Public Power, Private Dams: The Hells Canyon High Dam Controversy

6. Sacrificing Hells Canyon’s Fish: Death by Committee

6 SACRIFICING HELLS CANYON’S FISH Death by Committee C ongress and President Truman feared rapid demobilization after World War II would throw thousands of northwesterners out of work. Worries about another economic slump impelled more of the federal pump priming that had built Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams. Just as the New Deal did, postwar public-power dams created ecological crises for northwestern anadromous fish. Congress authorized the Army Engineers to build McNary Dam on the main Columbia in late 1945.1 Authorized as well was a multidam corps project to make the lower Snake in southeastern Washington navigable to Lewiston, Idaho, just downstreamfromHellsCanyon.2 McNary,thefirstnewfederaldamtoblock the Columbia since the New Deal, once again forced fish managers to negotiate emergency conservation measures with the federal hydroelectric agencies. Designed to be one hundred feet taller than Bonneville, McNary menaced both Columbia and Snake basin fisheries because of its location just downstream from the Snake’s mouth. McNary triggered tough public and internal debates about federal hydroelectric dominance over northwestern fish. In midsummer 1946, the Oregon fish commissioners met Army Corps staª at the dam site near Umatilla to debate ways of passing adult fish above, and juvenile smolts below, the dam. Several days later, corps engineers in Portland briefed Oregon governor Earl Snell,MasterFishWardenArnieSuomela,andstategamedirectorC.E.Lockwood about McNary fish passage. Corps engineers told the incredulous Oregonians current plans contemplated forcing downstream smolts against a screen over the turbine intakes. After first pinning the four-inch-long fish to screens, the Columbia’s flow against the dam would “wash them oª with pressuresbehind[a]screeninto[a]trough.”Upstreamadultmigrantswould havetosurmountfishladdersnarrowerandsteeperthanthoseatBonneville.3 93 Congress’ other postwar stimulus measure, the lower Snake navigation project, caused even more consternation in FCO. At a late-summer 1946 conference with Oregon fish managers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service salmon specialist J. T. Barnaby, corps planners revealed the army had not even settled on the number of new dams needed to carry ocean-going barges into Idaho. Congress had authorized at least six; the corps’ North Pacific Division headquarters in Portland projected five; and a corps engineer closed the discussion “as to the number of dams desirable (5–4–6??)” by “point[ing] out nothing [was] known.”4 Government biologists, commercial fishers, and sport anglers privately and publicly wondered whether such uncertainty warranted a pause before the upriver oªensive rolled on. In autumn 1946, as Congress debated appropriations to start McNary Dam, Fish and Wildlife’s Portland o‹ce leaked Barnaby’s preliminary report on the ecological consequences of more dams. It presented grim data from the Coulee salvage experiment. Barnaby warned northwesterners accelerated dam building “would literally destroy the valuable Columbia River salmon fishery.” His report infuriated higher-ups in Interior, who ordered the FWS to recall the study pending further discussions with the power agencies.5 The Oregon Fish Commission’s o‹cial summary of its 1945–46 work reflected fish managers’ new urgency. Suomela “viewed with alarm” gathering dam-building momentum. “The tremendous program of the army engineers, which calls for the construction of multi-purpose dams on most of the rivers of Oregon, threatens to deplete the salmon resource to a point where it will no longer exist in commercial abundance,” Suomela warned. “I believe,” he wrote, “that we are witnessing the most crucial period in the history of our fisheries, and that complete development of those plans may well spell the doom of the great salmon resource of the Northwest.” Considering losses already caused by New Deal dams, “a continuation of the present trend of yield and abundance of our major fisheries, coupled with the unrestricted and improper planning of water uses, can only lead to virtual extinction of our great fishery resources, particularly the salmon.” Suomela outlined a postwar conservation strategy premised on the New Deal hatchery-transplantation model. Oregonians were “now entering a postwar era of expansion and industrialization,” he wrote. The Oregon Fish Commission “is not opposed to the development of new industries for the betterment of the state.” The new Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act required federal dam-building agencies to solicit state fish-agency views, 94 SACRIFICING HELLS CANYON’S FISH so Suomela pledged Oregon’s technical skill to reweave a new web of water to carry salmon to and from the Pacific. “The artificial propagation of fish as carried on by this Department becomes increasingly important,” he vowed, “in view of the great number of proposed...