Snake River Dams: How They Affect The Wildife

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Full Transcript:

- So on that note, Snake River dams in the news again, you've been covering them. Why are they in the news again?

- So there have been some recent workshops and the kind of stem from an attempt by Washington officials to push the conversation away from beyond just what do we do with the dam, should they stay or should they go, into more productive discussions. This most recent study comes from recommendations from Governor Jay Inslee's, Orca Task Force, which was tasked with looking at ways to save the orcas. And orcas depend on salmon for food. So one of the suggestions that task force came out with was to form a stakeholder group that would list all the pros and the cons of the dams. So the study doesn't exactly make any suggestions on the fate of the dams. It's just supposed to guide the state's position when the federal government comes out with its draft environmental impact statement next month. The study was kinda controversial because some say that it was kind of just a waste of taxpayer money. It was $750,000, that they say wasn't reporting on anything new. Others say that it's really important to have these kind of discussions and learn from what the other side is thinking and figure out kind of ways to go forward instead of just continue to remain stuck in the same discussion we've been having for decades.

- One, I know we have talked about, you and I have talked about this topic before. This conversation about dams and the fate of them on the Snake River is nothing new. They've been ongoing five, 10, many years back. So I'm just wondering what really has elevated it again to the popular conversation and to having so many studies about it. Is it really just the orca thing?

- So that was kind of the big question that people were asking in this recent Clarkston meeting. What's new? Why are we still talking about this years and years and years later? And so I think these discussions really kind of do stem from efforts to save the southern resident killer whales. Although gathering opinions about the Snake River dams were just one recommendation made by the task force that I mentioned earlier. So at other readings around the plight of the salmon, I've heard people say that orcas are really kind of the key to pushing this discussion forward to talk more about actually removing or altering the dams. And that's a big thing that's kind of different in this debate now, is orcas are top of mind for a lot of people, whereas they weren't several years ago.