http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/44804100

Army Corps of Engineers : an assessment of the draft environmental impact statement of the Lower Snake River dams : report to Congressional requesters

The precipitous decline of salmon has caused the National Marine Fisheries Service to list four different species of salmon and steelhead native to the Snake River as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In 1995, the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates four hydroelectric dams on the Lower Snake River, began to study how to improve migration conditions for juvenile salmon. The Corps listed four alternatives: maintain current operations, breach the dams so that the water courses around them, increase transportation of juvenile salmon around the dams, or make improvements to the dams' systems for collecting juvenile salmon and barging or trucking them past the dams. Their draft environmental impact statement made no recommendations about which of the four alternatives to adopt. The net economic effect on electricity costs, some $245 million a year, is reasonable. Breaching the dams would mean losing hydroelectric power generated by the dams and would affect shipping on the Lower Snake River. Although the Corps' transportation analysis followed appropriate guidelines, it did not fully consider the effect of some of its assumptions and has not corrected some known errors. Also, breaching would affect air quality by increasing dust in the air and adding airborne pollutants from substitute sources of power and transportation. The Corps is now considering public and agency comments on the draft environmental impact statement before revising it.

Open All Close All