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Commentaries and editorials

Salmon Plan Concerns

by Breanne Lee
The Chronicle, August 19, 2020

Removing the four Lower Snake dams will allow more salmon and steelhead
to return to cold, healthy streams and rivers in the Snake basin.

Columnaris lesions mar the gills of a sockeye salmon that was moving up the Columbia River in July 2015. The feds' new salmon Plan Ignores Climate Science and Hot Water caused by the dams.

Washington, Oregon, and the Environmental Protection Agency have said the Snake River becomes too hot for wild salmon in the summer and that dams are the biggest contributor to that problem. The federal agencies ignore this problem in their “new” Snake-Columbia salmon plan.

Hot water in the reservoirs behind the dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers during the summer months is killing salmon. You can see detailed graphing of these rising temperatures, which once surpass over 68 degrees Fahrenheit become increasingly deadly to salmon and steelhead, in Save Our Wild Salmon's annual Hot Water Reports.

With climate change steadily warming the waters in the Columbia and Snake Rivers, we need to provide salmon a cooler, faster journey between their home rivers and the sea. Removing the four Lower Snake dams will allow more salmon and steelhead to return to cold, healthy streams and rivers in the Snake basin. Sadly, the Trump Administration's salmon plan does not call for real river restoration.

We need leadership on this issue. We need Congress to step up, bring stakeholders together and develop a solution to this crisis that can restore salmon and meet the needs of the region.

Related Pages:
Water Temperature bluefish comments and the CRSO responses they evoked, 7/30/20


Breanne Lee, Pacific City
Salmon Plan Concerns
The Chronicle, August 19, 2020

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