Posted on 09/04/2003 3:59:38 PM PDT by bicycle thug
SPOKANE (AP) - Four dams on the Snake River continue to raise water temperatures to dangerously high levels for endangered salmon, an environmental group contends.
The dams include Ice Harbor, which President Bush visited in late August to declare that federal efforts to restore salmon numbers were working.
But the activist group American Rivers said Wednesday that even on the day of Bush's visit, the water temperature behind Ice Harbor Dam was 71 degrees, 3 degrees higher than the federal Clean Water Act standard of 68 degrees.
``Because of the lower Snake River dams, the water temperature in the river is hot for weeks on end, creating harmful and sometimes lethal conditions for young salmon,'' said Michael Garrity of American Rivers' office in Seattle. ``It's like having your children swim laps in a hot tub.''
The group gave failing marks to federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Fisheries, which is charged with restoring salmon runs.
Brian Gorman of NOAA-Fisheries disagreed with the grade.
``We are making substantial headway on improving habitat and hatcheries and dams,'' Gorman said.
``The problem is snapshot criticism where they look at one or two aspects of salmon recovery for an instant and say `it's awful, so the feds are failing,''' Gorman said. ``You also could say `it's great and they are succeeding.'''
Biologists must look at long-term trends, and those indicate that salmon numbers have been improving since some runs were listed as endangered in the 1990s, Gorman said.
Salmon require plenty of cold water for their migrations between spawning groups and the Pacific Ocean.
In addition to raising water temperature, the dams do not release adequate water downstream to help the fish migrate, American Rivers contended.
On the Snake River, federal dam managers failed to achieve spring salmon water flow targets nearly 75 percent of the time, and summer flow targets more than 90 percent of the time, the group said.
Snake River summer water temperature standards were violated over 75 percent of the time, the group said.
In May, U.S. District Judge James A. Redden of Portland, Ore., threw out the government's Columbia and Snake rivers salmon recovery plan as inadequate and gave the Bush administration one year to come up with a new plan.
In April 2001, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was ordered by another federal judge in a separate case to come up with a plan to bring the four lower Snake River dams into compliance with the Clean Water Act temperature standard of 68 degrees. That issue is still in court.
While an upswing in ocean survival has contributed to strong runs of mostly hatchery salmon for the last three years, wild Snake River salmon and steelhead are still in danger of extinction.
For instance, only 12 sockeye salmon made it past the dams to Redfish Lake in central Idaho this year.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
As a kayaker, I've paddled a lot of rivers in the SE, and the dam-fed rivers are colder, not warmer - all that deep water behind the dam that never sees the sun. The Chattahoochee (runs through metro Atlanta) is cold enough to support trout WAY south of any other river around here, because it comes out of Lake Lanier and Morgan Falls Lake. (You can see all those urban fisherman in their matching Orvis vests and waders standing all over the shallows just north of the US 41 bridge - so many of them so close together that their lines get tangled. No room for my Lab to chase a bumper in the whole river!)
The river's so cold it actually creates the "Chattahoochee Thermocline", and temperatures on the leeward (N) side of the river are 5-10 degrees cooler.
And ask anybody about how cold the Nantahala is when the power company is generating - the water to run the turbines comes right off the bottom of the lake and you're like to freeze to death if you don't have your wetsuit and paddle jacket on. I swear the water must be fifty degrees.
Are things different out west somehow?
It's clear that wildlife management is functioning with proficiency in this situation.
Because I'm not a very good typist, I'll jump to my conclusion: environmentalism is genocide.
This statement just amazes me. I know it shouldn't but it does.
"But I've just had a report that a representative of Disaster Area met with the environmentalists at lunchtime, and had them all shot, so nothing now lies in the way of..."
Douglas Adams, Restaurant at The End of The Universe
"Are things different out west somehow?"
Of course, they aren't. The White River in Arkansas, below the Bull Shoals and Norfork dams, runs at 45 degrees -- winter and summer. The trout fishery there may be the most productive in the nation.
I'd wager that the 71 degree figure the enviros are quoting at Ice Harbor is a surface temperature. And beneath the surface there will be a tube or tunnel of cold, flowing river water equivalent to the inflow from the Snake and other feeder streams.
Dive to the bottom of any lake, along the old channel, and you'll be in this tunnel of water -- which is perceptibly colder than the surrounding water...and perceptibly moving.
That is also where the fish who prefer colder water will be, while other species will hang out near the banks and the surface.
The enviromentalists are either a.) too stupid to understand this, or b.) lying.
Maybe they're those armchair environmentalists who live in a downtown condo and have never put so much as a well-shod toe into a lake . . . ?
The followers are THAT stupid.
Kayakers do tend to circle the wagons a little on environmental issues. But really they're not hard-core idiots, because they USE the river and need to have equipment, access, parking, etc. as well as knowing what it's like because they're IN it.
(self and daughter goofing on Tuckasegee on Labor Day weekend. It was a little high and muddy but still fun.)
In that respect, kayakers are like farmers and riverside dwellers. Everybody who uses or lives on a body or source of water has a vested interest in maintaining it.
There is no philosophical conflict between these various water users -- they can successfully co-exist, respect each other and work together, because they share the same objective.
It is the radical environmentalists who are in conflict with everybody else, because their starting point is that man should not be using the water!
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