Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (5992)	3/11/2006 5:36:08 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 36917

ASHLAND, ORE. – It's looking like a bleak, belt-tightening year for thousands of commercial fishermen along the Pacific Coast. From Point Sur in California to Cape Falcon in Oregon - 700 miles in all - the skippers and crew of some 2,000 boats are likely to have to forgo salmon, their main money fish. That's because of plummeting fish runs in the Klamath River and what's expected to be an order by federal officials that commercial and sport salmon fishing be closed... ..."Year in, year out, salmon is the one that they depend upon," says Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations in San Francisco, which represents organizations from San Diego to Alaska. "It's their anchor fishery." Salmon fishing off the coast of California and Oregon is a $150 million a year industry, on average... ...Coincidentally, the controversy over closing the salmon fishery this year comes just as government regulators are deciding whether to renew federal licenses for the four hydropower dams on the lower Klamath River, the first built in 1917, the last in 1962. The dams are operated by PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of energy giant Scottish Power in Glasgow. None of these dams has fish passage devices, which means that 350 miles of historic salmon-spawning habitat in the river and its tributary streams were cut off... ...Irrigators are eager to keep the dams operating - not because they bring water to farmers' fields (which they don't) but because they charge low power rates to pump the water from canals and wells. Compared to modern gas-fired generators, the dams on the Klamath provide a relatively small amount of power for the electrical grid. But county governments in the largely rural area fear the loss of an important part of their tax base if the dams are removed... ..."If we don't remove dams now, there won't be any salmon left the next time the dams are relicensed," says Michael Belchik, fisheries biologist with the Yurok Tribe in Weitchpec, Calif... csmonitor.com -------------------------------------- These old dams on the Klamath should be removed now...the Snake river ones will be able to be removed in about 10 to 15 years, and the Columbia river dams about 5 to 10 years after that - depending on how fast it takes the alternate technology (solar or pebble bed nukes) to deliver 5 cent per kiloW power...