A16
NEWS
Wallowa County Chieftain
Dam: $16 million
earmarked to rebuild
Wallowa Lake Dam
Continued from Page A1
Now that fund-
ing is on the horizon,
McMillen said he is
focusing on regulatory
and permit issues and
refining the concep-
tual design in order to
choose the best alter-
native by July 1.
In
February,
McMillen said he will
present the work plan
and schedule to the
governor’s office fol-
lowed by meetings
with the office of Ore-
gon Dam Safety and
local fisheries man-
agers Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wild-
life and the Nez Perce
Tribe.
“We will have the
pre-planning
work
complete when the full
budget is allocated,”
McMillen said.
That starts about
a one-year clock for
McMillen’s team to
prepare the final plans
and specifications for
the dam rehabilitation,
including fish passage.
In August 2020 the
lake will be drawn
down and the dam
demolished in Septem-
ber. McMillen said he
leaving the foundation
of the existing dam
because it has adhered
to soil, creating a seal,
and will build on top
of it.
The concrete at the
base is friction locked
and we don’t want to
dig it up,” McMillen
said. “We will peel off
the bad concrete and
encapsulate the whole
thing — and have a
100 year-dam by doing
that.”
While additional
funding may be sought
to help pay for screen-
ing downstream diver-
sions, McMillen said
he anticipates he can
achieve all of the reha-
bilitation goals with
the $16 million in gov-
ernor’s the budget.
The dam will be
commissioned, com-
plete with fish pas-
sage in 2021, McMil-
len said.
Fish passage opens
the possibility of
reintroducing
sock-
eye salmon to Wal-
lowa Lake, a species
long extinct from the
Grande Ronde River
system.
Jeff Heindel, project
manager for McMil-
len Jacobs Associates,
said the brood stock
will likely come from
Redfish Lake in Idaho
where Snake River
sockeye were reintro-
duced several years
ago.
“It’s a great system
to reintroduce sock-
eye,” Heindel said.
“We know the forest
health benefits of anad-
romous fish — our
generation is already
seeing the impacts of
lakes without salmon
carcasses.”
Irrigators along five
ditches benefit directly
from diverted water
from Wallowa Lake,
but Aaron Maxwell of
the Nez Perce Tribe
asked if Wallowa
River
downstream
water users were being
taken into account.
Joe Dawson, the
district’s
secretary,
said a lower Wallowa
River Valley irriga-
tor, Dennis Hender-
son, requested that he
and his neighbors be
included in conversa-
tions about rebuilding
the dam.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Waterways group: Removing dams
won’t help orcas, environment, economy
By MATTHEW WEAVER
EO Media Group
LEWISTON, Idaho —
Removing four dams from
the Snake River won’t help
orcas, salmon, the environ-
ment or the economy, the
head of the Pacific Northwest
Waterways Association says.
Kristin Meira, execu-
tive director of the associa-
tion, which includes ports,
businesses, public agencies
and individuals that depend
on the region’s rivers, cited
figures from federal agen-
cies to counter environmen-
tal groups’ arguments for
breaching the dams as she
spoke Jan. 18 in Lewiston,
Idaho.
Washington Gov. Jay Ins-
lee recently announced his
support for a $1.1 billion
orca-rescue plan that includes
$750,000 for another look at
breaching the dams on the
Lower Snake River.
The number of orcas in
that population peaked at 200
in the 1960s, Meira said.
“Catastrophic”
orca
declines were due to shoot-
ing them before the 1960s
because they interfered with
commercial fishing. More
than 40 orcas were also cap-
tured alive for aquariums in
the 1960s and 1970s, leav-
ing 71 by 1976. There are 74
today.
Few adults of breeding
age were left at the time,
which may also have an
impact today, Meira said.
Environmentalists claim
that removing the dams will
save the orcas, she said.
“It’s not as simple as one
easy action that fits on a
T-shirt or a bumper sticker,”
she said.
The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric
Administra-
tion, or NOAA, the agency
responsible for orca recov-
ery, says the killer whales
also eat chinook salmon that
have picked up contaminants
in the Pacific Ocean, affect-
ing their ability to reproduce,
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press /Capital Press
Kristin Meira, executive director of the Pacific Northwest
Waterways Association, speaks about the importance of the
Columbia-Snake river system to the Lewis Valley Chamber of
Commerce in Lewiston, Idaho.
Meira said.
Other
problems
are
ships and boats, particu-
larly whale-watching boats.
The sounds their engines
make underwater interrupts
the orcas’ ability to use echo
location on prey.
“We’re basically loving
the orcas to death,” Meira
said.
Chinook runs along the
West Coast, Canada and
Alaska are important. The
Southern Population of orcas
migrates between Southeast
Alaska and Northern Cali-
fornia, spending only part
of the year off Washington’s
coast.
“Focusing with a laser on
four dams, that’s not going
to be the answer for these
orcas,” Meira said.
Juvenile fish survival
numbers for the Colum-
bia-Snake projects equal,
and sometimes exceed, those
of undammed rivers, Meira
said.
NOAA says removing the
dams would not have a pos-
itive impact on the fish, she
said.
Three dams recently
removed in the Puget Sound
area — Elwha Dam, Glines
Canyon Dam and Con-
dit Dam — were “ancient,”
completely blocked fish,
were built for storage, with
very little hydropower pro-
duction and were “ripe for
removal,” Meira said.
The Snake River dams are
an important source of reli-
able electricity compared
to intermittent sources such
as wind and solar, Meira
said. They are also among
the least-expensive power
sources for the Bonneville
Power Administration, she
said.
“These are not loser dams
that are too expensive to
run and making power BPA
doesn’t need,” she said.
“Quite the opposite.”
Meira cited claims from
environmental groups that
more than $30 million was
spent for sediment manage-
ment on the four Snake River
dams, adding that environ-
mental lawsuits filed against
the U.S. Army Corps of Engi-
neers were the reason.
In most parts of the coun-
try, dredging is needed each
year, Meira said. On the
Snake, it’s needed every five
years, at most.
“Even though this is the
most routine, win-win project
you can think about, because
I have the power to
explore
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it is on the Snake River, it
draws a lawsuit every single
time,” she said.
In 2005, the corps decided
to settle with the plaintiffs to
get the dredging done, but
had to agree to a sediment
study, which is not required
anywhere else, Meira said.
That study cost $21 million.
“That’s your taxpayer dol-
lars spent on a study that you
don’t have to do for any other
channel any where in the
United States, but it had to
be done on the Snake so the
corps could get out and do
that very basic maintenance
activity,” she said.
The
Columbia-Snake
river system is primarily a
gateway for exports over-
seas, where ports in Seattle,
Tacoma, Los Angeles and
Long Beach are primarily
to bring in consumer goods
from other countries, Meira
said.
Nearly 10 percent of all
U.S. wheat exports move
through the Snake River
dams. The Columbia-Snake
is the third largest grain
export gateway in the world
and the top wheat export
gateway for the U.S. More
than 50 percent of wheat
shipped from the U.S. is
exported through the river
system, she said.
It is also the nation’s sec-
ond largest export system for
soybeans from the Midwest.
In 2014, 4.4 million tons
of cargo were moved by
barge through the locks at
the four dams, Meira said.
That was 302 four-barge
tows. The equivalent would
be 43,610 railcars or 167,000
semi-trucks.
“Just think about what that
would mean for our rail lines,
if you can even find that
many cars and get them out
on the tracks,” she said. “So
then you think about your
highways, and how many
trucks you want on the high-
ways, what it would mean for
maintenance, for injuries, for
fatalities.”