Recreation vs dams

Recreation vs dams

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Josh Mills gives reasons why getting rid of some of the dams in the Columbia and Snake River complex would produce an outdoor paradise. There's estimates of eighty three or more different sets of rapid that will be exposed that never really came to fruition into this recreational mecca. Clearwater to the Snake, Hell’s Canyon. All these places you think about, all the different river trips that could happen, all the different sporting opportunities. There's an estimated fourteen thousand four hundred acres that will be returned to the public trust. Think about all the riparian areas that will return that were once havens for songbirds, big game and upland birds like pheasant, quail and chucker and all the things that could happen. Mountain biking and hunting and fishing and rafting and all the things could be available. Eighty-three defined sets of rapids between Lewiston and the mouth that could just turn this into just an absolute outdoor mecca. This is just purely my perspective. If you go into the towns of Lewiston and Clarkston, and there's some amazing people in there, you go down to the downtown area, they're economically depressed. It literally looks like the town that time forgot the downtown core and other places. I mean, there's growth in some of those places. But if my numbers still hold true, I believe there's a negative population growth in comparison to the rest of the region. So many reasons, but not exactly endorsed by big ag businesses.
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