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Salmon Chat - Transportation with Rick Eichstaedt Environmental News Network, December 15, 1999

ENN Chat: I was thinking that we could discuss some of the transportation issues that swirl around this debate.

Rick Eichstaedt: Sorry I stepped out. We are tracking the release of the new Potlatch NPDES permit and the media called.
Rick Eichstaedt: Hi Dan.
Dick Dahlgren: I'm back. I crashed and had to restart.
Dan Skinner: Hello gentlemen. Nice to see some friendlies.
Rick Eichstaedt: Definitely.
MightyColumbia: What Have I Missed? where are my past posts?
Dan Skinner: Do any of you know how to make the type box bigger so I can see more than one sentence?.
MightyColumbia: The Corps of Engineers (Dec 17th) will not tell you how dam breaching will benefit endangered salmon. That clearly suggests that there is no benefit to dam breaching for salmon.
ENN Chat: Ok - Sorry about that everyone - we were having quite a few system problems there for a bit.
MightyColumbia: Keep on typing
ENN administrator: Glad to see that everyone made it. Again, I apologize for the confusion.
Tom Flint: I was not able to get on until now, What have I missed???
Rick Eichstaedt: We are just getting started.
Dan Skinner: Actually, the Corps is trying to offer debate, rather than a top down reactionary argument.
MightyColumbia: I just reentered a starting post

Dan Skinner: The science is clear. It now is up to the public as to what we are willing to do.
Dick Dahlgren: The heck with the salmon for the time being. The question is if the dams go out how will barge transportation be replaced?

RedFish BlueFish: Well I thought I was late but lucky me
ENN Chat: Not at all - glad you could join us Red.
ENN Chat: Welcome to the chat all.
MightyColumbia: The Corps is embarrassed about the PATH process.
Dan Skinner: Railroads, trucks, with one time investment to upgrade the infrastructure.
Rick Eichstaedt: They are embarrassed that it showed that their prized hydro-program was killing salmon.
ENN Chat: Today, I was hoping we could discuss a few of the transportation issues that are swirling around this problem.
Tom Flint: There is no substitute for the existing system. That will be as efficient.
MightyColumbia: Barging a salmon recovery key, National Research Council says. The National Research Council, an independent scientific research agency of the National Academy of Sciences, released its long-awaited report that says barging juvenile salmon down the Snake and Columbia River is the most biologically effective and cost-effective way to help them get past the dams. (Dec 1995)
Dan Skinner: But, at what cost. Since the barging began, we have lost 90% of our stocks. Is that success?
Tom Flint: Good point, notice how there in never any discussion about the natural river fish mortality rate.

RedFish BlueFish: Tom: efficient in what way, money or energy?
Dick Dahlgren: How will trucks and rail costs be paid ?
Rick Eichstaedt: Savings from salmon mitigation dollars and avoidance costs from law suits resulting from extinction.
Tom Flint: That's because the Idaho Fish and Game poisoned the lakes, killing salmon to make them into trout lakes.
MightyColumbia: Increasing trucks, increases highway accidents. Who is in favor of traffic accidents?

RedFish BlueFish: The most vocal beneficiaries of the current system are Wheat Growers and shippers that transport their wheat by barge 465-miles to export terminals in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.
Dan Skinner: The rail line already exists. It worked just fine before the dams. It will be the same after.
Gary Behymer: Re: Transportation...I work at a grain facility that is located below Lower Granite Dam...Loss of the 4 Snake River Dams would add approximately $2 1/2 million our freight charges per year. All of this will passed on to farmers. Our facility is but one of such facilities.
Tom Flint: The transportation going down stream is going with the river flow, almost like coasting. Supper efficient.
Rick Eichstaedt: No barges means more independent businesses (trucking lines). So more money goes to more people. Instead of just to the big Portland based barge companies.
Dan Skinner: No, it will not necessarily be put on farmers. We subsidize 90% of barge costs now. Why would we not do it in the future.
Tom Flint: I am a farmer and can not afford to pay more.

RedFish BlueFish: Tom: but they have to go back upstream as well
Dan Skinner: We would rather cover your increased costs and have salmon. Science says we can't have both.
Dan Skinner: We don't want you to pay more, Tom. We want to shift our subsidy.
MightyColumbia: Increasingly, as evidence builds that dam breaching won't be necessary, dam removal backers groups are moving away from biological arguments to political ones" (December, 1999).
Rick Eichstaedt: We already pay for dredging. The Corps promised that the Port of Lewiston would be self-sufficient in ten years. That was another lie of the hydro-program.
Tom Flint: Yes they do they ship both ways, however the downstream passage with wheat and paper products is the most efficient way possible.
Gary Behymer: ...Approximately 400 more semis will be place on the road each day from those firms you remove the river from...

RedFish BlueFish: Rail lines parallel to the 139-miles of Snake River could handle the 5 million tons of grain shipped annually down this corridor. Currently, barge operators charge about 1.48 per ton for this 139-mile journey (www.bluefish.org/bargrate.htm). Think about that - 1.48 per ton! The true cost is much higher, about $14 per ton (Oregon Natural Resource Council). Barge operators are not charged for the dredging of the channel, maintenance of the locks, employment of the lock operator, or power lost due to water going through the locks and not the power generating system.
Dick Dahlgren: The shippers of grain pay nothing. The taxpayers and rate payers pick up the entire tab.
MightyColumbia: Today, juvenile salmon are surviving the region's hydroelectric dams at a rate that is as high or higher than in the 1960s, before the construction of the four Snake River dams that environmentalists want to remove. This, according to a new draft report from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center of the National Marine Fisheries Service. (Spokesman Review)
Dan Skinner: The vast scientific majority says it is necessary to bypass dams. The truck study you refer to does not include rail. That is not very likely a scenario.
Rick Eichstaedt: Taxpayers pay for the river lane and dam maintenance.
Tom Flint: That will come to about an additional 700,000 thousand semis on no existing roads.
MightyColumbia: There is no rail>
Dick Dahlgren: Wait a minute Tom. You farm on the Columbia not the Snake. Do you have a farm on the Snake?

RedFish BlueFish: Gary: 400 semis a day? Is that for 365 days of the year? I am curious as to how you arrived at that number.
Gary Behymer: ...and what rail system are we chatting about. It is almost 'defunct' in many areas of the Pacific Northwest
Rick Eichstaedt: Trucks already are on the road to Lewiston and there is not the out of control traffic that you refer to.
Dan Skinner: We could easily improve the highway system with a one time cost...rather than the continued dam and barge maintenance.
Tom Flint: We all pay for highways, public transportation and economic development of different areas. This is no different.
MightyColumbia: I worry about the WSU students facing those trucks!
Rick Eichstaedt: What about the salmon facing the dams?
Dan Skinner: Exactly. Why not make a choice. We don't want to leave anyone out here.
MightyColumbia: Barging a salmon recovery key, National Research Council says. The National Research Council, an independent scientific research agency of the National Academy of Sciences, released its long-awaited report that says barging juvenile salmon down the Snake and Columbia River is the most biologically effective and cost-effective way to help them get past the dams. (Dec 1995)
Tom Flint: There is a cost of lives lost on the roads that needs to addressed as this proposal with cost lives from traffic fatalities.

RedFish BlueFish: Tom: the 700,000 trucks increase per year is Senator Slade Gorton's number that comes from estimates of closing down the Columbia barge system.
Dan Skinner: Please remember that it is the salmon advocate community trying to include investment to cover any increased costs for shipping.
MightyColumbia: Humans over dam removal!
Dan Skinner: We are trying to take care of everyone, including farmers and fish.
MightyColumbia: American Rivers demands high human costs!
Dan Skinner: Anyone got any questions?
Rick Eichstaedt: A report from 1996 indicates that dam removal would cost $75-153 million a year compared to $200 million a year for barging and flow augmentation.
MightyColumbia: There is on reason to remove the dams.
Dan Skinner: Yeah, the general consensus is that bypassing dams will actually save taxpayer money.
Gary Behymer: It's time to review some reports. We need to include those whom it will directly affect. Those numbers May be a drop in the bucket.
Rick Eichstaedt: And ensure compliance with several federal statutes and treaty obligations.
Tom Flint: The salmon are safely bypassed around the dams, 95 percent are safely bypassed. of the remaining 5 percent 98 percent of them safely pass through the turbines. The net effect of all the dams on the Snake and Columbia is about 2 percent which is a very small part of the bid problem
MightyColumbia: The first gorilla will cost the citizens 240 million dollars a year to purchase electricity after the Snake River Dams are removed.
ENN Chat: Don't worry about prefacing your statements, your username does it automatically.
MightyColumbia: The second gorilla comes in the form of lost economic resources. The Snake River Dams provide BPA with net gross revenue near 200 million dollars each year. Citizens will make up for the loss.

RedFish BlueFish: It truly bothers me that many continue to use the 700,000 truck number so let's try to set it straight please.
MightyColumbia: All without benefit to salmon but in the name of salmon recovery!
Dan Skinner: I'm sorry, Tom, but your recent information is not accurate. Barging has failed.
Rick Eichstaedt: Are there 700,000 trucks coming into Lewiston now??
Tom Flint: What figure do you want to use for trucks.
MightyColumbia: Go Tom!
Gary Behymer: There would be 15,000 to 20,000 trucks coming out of Almota - all things equal - each year.
Tom Flint: Wrong, barging is 98 percent effective. And the those are the U.S. Army Corps numbers.
MightyColumbia: Barging a salmon recovery key, National Research Council says. The National Research Council, an independent scientific research agency of the National Academy of Sciences, released its long-awaited report that says barging juvenile salmon down the Snake and Columbia River is the most biologically effective and cost-effective way to help them get past the dams. (Dec 1995)
Dan Skinner: Barging has killed off 90% of our stocks since the program began. The reservoirs are a major problem.
Dick Dahlgren: Only 4% of the grain grown in the NW goes down the river and only 10% of Potlatch product goes down the river. Does any one else need help in switching to a new system?
MightyColumbia: Barging - The best available dam-mitigation option for the Columbia River or the Snake River...transportation appears to be the most biologically effective and cost-effective approach for moving smolts downstream.

RedFish BlueFish: As reported in April 99 Wheat Life, the Washington State Legislative Transportation Committee: "an increase of 169,000 one-way truck trips per year."
Dan Skinner: Looking only at the survival in the barges ignores the problems associated with reservoirs.
Tom Flint: You are focusing on yesterdays data and studies. Sorry you are just plain wrong.
Gary Behymer: I believe that 4% is an incorrect number.
MightyColumbia: Dick you have not been in the area during harvest have you.
Dan Skinner: Passage may get them to the ocean, but what about the half that never make it through the first pool, lower Granite?
MightyColumbia: It is clear that the trucks head toward the River.
Gary Behymer: "Battle of Statistics?"
Rick Eichstaedt: That 98 percent survival number is not accurate. That does not account for delayed mortality. That is the same as dropping a fish bowl off a skyscraper and checking to see if the fish are alive at the third floor!
Dan Skinner: What about the 20-40 percent that die in-between the dams on the way back, due to high temperatures and the physical toil of getting over dams.
MightyColumbia: Correction 40 % die in the wild rivers above the dams!
ENN Chat: Okay - everyone... enough with the exclamation points....and lets try not making this personal.
MightyColumbia: NMFS
Tom Flint: Let me put it in perspective the transportation commerce down the Snake River is second to that of the Mississippi River. 43 different states benefit either directly or directly from the current barge system
Rick Eichstaedt: That 40% loss has in part to due with loss in reservoirs from temperature and predators.
Dan Skinner: We must recognize that if major changes are not made, the fish will go extinct.

RedFish BlueFish: 169,000 one way truck trips if the Snake River Barge system is removed. http://www.bluefish.org/roadcost.htm#trucks
Dick Dahlgren: 98 % of the yearly release may pass down the river. It's the returning fish numbers that shrink each year. Only 197 Chinook returned to the Sawtooth hatchery. The recovery plan for Sawtooth is 19,500 (IDFG data)
MightyColumbia: I favor passion. Dam removal is a dirty business!
Dan Skinner: That 40 percent is documented in pit tag data at the head of the pool and at the dam. Let me know if you want the report.
Tom Flint: That's because the have been all poisoned in the past.
Tom Flint: A fish that was poisoned was not killed by a dam.
Rick Eichstaedt: No Dan, I was referring to the 40% loss above dams, not the returns.
MightyColumbia: Consultant Don Chapman spelled out his views on the biological benefits of breaching lower Snake dam breaching issue in early March, 99 at his state's chapter meeting of the American Fisheries Society. "It is really the estuary and ocean that constitute the most limiting factor in the ecology of salmon. It doesn't matter if you breach or do not breach--the ocean remains the elephant sitting on the coffee table. Yet it is the least-studied salmon life stanza."
Gary Behymer: What cost removal? What cost transportation? Is it the desire of the people East of the Mississippi to take the Pacific Northwest back to what it was in 1920? At what cost?
MightyColumbia: Dan the data is the back face of the dam - that is where the sensors are.
Rick Eichstaedt: Okay, if the estuary is an issue. Do you favor lower Columbia dredging?
Dan Skinner: Don Chapman is the exception, not the rule. He is also employed by the industries that benefit from the dams.

RedFish BlueFish: 1995 Snake River Freight includes 3,545,000 tons of wheat, 391,000 tons of barley. ACOE http://www.bluefish.org/freight.htm
Tom Flint: Good point Mighty Columbia. The ocean no one looks at or considers.
MightyColumbia: Dredge but don't make sand islands.
MightyColumbia: Dam removal is a dead issue.
Dan Skinner: The ocean has not selected to kill only Snake stocks. Downriver stocks survive at rates 2-10 times higher than our fish.
Rick Eichstaedt: We cannot control ocean conditions, we can control dams! Also, dredging is going to release a lot of toxins into the estuary furthering the damage to salmon.

RedFish BlueFish: I think an average number of a little under 4 million tons is a good estimate to use.
Dan Skinner: Obviously, the ocean is a major factor. But, at Rick said, we can control the migration corridor.
Tom Flint: These are really multipurpose projects, of social and quality of life issues. We can have both salmon and dams if we do it right.
MightyColumbia: Dan try the 2-10 again - I missed the point.

RedFish BlueFish: The rail lines parallel to the Snake River charge rates comparable to the barge rates. If the rail lines were subsidized at a fraction of the current barge subsidy, rail rates IDENTICAL to the current barge rates could be established.
Tom Flint: So when will it be open season on Caspian Terns?
Dan Skinner: I would like to believe you, Tom, but we have failed to date. And, something has got to change.
Rick Eichstaedt: We have tried that for 20 years and 3-5 billion dollars. Salmon and dams do not work! They will work only when the dams finally put the salmon into a state of extinction!
Gary Behymer: The rail lines cannot handle the grain that is produced in the Pacific Northwest. Substantial monies would have to be provided to make that work.
Dan Skinner: I met with NMFS #2guy yesterday. He claimed there would be no terns on Rice Island next year.
MightyColumbia: Do barges pick up subsidy checks?
Tom Flint: Ok, then lets look at some of the obvious like harvest. What about harvest.
Dick Dahlgren: No terns if the islands are removed. They were created by the Corps dredging activities.
ENN Chat: Gary - working in the industry, do you know if the barge system is subsidized?
Dan Skinner: We have cut harvest from over 50% to less than 10% in the last 20 years.

RedFish BlueFish: This chat was hopefully going to focus on Transportation concerns. What if rates IDENTICAL to the current barge rates could be established? How would all the shippers feel?
Gary Behymer: To my knowledge the barge system is NOT subsidized. They actually pay a fee for each lock they go through...
Dan Skinner: Also, we do not fish for spring/summer Chinook and their numbers are down as well.
Tom Flint: NMFS has been trying to solve that for over 4 years at a cost of about 500,000 per year, It is turned in to a comedy of errors, and I would expect more comedy from them in the future.
Dick Dahlgren: Give me a break! Better than 90% of the grain grown in the NW is NOT shipped by barge.
MightyColumbia: According to a Letter to the Editor from M. Clark of The Dalles unsold tribal caught salmon are being dumped. Clark told Oregonian Newspaper readers of a conversation with a 'young' tribal fish salesman at Cascade Locks - "I then asked if they didn't sell all of them, what would they do and he said 'go dump them'. I was expecting him to say, 'take them home (to eat)".
Gary Behymer: Our freight costs would go from 21 cents a bushel to 38 cents per bushel.
Dan Skinner: To get to that 90% subsidy, you need to include costs for salmon mitigation and the water flushed each time the locks are used.
Dan Skinner: Yes, if all of the costs were left to shippers. They are not now, we don't want them to be in the future.

RedFish BlueFish: Tom: I would amend that to say we can have salmon and a healthy agriculture economy at the same time. It is completely unclear to me why dams are necessary for agriculture. If the rail rates parallel to the River charged rates IDENTICAL to the current rates, the dam breach would be invisible to all shippers.
Dan Skinner: We support your system now. We want to continue to do that. We just want a new system.
Tom Flint: So are you going to pay for it?
MightyColumbia: The Columbia River has enough water to sink the Navy any day of the Year. The Snake is a big River too.
Gary Behymer: All costs would eventually be passed on to our local area farmers. How much more are they expected to 'shoulder'?
Dan Skinner: We already do pay for it. And yes, we want to invest in the system to keep your costs where they are.
MightyColumbia: Pit -Tag (Passive Integrated Transponder) measurements found that 72 percent of wild Snake River Spring Chinook were barged to below Bonneville Dam while 83 percent of wild steelhead were barged in 1999. Based on NMFS studies, approximately 99 percent of barged fish survive the journey.
Dick Dahlgren: Yes. The salmon are thriving low the four dams. They are almost gone above.
Dan Skinner: Could we address the dialogue, please?
MightyColumbia: Barging is first class!
Tom Flint: Rail is not the answer, you can not get the cars and the scheduling of trains and additional track is not there. They estimate that it would take 100 years to replace the barging system with railroads.
MightyColumbia: Rail is has been in the pull up mode for years.
Dick Dahlgren: The costs will be paid through subsidies as they are now.
Gary Behymer: There are many facilities in Eastern Washington that has no rail service.
ENN Chat: To Room: Indeed - this conversation would be a great deal clearer if you addressed your comments to a particular individual.
Tom Flint: No subsides are not the answer
Dan Skinner: What about the Washington Grain Train program. They have secured the cars in central Washington. There is no reason to think we could not do that on the lower Snake.
MightyColumbia: Problem is no rails.
Dick Dahlgren: Local farmers pay at best only 10% of shipping costs. Any new costs will not be a burden to them.
Gary Behymer: Dan...is the State to subsidize? If money was to be made then the BN and UP would have left the lines in...

RedFish BlueFish: From the Oregon Natural Resource Council Report: "River transportation on the Lower Snake is expensive and heavily subsidized. Although river shippers pay only $1.23 per ton from Lewiston, Idaho to Kennewick, Washington, taxpayers and electric ratepayers pay an additional $12.66. The total cost to ship one ton of goods on the Lower Snake is $13,89. In comparison, rail costs only $1.26"
Dan Skinner: At that point, the rails could not compete with barging. We are talking post barging.
Tom Flint: So does that mean that you want to start paying for the roads you drive your car on?
Dan Skinner: We already do.
ENN Chat: I don't think that is the point Tom.

RedFish BlueFish: Gary: freight costs need not change at all. How would you feel if a breach proposal guaranteed IDENTICAL shipping rates to the current system? Your concerns would be heard and addressed.
MightyColumbia: 12/9 cents to Portland by barge from here - farmer paid
Dick Dahlgren: Mighty From where are you referring to?
Tom Flint: We should be all nervous when the government guarantees anything.
Gary Behymer: RedFish...I don't believe that taxpayers are willing to foot all of this bill....? Do you?

RedFish BlueFish: No one is interested in impact the Wheat Grower that uses the current barge system. Let's make the effect completely invisible. What do you say to IDENTICAL rail rates?
MightyColumbia: Dam breaching is "..Dirty business", salmon Czar
Dan Skinner: We going to spend $1 billion this year on salmon mitigation. We would save money in the long run.
Dick Dahlgren: Tom. That's a strong point. Soon the taxpayers are gonna' catch on and demand that the government stop the barging subsidies.
MightyColumbia: What about the carbon benefit to barge transportation?
Tom Flint: The barging system is clean and renewable. What other alternative are as environmentally friendly?
Dan Skinner: MC, you have a good point. I suppose those of us who want fish are willing to make that trade.
Gary Behymer: Monopolies are great! How about rail subsidies? Weren't they given a large part of the West when they were being built?
Tom Flint: Over 500 million on that was for administration.
MightyColumbia: Does Does American Rivers advocate increase carbon use?
Dan Skinner: I would believe that. It would be just fine to put the administrative dollars to work on solutions that work.
Dan Skinner: I don't thing American Rivers is present.
MightyColumbia: Dan you might note that, Pit -Tag (Passive Integrated Transponder) measurements found that 72 percent of wild Snake River Spring Chinook were barged to below Bonneville Dam while 83 percent of wild steelhead were barged in 1999. Based on NMFS studies, approximately 99 percent of barged fish survive the journey.
ENN Chat: No, I don't think American rivers is represented.

RedFish BlueFish: I agree with your concern Tom, that we should be nervous about any guarantee from the government. But this is are major stumbling block: Fear that the government won't keep the promise. If that was written into law along with the decommissioning of the dams then it will be Guaranteed.
Dick Dahlgren: Tom. Do you ship your grain through the four dams from your farm?
Tom Flint: Dick. I personally do not.
Tom Flint: But it goes do from the Port of Pasco by barge.
MightyColumbia: 1960 Decline: B.C. Scientist Dr. David Welch recently testified before Senator Gordon Smith. Here's an excerpt of his testimony: "The work of my colleagues and myself at sea indicates there are massive changes occurring in the north-eastern Pacific. Perhaps most important, there are dramatic changes in the ocean ecosystem as a result of nutrient depletion in the 1990s. This is apparently the result of a 'sealing off' of the nutrient-rich deep ocean from the surface layer where most biological activity occurs.
MightyColumbia: Snake river salmon travel that path in the ocean.
Tom Flint: The vast majority of wheat moves down the Snake River System.
Rick Eichstaedt: So, if the only answer to salmon recovery, would it be okay to breach dams?
ENN Chat: Ok All: We have about 5 minutes left - I will have the transcript up this evening.
MightyColumbia: One good example of the environmental tax is the salmon recovery tax of the Pacific Northwest. Large (1 1/2 new king domes each year). Hidden most people believe that it only amounts to one latte each month. Best of all nearly all the tax is used for things that do not recover salmon.
Dan Skinner: Please stop wasting our time MC, we are actually trying to exchange ideas.

RedFish BlueFish: The stumbling block is the farmers fear that shipping rates will go up. I have heard this concern and believe it is very valid. So let us address this concern. Guarantee that shipping rates will be IDENTICAL to the current "heavily subsidized" barge system rates of around 1.40 per ton for 139 miles from Lewiston to Pasco.
Rick Eichstaedt: Good point Dan.
MightyColumbia: The third gorilla reinforces the first two: The Congressionally set recovery cap of $435,000,000 has been raised administratively, up to $700,000,000 without benefit to salmon.
Dan Skinner: I think we could all support a system which capped your costs to ship.
MightyColumbia: Who is wasting whose time??
ENN Chat: OK Mighty - your gorillas have been cited here before.
Rick Eichstaedt: So we could spend more and more useless dollars or remove dams and actually accomplish something? Right, MC.
Tom Flint: I believe that you have focused 98 percent of the solution on 2 percent of the problem. We need to address the other 98 percent of the problem and barging is not it.
MightyColumbia: The problem is clearly to much money.

RedFish BlueFish: I think that we agree that the money currently spent is being wasted on actions that provide no benefit to salmon recovery.
Dan Skinner: Tom, we know this a threat. We don't want to make anyone the sacrificial lamb. That is why we are supporting studies that show how to shift the transportation system without dumping the cost on you.
MightyColumbia: True for dam removal too!
Rick Eichstaedt: Or lets start calculating how much mitigation dollars we will need for farmers.
Gary Behymer: Gentlemen..."We have met the enemy and he is us" Walt Kelly/Pogo/1968
Dan Skinner: We are addressing the key difference between downstream stocks and our own. They survive at rates higher than ours

RedFish BlueFish: From all the people that I have talked to, Barging is the Main Problem. This is the most important of all the stumbling blocks.
Rick Eichstaedt: That is one reason that the Tribes have supported spill over barging.
MightyColumbia: Dam removal will steal from your future, your children's future and all of the school districts within reach o BPAs power lines.
Tom Flint: So do you agree that dams do not kill 98 to 99 percent of the salmon.
ENN Chat: Alright folks, I am not sure that we got anywhere today, but we did have quite a few facts and figures presented. Perhaps we can make better sense of them from the transcript.
Rick Eichstaedt: I think not.
Dan Skinner: Dams are responsible for their decline.

RedFish BlueFish: If rates were IDENTICAL to the current system, no economic effect would be felt by anyone that uses this corridor for shipping goods to market. Wheat Growers, Cooperatives, Potlatch, please speak up and comment. Your input is imperative.
ENN Chat: We can continue this discussion next Wednesday - same place same time. Thanks for logging in tonight.
Tom Flint: Dan, So do you eat and use power?
MightyColumbia: 1989 studies of adult steelhead at the Lower Granite Dam show that transported and control (fish that migrated in the river) group ratios were 2.1, which means that about 110 percent more steelhead returned to the Lower Granite Project than would have without the 1989 juvenile transportation program.
ENN Chat: Ok I will have this transcript up tonight. Email me if you wish a copy. Dskillman@enn.com.

RedFish BlueFish: Thanks for the chat. It seems, however, that certain parties are interested in distracting us from the main conversation line.
Rick Eichstaedt: We definitely need to have more of these chats.
Dan Skinner: Tom, email me. Yes, of course. We are not talking about dismantling the system.
Tom Flint: Thanks for the opportunity to share views, This is appreciated.

RedFish BlueFish: One question. What if rates were IDENTICAL?
Dan Skinner: WE are talking about doing what is necessary to bring our fish back. These not my facts.
ENN Chat: Ok Red- NEXT WEEK.
Dan Skinner: Thanks all. My typing skills are way up.
MightyColumbia: Why disable the best economic alternative with out benefit?
Rick Eichstaedt: Thanks!
Tom Flint: Money is not the only issue. Air pollution and efficiency are important also.

RedFish BlueFish: Thanks for having us.
ENN Chat: No problem.
Rick Eichstaedt: Air pollution in Lewiston? Come smell Potlatch. That is not even an issue!
Dan Skinner: You are right, Tom. It is a tradeoff. Some of us think it will be worth it.
Tom Flint: That would contribute to global warming.
Rick Eichstaedt: Then perhaps we should air emission limits on Potlatch and breach dams. Sounds good to me.
Dan Skinner: Now there's a trade we would all love to see.
Dan Skinner: The point is that there are tough choices to be made. For most of the Northwest, considering the subsidies, those dams just don't make sense, for people or for salmon.
Rick Eichstaedt: Need we forget, that there is an entire economy which has been destroyed by the dams - Tribal fishing.
Tom Flint: Dams are not the big problem you make them out to be. We need to be discussing the 4 H's or 5, 6 H's as well.
Dan Skinner: Tom. dskinner@idahorivers.org Thanks for the chat, all. I'm off.
Rick Eichstaedt: Me too! Thanks! ricke@nezperce.org
ENN Chat: Thank you all for joining us tonight.