I believe the “fish” problem was not the usual fish in the river, it was the hatchery below the dam: A big piece of CA’s salmon future (nearly 10 million salmon?) was there.
People should come 1st, of course, but 5-10 million less salmon would affect a lot of people.
As for the emergency spillway, I would not expect those “repairs” to last long in a repeat occurrence...
2/3rds of the salmon were removed from the hatchery last week.