dampainter

Don't worry too much about the silt or mud! Remember what happen at Mt. Saint Helens? It left what you would consider to be an "ecological disaster" to the Toutle River and lower Cowlitz when it erupted, and look at it now!

That's even after the COE had to screw with it again, and put in a huge earthen filled retension dam to "STOP" the sediment from going into the Columbia. You would be surprised just how quickly old Mother Nature comes back once man quits screwing around with here.

The huge mud flats that were left along the banks of the Toutle are now prime land for massive groves of alder trees. And the same thing would also happen if many of the dams were now removed or breached and left to flush themselves.

Rather you like it or not, ALL DAMS will eventually be filled in by the built up of silting. Then what are your options going to be? Who do you think will be paying for any of the option that may be used? What would you do if the Grand Coulee Dam failed? All the dams downstream would most likely fall like dominos if the Grand was to fail. Then what?

As far as power goes, we are on the brink of developing new and better power sources such has hydrogen power. And all this has only been done in the past couple of decades. What do you think will be our power sources in the next 50 years or so?

Here's the bigger question that you need to answer; who's going to play to remove the dams once another source of power is developed or they get silted in? Do you think that a single dam has any legal obligation within its operating license for it's decommissioning or removal. . .Dream on if you do!

There are a lot more "hidden problems" with dams then most people will ever realize, and they are not all fish related problems either. If you think that I am wrong, just do a public record request on your most favorite dam and ask to see all the "Dam Safety Reports" (inspections) that they are mandated to do every 5 years or so?you will be shocked when you see what some of their ongoing problems really are, and how they have propose to either monitor or fix the problems.

I can tell you; that is a fact on Tacoma's Cowlitz River dams!

Cowlitzfisherman

Backlash

The recent good sized runs of steelhead in the snake river system are the result of a few good water years in a row. The problem has nothing to do with the fish being able to get back up the river, its the smolts having a hard time getting down. Last year was a very poor water year and so was the year before that. I don;t expect to see much of a salmon run, and maybe half the steelhead.

Chappy,

I believe there was something on the ballot a couple of years ago to ban commercial netting. It obviously did not pass. Why? I am not sure. Could have something to do with the political power of the commercial fisherman, may of also had something to do with the Indians still being able to net. Anyway, the only way it would work is if both the indians and the commercial fisherman were both denied the opportunity to net.


Sammy

Cowlitzfishermen.......you ever been in a dam? do you know anything about there operation? there is no way these are going to be silted in , some are more than 50 years old .whats this dams being silted in thing your talking about ? what I had posted was fact ,wheres this silted in study of yours? I do know that part of a study done on breaching shows that there is a question with the areas behind the dams that have alot of built up silt and will wash downstream onto crab beds.....We depend on these dams (columbia and snake river hydroelectric dams, I do not know or care about others) and untill there is an alternate power source, which right now there is none nor in the foreseeable future.... the dams will be here long after you and I have gone.

jimh ... Isn't it pretty much a fact that the Tolt Dam wiped out the run of pinks in that river?? That's a Snohomish trib ...

dampainter

Yes, I have been in lots of dams! If you question my reply, just ask Salmon G. He's been with me on numerous visits during the entire construction fazes of the Cowlitz Falls Dam. I was the FOC legal representative for that organization when Bonneville Power made a settlement agreement with the FOC which assured that Fish Collection Facilities would be installed at the new Cowlitz Falls Dam. The original project did not require any fish collection facilities to be installed on the project.

Our settlement changed that forever and assured that the Cowlitz would once again have an opportunity for recovery of its natural spawning fish.

I was very involved in the technical meeting that defined the designed of and the implementation of the new fish collection facilities. Because of my lack of engineering background, I didn't have much to give other then my knowledge of the Cowlitz and its fish. I did learn a tremendous amount about "dams" and how they function.

I also helped put special anchors in the reservoir for our fish rearing net pen projects and walked the terrain prior to the filling of the Cowlitz Falls reservoir. That was sometime back in the mid nineties. That also gave me the opportunity to see a reservoir both before and after it had been filled.

Most people never get such an opportunity to see how silt can build up after a dam has been operating for years. The droughts of recent years afforded me the opportunity to see first hand how silt can accumulate. You wouldn't believe just how much silt has already build up in just 6 years! Even though the Cowlitz Falls reservoir is a relatively small one, it surely reflects how silt can fill in the reservoirs carrying capacity.

Once a reservoir starts filling up with silt, they begin to loose some of their head pressure and the turbines become less and less effective. It's the head pressure that makes the turbines turn, not just the amount of water that stored behind them.

A thousand miles of stored water that is only ten feet deep at the dam turbines intakes makes it just about worthless for tuning large turbines. At some point, be it 60 or 125 more years, most dams will loose their head pressure, which will make them totally inefficient to run or operate for power generation.

It's pretty well known and accepted by most of the biologists on this board, that all dams are domed at some point in time. The biggest problem is; they just don't know exactly when that time may be! Lots of different natural events control that factor, and it would almost be imposable to predict those events and their regularity.

When one considers that the average amount of sediment transported into Riffe Lake is to be 1,000,000 cubic yards a year (on the average), how much sediment has been dumped into it in the pass 35 years? Now you take a massive river system such as the Columbia, and you can do your own math! Sooner or later, they will be filled in with sediment!

You asked me "where's this silted in study of yours?" It pretty simple to find; just look at the FERC/FEIS-133 (Cowlitz River Hydroelectric Project; FERC 2016). Any dam that is currently going though a relicensing process, or is about to do one has to do a "Sediment Accumulation Study". So pick any dam you chose, and read what there own studies or EIS says. Then do the math again and add them all up and see what the pictures looks like; it's just a mater of time!

Finally, I agree with you that dams will be here for a long time; but not all of them are worth having! Some dams may be in need of being decommissioned, while others may be worth keeping! It really doesn't have be one of those "all or none choices" when it comes to removing dams.

Cowlitzfisherman