President on Dam Breaching Pt 2
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. President Biden recently threw his support for the breaching of LowerSnake River dams, which has reignited the hot conversations.
U.S. Representative Dan Newhouse says as we’ve shown in recent years, dams and salmon can coexist …
NEWHOUSE … “If we continue to be creative and inventive and continue to invest in many of these different things that allow salmon to successfully migrate, which is what we all want to see, and have a healthy salmon population, that we can continue to enjoy it, not only in the benefits of having the salmon, but continue to enjoy the benefits that the dams provide.”
Despite the President’s misnaming of the issue as the “Colorado River” …
NEWHOUSE … “That tells me that truly the administration, they really are somewhat removed from the issue and want to say the right things to make the right groups of people happy and not really looking at the facts here and the science here. We have to have an honest conversation.”
Newhouse says it won’t be easy …
NEWHOUSE … “Certainly we have challenges. I’m not going to disagree with people that are saying we do, but I do think we’ve been very successful at meeting many of those challenges and I have every confidence that we can continue to improve.”
Last year’s estimates for replacing the dams energy production came in at around $33-billion.