Posted on 06/17/2025 11:09:17 AM PDT by CFW
President Donald Trump issued a memorandum last week blocking an effort that was underway during the Biden-Harris administration to remove four hydroelectric dams in the Snake River.
Trump’s memorandum revokes a directive from the previous administration, which Trump described as an effort by “radical environmentalism” to raise the “equitable treatment for fish” above that of human flourishing.
“The negative impacts from these reckless acts, if completed, would be devastating for the region, and there would be no viable approach to replace the low-cost, baseload energy supplied,” Trump stated in the memo.
If the experiences of those in northern California living along the Klamath River are any indication, Trump is right that a dam-removal project on the Snake River would cause serious and lasting impacts.
Last year, four dams near the Klamath River near the Oregon-California border were removed, and people living in communities along the river tell Just the News that the sediment that flooded the river has turned the Klamath into a muddy waterway. While proponents of dam removal say it helps salmon populations, the Klamath River dam removal has decimated fish populations, ruined fishing tourism, and may impact agriculture.
(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...
Another Biden-Harris administration plan to make America North Korea.
Keep them hungry and in the dark.
The sediment will clear out but yes, initially, it was going to make a mess. Dammed lakes fill up with the stuff over time, becoming shallower and shallower, so it should have been expected all those years of sediment was going to make issues.
California has removed the Klamath river dams and it’s been a total eco disaster. Haven’t been able to confirm it but I’ve read that money raised from a bond issue to build more water storage was used.
The Snake River isnt only a recreational river system, it is a shipping waterway with a port at Lewiston ID.
Every dam has an expected useful life, for example when the resevior created fills with sediment. Rate setting rarely makes adequate provision for when expected useful life is at an end (cannot create competitively priced hydroelectric power or an aid to irrigatkon) a hundred years or more after construction. So is the solution abandonment? Await total failure? Stick your head in the sediment?
This attempted relitigation of Klamath is anecdotes only BTW.
Reagan wanted to end Hech Hetchy.
Interesting. Every one of these potential removals are extraordinarily complicated because the water is a publicly owned resource. That the deconstructed must be made in Calfornia means the process will be 10x more expensive than it should be. Klamath removals were the right decision. Fish runs have been larger than expected and the mud will clear. My $.02
Nature - the flora and fauna - has adapted to the changes wrought by the creation of the dams. Life writ large has not been killed, it survives as it always has by accommodations by adaptation.
California is committing suicide every day. Water, fire, crime, education, law enforcement, illegals… it never ends with these morons.
The Snake River Valley in Idaho isn’t old stomping ground. The river bisects my hometown. When the new Teton Dam collapsed in ‘76,it was the downstream dams that helped limit the flood damage.
The agriculture and economy will be devastated.
Women and children hardest hit!
Not sure the lifespan of the dams in the Sierra Nevadas. One, Shaver Lake, was a great site when they would open the plug at the base of the dam and watch all the mud and silt blow out. Of course it was managed unlike what they did on the Klamath dams.
I saw a show on PBS several years ago about the Grand Canyon and they had this lady complaining about as a kid the river was wild and that the dam should be torn down.... Millions of people depend on that water but the democrats do not care.
Must be nice to be independently wealthy.
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