Dams Study DOE Pt 2
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. Plans to spend taxpayer money for a Department of Energy study on replacing the Lower Snake River dams come as a shock after the Biden Administration insists, they have no such plans.U.S. Representative Dan Newhouse says the dams provide too much to our way of life to just give them up …
NEWHOUSE … “How many things can I say about the benefits? You know, the transportation the rivers provide because of the dams. The clean, renewable, baseload power, the irrigation, the recreation, all of those things that communities up and down the rivers throughout the Pacific Northwest receive from these dams.”
The numbers, Newhouse says just don’t add up …
NEWHOUSE … “It’s just so key to our economy, to all of our communities, that we need to do everything we can to preserve them. But dams and salmon can and do coexist and my determination is to make sure that that is always a true statement.”
Helping the salmon, Newhouse says is something we should continue to do …
NEWHOUSE … “But removing the dams should be the very last thing that’s considered because that would be such a blow to our economy in the Pacific Northwest that we just couldn’t sustain the economic activity that we have without the dams.”
Newhouse says the Lower Snake River dams provide a critical source of renewable, reliable, and affordable energy.
The Lower Snake River dams produce approximately 1,000 megawatts of power on average, which is roughly equivalent to the energy needed to power over 800,000 typical U.S. homes; this power is considered reliable and carbon-free.