01/24/07 Gould confirmed

Celia Gould has won unanimous confirmation to head the Idaho State Department of Agriculture. The Idaho Senate gave her the vote Monday, the first of Governor Butch Otter's appointees to receive the endorsement. Gould, a former state representative from Buhl and one time chairmen of the Finance Committee, is married to former House Speaker Bruce Newcomb. There are those who say salmon are dying off because of four lower Snake River dams and the dams should be breached. A new scientific study by a Canadian research firm shows a 19 percent survival rate for juvenile salmon reaching the ocean from the Clearwater River. Even though those salmon have four more dams to cross than migrating salmon in the Yakima drainage their survival rates are nearly identical. Even more surprising is that fact that Clearwater and Yakima fish have the same survival rate as those measured in the Fraser River of British Columbia, a waterway with no dams. I have to point out that this is just one year in what will be a three year research project for the Bonneville Power Administration. The research also showed that juvenile salmon transported by barge from Lower Granite Dam to the northern tip of Vancouver Island survived at five times the rate of those fish that were not barged. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott