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Date Posted: 16:09:06 04/26/08 Sat
Author: SS
Subject: ****************ARIVERLOST1STREPORT************

Noah Eaton
April 23, 2008
Science 354U

A River Lost: First Report


Introduction

1) Who are the stakeholders in irrigation country in Eastern Washington and in the cities and suburbs of Western Washington?
- Stakeholders in Eastern Washington and the suburbs of Western Washington include farmers (who Harden illustrates the adversities his father Arno endured as a wheat, corn and barley farmer and livestock herder), companies and agencies that manage hydroelectric facilities along the Columbia River Basin, dam owners and operators, towns among the region whose local economies are pivotally dependent on the river’s resources, environmentalists (who Harden explains have primarily worked to save the spotted owl and caribou, among other species), Native American tribal communities, fishers, aluminum companies, barging firms and various other utility operators.

2) How do their interests compare?
- Harden mentions that every half hour, the Columbia “expends as much energy as was released by the explosion of the Hiroshima bomb” (17) and “possesses a third of America’s hydroelectric potential.” (17). Since the Grand Coulee and several other major dams were first installed in the mid-thirties, and turned the Pacific Northwest “from a boondock into a high-tech, high-wage region whose gross national product ranked tenth in the world.” (18), where many who benefited economically from it at the time have since taken pride in the culture and was depicted as a “soothing version of Garrison Keillor’s white-bread America.” (12) in Harden’s mind at one point, polarities have increasingly widened between natives who regularly rely on the Columbia River economically that defend “a subsidized status quo that they believed to be their birthright.” (16) and West Side residents who are less personally attached and dependent on the river intimately who, as Harden argues, behave “like dilettantes, motivated by a passing desire for a pristine playground or by abstract notions of saving endangered species.” (16)
Also noteworthy are the divides between those who rely on the river in Western Washington to those who rely on it in Eastern Washington. While “the integrity of the Columbia River and the survival of its salmon” (16) are hallmark concerns on the West side of the mountains, while on the Eastern side, where inhabitants once possessed much more political muscle but has since shifted to the major cities on the Western side, feel “betrayed by schemes to save salmon, schemes that would retool the river, speed up its current, and ground the barges.” (15) and where minimal to no attachment to salmon is tangibly felt in comparison (he notes that the issue of salmon mortality due to electricity demand there never came up in a combined sixteen years of education) and still like to cling to a more pastoral lifestyle, regardless of the many political contradictions that pepper the region in his view.

Chapters 1 & 2
3) What interests clash regarding spilling large quantities of water over the lower Snake Dams in the summer, I.e, who are the stakeholders and what are their objectives?
- In favor of what has been popularly termed the “drawdown” are environmentalists (most notably American Rivers and the Sierra Club), aiming to reverse the decline in migrating juvenile and adult salmon populations through these series of dams by proposing that, for a few months every year, water ought to spill over the dams rather than through hydroelectric turbines so to help young salmon eschew the turbines and warmer waters. In alliance with them are most fish biologists, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (who ironically in the 1960s decided to poison the sockeye habitat in their central Idaho spawning grounds) and many (but not all) Native American tribal communities, who have relied on salmon for their cultural heritage.
In opposition to this proposal are barge pilots and the Idaho port authorities, who insist that the lower water levels in result of a “drawdown” would halt all barge traffic on the river during each peak shipping season, irrigation system managers, grain buyers (the Pacific Northwest Grain and Feed Association has claimed that the scientific evidence behind it is inconclusive on if it will even help fish) and large populations of farmers who depend on them (as noted heavily in post-New Deal Moses Lake, with an abundance of Chinese pheasant and sugar-beet production that has since disintegrated), Northwestern utilities who would lose tens of millions of dollars to purchase electricity under such a scenario, aluminum lobbyists, the Army Corps of Engineers who insist it would be a heavy burden on U.S taxpayers to modify these dams, and various regional town and small city communities along the river, most notably Lewiston, Idaho, who resent elite outsider interests in trying “to take the pioneer spirit away from Idaho.” (47) and argue that overemphasis on saving one fish will wipe out other native fishes.
4) What scientific information would you want if you were the decision maker?
- In considering the statistic mentioned on page 25 of the text that one-quarter of America’s feed grain and 35 percent of our country’s wheat move down this river system, I would already be inclined to see that grain growers and barge pilots have necessary access to the river during peak season, but would also consider the experimentation for one month the spilling of water over two of the four dams, examine how that was or was not effective toward reducing salmon mortality rates, and would also give a second look into the much-mocked Kevlar fish tube proposal as noted on page 45, have a trial testing of it along one fraction of the river system, and examine survival rates through that single increment. I would also order an examination into how much water would be required for this endeavor and whether it would effect local water supplies and irrigation systems.

Chapter 3
5) How does the “machine river” challenge salmon?
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