Institute's work is made possible by the generosity of people like you! In 1976 the Teton Dam collapsed, causing disastrous flooding of the upper Snake River valley. crops for the last ten years is $862 million. Founded in 1993, Sightline Institute is committed to making the Northwest a global model of sustainability, with strong communities, a green economy, and a healthy environment. Instead of addressing the violations, Idaho passed legislation to guarantee dairies they would not lose their permits for violating the CWA. If the dams were breached, those grain shipments would either travel by truck to Pasco for barge loading or travel by train to Portland. For five decades, the four dams on the lower Snake River have provided water for irrigation, emissions-free hydroelectricity, and 140 miles of flat water for barge passage from Pasco, Washington, to Lewiston, Idaho. The lower Snake River dams’ powerhouses save over 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere each year. Hundreds of facilities dump millions of gallons of pollutants into the Snake River and its tributaries every year. The shift from barge to truck or train would increase costs for some grain growers. The Snake River, and the communities who depend on it, face serious threats from toxic pollution. The ECONW study greatly exaggerated the cost of breaching the Lower Snake River (LSR) dams. A $6.2 million increase in transportation for those who barge their grain represents an average cost increase that is less than one percent of the region’s grain revenues. .) over the ECONW report,  the face of agriculture in Eastern Washington would go unmarred if the dams came down. The Snake River dams in Washington would remain in place under a final study released Friday, July 31, by federal agencies. The dams generate electricity, allow cargo to be moved on river barges and provide irrigation water to farmers. Its time to remove the dams benefits more life forms and bring balance back to the region. Breaching the lower Snake River dams and restoring the river would not come cheap. Today fertilizer, manure and other chemicals and pollutants wash into the river and greatly increase the nutrient load of phosphorus, nitrogen, and fecal coliform from failing septic tanks, wastewater treatment plants, broken sewer lines, and animal waste. It’s time for factory farms to comply with the Clean Water Act. SPOKANE, Wash. — The U.S. government announced Friday that four huge dams on the Snake River in Washington state will not be removed to help endangered salmon migrate to the ocean. Our legal approach is complemented by strong educational efforts and grassroots mobilization. Due to the lack of water storage, the dams also don't offer much in the way of irrigation. In 2009, EPA backed out of agreements allowing the state to inspect these facilities on EPA’s behalf due to the close relationship between the Idaho State Department of Agriculture and the industry. Agricultural runoff from farms and ranches in the Snake River Plain and many other areas has crippled the ecology of the river. Rail is non-existent in the capacity to handle 40 million bushels a year there just from the LC Valley. (https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/judge-redden-talks-salmon-case#stream/0). You would not guess it from the words of conservative political leaders along the Snake, though. Let’s take them in turn. Reducing the supply of wheat will increase wheat prices for the farmers anyway. SPOKANE, Wash. — The U.S. government announced Friday that four huge dams on the Snake River in Washington state will not be removed to help endangered salmon migrate to the The cost could exceed a billion dollars. From the study: “The Lower Snake River Dams supply a small share of the energy needs for the Pacific Northwest region, and account for less power than BPA currently exports to other regions.”. An Overview of the Pros and Cons of Removing Snake River Dams, Dams’ Hydropower Is No Longer Particularly Cheap. Snake River Waterkeeper is working to regain healthy waterways by demanding agency accountability through application of science and law. The lower Snake River dams have enabled large quantities of grain to be shipped by barge from Lewiston, Idaho all the way to the mouth of the Columbia River, 465 miles away, making the ninth-largest city in the nation’s 39th most populous state the West Coast’s farthest-inland port. I am hopeful that your future stories will consider this important discernment, and perhaps explain why ECONW rejected Twa’s modeling of earthen embankment removal. After the first irrigation dams on the river began operation in the first decade of the 20th century, most arable land bordering the Snake River was cultivated or turned to pasture, and agricultural return flows began to pollute the Snake. It allows for more springtime spill over dams to help juvenile salmon migrating out to the Pacific Ocean. Reducing the supply of wheat will increase wheat prices for the farmers anyway. Proper application of the Clean Water Act could bring these regions back to balance with only minimal adjustments in land use. Although they did consider the hydraulic breaching of DamSense, designed and modeled by John Twa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyGbgyPLDmc) this option was not selected, and for some unknown reason. Pesticides and heavy metals also enter the river from agricultural runoff and air deposition. Print. Rain is non-existent in the state its in now in the LC Valley. Working with a broad coalition of non-profit, government, private, and individual partners, we use the NPDES permitting process, Total Maximum Daily Load (“TMDL”) designation, and the antidegradation program to help develop pollution control and cleanup projects that restore impaired waterways and protect pristine waterways. Sold to China. Water is pumped from the top of the full reservoir to cropland 20-560 feet above the surface of the reservoir. Off, 1955-57. Some of the uses are at odds: navigation to and from Lewiston, Idaho, the West’s most inland port, irrigation for growers along the Snake, the balance of renewable energy, the survival of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead, tribal treaty rights, sport and … Instead, the ECONW study estimated a cost of breaching by considering a dam that needed the concrete structure removed. In total, just 125 water sources out of 230,000 statewide permits managed by Ecology would be affected. All told, on the most generous assumptions, holding irrigators and grain haulers harmless and applying the savings from ending lock operations would cost roughly $80 million or about 7% of the cost of removing the dams. Some of us want to have healthy salmon populations along with all the jobs, food sources and benefits more salmon and a healthier marine ecosystem brings. If wheat farmers in WA, Oregon and Idaho cant access international wheat export markets, where is the economic impact of that scenario? The lower Snake River dams are all run-of-river dams, which means they don't store water, and thus don't provide any flood control. The main stream is regulated by several dams and reservoirs, the most expansive being American Fall Dam and Reservoir. For example, the Legislature has limited which citizens can comment on CAFO siting, prohibited a state agency from considering odors and health impacts in water permitting, criminalized certain videotaping and photographing of agricultural operations, provided CAFO’s with protection from nuisance lawsuits, and prohibited oversight of CAFO waste management plans by declaring them “proprietary.” Reviews of waste management plans prior to the secrecy laws demonstrated widespread violations of state and federal land application standards. Downriver grain shipment makes up the majority of barge traffic on the lower Snake River. Not surprisingly, and despite notoriously limited water quality sampling, Idaho DEQ’s most recent report shows 36% of Idaho streams require mandatory TMDLs for failing to meet water quality standards. Support more research like this with a year-end gift! www.factoryfarmmap.org. Some of us want to have healthy salmon populations along with all the jobs, food sources and benefits more salmon and a healthier marine ecosystem brings. The current shipping system is faster and more environmentally friendly than adding thousands of semi-tractors to our roads. In the case of the LSR dams, the concrete structure remains in place. Please keep it civil and constructive. In some cases, paying them for their losses would cost less than continuing to operate the dams as at present. Congress and Bonneville to decide fate of lower Snake River dams. © 2021 Sightline Institute. Remarkably, the annual budget for operating the locks at the four dams is $21 million per year; the federal government spends one dollar operating the locks so grain shippers can save 30 cents on shipping. Lower Granite Dam by Moosealope used under CC BY 2.0. All of these agricultural reservoir users are pumping their irrigation water. Irrigation after the Dams Using water permit data from the Department of Ecology, ECONW identified 41 surface water diversions and 84 groundwater wells that could be affected by the drop in water levels if the dams were removed. “Right now we have zero participation in Idaho.”14 The most recent EPA status report shows that none of the 365 agency-designated “Large CAFOs” in Idaho – which for Dairy CAFOs means 700 or more mature dairy cows at one site – have CWA permits. All told, on the most generous assumptions, holding irrigators and grain haulers harmless and applying the savings from ending lock operations would cost roughly $80 million or about 7% of the cost of removing the dams. In spite of the. Regarding irrigators in the Columbia-Snake basin, removal of the four lower Snake River dams could actually take pressure off upriver irrigators in Idaho, who under an aggressive non-dam-removal plan would need to let more water remain in the river to mitigate for the effects of the dams. You may add a link with HTML: text to display. The Case for Removing the Snake River Dams, Few Would Lose from Removing Snake River Dams, Breaching the lower Snake River dams and restoring the river would not come cheap. It may be just as simple as suggested by the highly-informed Federal Judge James Redden, “You just dig out the ditch”. We can find replacement power to make up for the relatively small amount provided to the region by the four lower Snake River hydropower dams. We can replace barge traffic on the reservoirs behind the dams with rail. Diversified sustainable food sources are a must. Is Cap & Trade 1530 taken into consideration? Most of the Snake River watershed lies between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Columbia Plateau on the northwest. Reasonable people may think those costs are too high but the track record of most projects close to $1 billion is that they go over budget rather than under. After the first irrigation dams on the river began operation in the first decade of the 20th century, most arable land bordering the Snake River was cultivated or turned to pasture, and agricultural return flows began to pollute the Snake. The new plan says that’s the best option for fish – but too expensive in terms of irrigation, transportation and power generation. Please exchange rail for rain in my posting. The lower Snake River dams have touched on each of these topics since they were … When in late July, the consulting firm ECONorthwest (ECONW) released, on the economic tradeoffs of removing the dams on the lower Snake River, US Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, both Republicans from Eastern Washington, immediately, the report “a slap in the face of our state’s agricultural economy” adding that “billions of dollars in infrastructure improvements that would be needed for irrigation and transportation hardly come across as a ‘public benefit.’”, Using water permit data from the Department of Ecology, ECONW identified 41 surface water diversions and 84 groundwater wells that could be affected by the drop in water levels if the dams were removed. In total, just 125 water sources out of 230,000 statewide permits managed by Ecology would be affected. Grossly inaccurate on costs for shipping. Too much wheat is as bad as not enough. Some of the uses are at odds: navigation to and from Lewiston, Idaho, the West’s most inland port, irrigation for growers along the Snake, the balance of renewable energy, the survival of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead, tribal treaty rights, sport and commercial fishing and recreation. In some cases, paying them for their losses would cost less than continuing to operate the dams as at present. To find more articles on Sustainable Living. In this May 15, 2019, file photo, the Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River is seen from the air near Colfax, Washington. Its time to remove the dams, removal benefits more life forms and bring balance back to the region. Snake River Waterkeeper volunteers monitor water quality to measure progress towards the goal of “restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters” as expressed in the Clean Water Act. An August 2014 High Country News article sheds light on the completeness of EPA’s regulatory failure: “We know we have large CAFO (feedlot) facilities, but they have made the business decision to not participate,” said Jim Werntz, EPA’s director in Idaho. In some cases, paying them for their losses would cost less than continuing to operate the dams as at present. The Snake River dams in Washington would stay in place under the federal government’s preferred plan for the Columbia River System. The Snake River region hosts an extremely high density of cattle and pig confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), in which animals are restricted to feeding pens in dirt lots. The high end is with no back haul. Killing the river so someone can sell more wheat to china is ridiculous. If grain growers were forced to absorb higher shipping costs, the increase looks small in the context of the regional grain market. The tax money we save removing the dams benefits everyone. Grain growers have recently averaged annual shipments of about 2.2 million tons per year downriver. Even using costs of dam removal that some argue are too high, the case for dam removal remains strong. By slowing the flow and increasing the surface area exposed to the sun, the dams cause the Snake River to increase as much as 5.7 degrees, according to the report. The most likely scenario is that wheat that is currently trucked to Lewiston Idaho for barging would instead be trucked to Pasco and loaded on to barges there. : Hearings before the Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, first session, on S. 1333, a bill to authorize the construction, operation, and maintenance of the Hells Canyon Dam on the Snake River between Idaho and Oregon, and for related purposes … Washington, DC: U.S. Govt. If the dams were breached or removed, it would take several coal- or gas-fired power plants to replace them. You would not guess it from the words of conservative political leaders along the Snake, though. Lower Granite Dam is actually regarded to increase flood risk to Lewiston, Idaho. With a little leadership and creativity, we can extend irrigation infrastructure to withdraw water from a free-flowing river. Dams, irrigation diversions, pollution, and channel alteration have affected water quality, and over-watering from sprinkler-irrigated portions of the Eastern Snake River Basalt Plains has raised groundwater levels and created artificial wetlands. How about a healthy balance of wheat and salmon instead of just wheat. The Snake River dams, called run-of-the-river dams because of their limited storage capacity, are shallower than other dams on the Columbia, allowing for temperatures to build during summer heat. Learn more about the Snake River dams’ role in our region’s clean energy portfolio. (The value of wild salmon make that expense worthwhile, I argued in the. We are focused on achieving measurable reductions in toxic pollution in the fish, wildlife, and people of the mighty Snake River by advocating for state and federal laws that responsibly limit toxic pollution and holding illegal polluters accountable for threatening water quality and public health. Hearing happening now on WA HB 1157 that would offer cities a partial rebate of the real estate excise tax in exchange for…. Clearwater and Salmon, two Snake River tributaries. Runoff from feedlots was dumped into the river until laws made the practice illegal. Since this time the Lower Snake River has been used as a means for getting products to In spite of the howls of protest over the ECONW report,  the face of agriculture in Eastern Washington would go unmarred if the dams came down. Natural vegetation is mostly sagebrush and bunchgrass, but low terraces have salt tolerant plants. Support more research like this with a year-end gift! Pie in the sky with lots of key slices missing. It … But an irrigation specialist estimated that it would cost $148 million to plan, permit and replace the 41 diversions at the new water level after the dams were breached and $12 million extra to deepen or replace the 84 wells. (The value of wild salmon make that expense worthwhile, I argued in the first article of this series.) Lower Granite Dam is located approximately 40-miles downstream of Lewiston, Idaho. « Snake River Dams’ Hydropower Is No Longer Particularly Cheap, Restoring the Snake River Is a Jobs Program », https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyGbgyPLDmc, https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/judge-redden-talks-salmon-case#stream/0. Approach to weighing the pros and cons of Dam removal that some argue are high! 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