Lawmakers have their eye on new dams, higher dams (Idaho)

Idaho Statesman ^ | 3/20/2008 | Rocky Barker

[Domandred]

1976 Teton Dam disaster is just one hurdle facing any project to store more water and make more electricity.

While Gov. Butch Otter and the Idaho Legislature talk about ways to build new dams and enlarge existing ones, the discussions are framed by two floods - one that some fear could happen at any minute, and another more than three decades ago that still hangs over the part of the state once devastated by its power.

Weiser residents are watching the weather closely as above-average snowpack threatens to swell the Weiser River, which has no dam, to flood stage this spring.

And a proposal to rebuild the Teton Dam, which burst in 1976 and killed 11 people, has some Rexburg residents uneasy.

Both floods are a part of the discussion as Gov. Butch Otter and others express new interest in building more dams here in Idaho.

Lawmakers want the federal Bureau of Reclamation to study the long-proposed Galloway Dam on the Weiser, update studies on the Teton Dam and consider raising the Minidoka Dam on the Snake River near Rupert to increase its capacity. The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee has approved spending $1.8 million for the Minidoka and Teton dam studies.

The House is considering a non-binding memorial calling on more studies, including Galloway and a proposed Twin Springs Dam on the Middle Fork of the Boise River. Both ideas, along with a new Teton Dam, have generated opposition from environmental groups.

[Domandred]

Idaho has in the last year or so killed at least two nuclear power plant proposals, now seems we might be going back to the old standby of putting more dams up and increasing current dam capacity.

[IYAS9YAS]

Weiser floods every year. I think there is a stock photo of an old radio station they put out to show it. With Weiser, it isn't a matter of if, but when, and how high...

Not only that, but Weiser is near the Idaho-Oregon border, several hundred miles from, and not even on the same river, as the Grand Teton Dam...

[IYAS9YAS]

Whoops, should have read the article better. Two separate situations...

[mikrofon]

Gov. Butch Otter and the Idaho Legislature talk about ways to build new dams and enlarge existing ones

His cousin Theodore is in complete agreement...

[Domandred]

Don’t get me wrong, more dams mean more places I can put out my boat.

Weiser and Teton were just two of the dams talked about in the article. The intro just mentions them both together oddly.

I’m not against dams themselves, but later in the article it talks about raising the height of Swan Falls to increase electric capacity when we could have built some nuke plants and got more then Swan Falls could even hope to generate.