Address fish electrocution before dam breaching

For years, Seattle's environmental establishment has delivered a remarkably consistent message about fish: No sacrifice is too great.

Tear down dams. Replace billions of dollars in infrastructure. Find replacement electricity. Replace barge transportation. Figure out what happens to agriculture and irrigation. Spend billions more doing all of the above.

Why? Because salmon are sacred and dramatic action is not only justified but morally necessary.

Unless, apparently, the infrastructure happens to be Seattle's shiny new light-rail system. Then, electrocuting fish is just an unfortunate hiccup.

You really couldn't script the irony any better.

Recently, roughly 2,000 fish have been found dead near the I-90 floating bridge in Lake Washington, where Sound Transit's new light-rail line crosses the lake. The suspected culprit involves an electrical system designed to protect the bridge from corrosion.

Electrical current associated with the system appears to be affecting fish in the surrounding water.

Yes, you read that correctly. After years of lectures from Seattle about the dangers that dams pose to fish, a multibillion-dollar Seattle-area transit project appears to be literally shocking them.

But the best part may be buried in the engineering details. Engineers actually considered the possibility that the electrical system could harm fish.

Fish protection was among 23 technical requirements evaluated for the project.

Its importance? Low.

Low!

Try putting those words into a report about the Lower Snake River dams and see how that goes.

Imagine federal officials announcing that protecting Snake River salmon is a "low importance" consideration compared with keeping reliable electricity flowing, moving agricultural products or maintaining river transportation. Seattle environmental activists would be rappelling down the Space Needle by lunchtime.

Instead, we have spent years listening to demands that the four Lower Snake River dams be breached because of their alleged harm to salmon.

Environmental groups have portrayed dam removal as an urgent necessity, despite the enormous economic, transportation and energy consequences that would follow.

And those consequences are hardly trivial. The Lower Snake River dams provide reliable, carbon-free hydroelectricity. They support the movement of agricultural products and other goods. Their power is available when the region needs it.

That brings us to perhaps the most delicious irony of all.

What do you suppose helps power Seattle's electrified future? Hydropower.

Seattle City Light reports that more than three-quarters of the electricity it delivers comes from hydroelectric generation. It also purchases electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power produced by the federal Columbia River power system.

Seattle is heavily dependent on carbon-free electricity produced by dams while its environmental establishment campaigns against dams because they supposedly hurt fish. Then the region builds an electric transit system - precisely the sort of electrification environmentalists routinely celebrate - and electrical equipment associated with that project starts killing fish.

We have apparently discovered the circle of environmental life in the Pacific Northwest: Generate carbon-free electricity with dams. Condemn the dams for harming fish. Use hydroelectricity to electrify transportation. Shock the fish with the electrical infrastructure. Then go back to demanding that the dams come down.

None of this means concerns about salmon should be dismissed. Salmon recovery is a serious and complicated. Reasonable people can disagree about the costs and benefits of the Lower Snake River dams.

But that is precisely why the double standard deserves ridicule.

Infrastructure involves tradeoffs. Hydroelectric dams involve tradeoffs. Highways involve tradeoffs. Wind farms involve tradeoffs. Solar facilities involve tradeoffs. And yes, even Seattle light rail involves tradeoffs.

A serious environmental policy weighs those benefits and costs.

Yet the Lower Snake River dams are routinely discussed as though virtually any environmental impact is grounds for dismantling them. Meanwhile, when a marquee Seattle infrastructure project is associated with roughly 2,000 dead fish, we discover that fish protection had been assigned "low importance."

There is another uncomfortable difference. The Lower Snake River dams aren't actually designed to kill fish.

Billions of dollars have been spent throughout the Columbia and Snake River system on fish passage and salmon recovery efforts. Yet, Seattle activists still demand their removal.

But before Seattle demands that Eastern Washington give up carbon-free hydroelectric dams to protect fish, perhaps it should make sure its own trains aren't electrocuting them.

Only in Seattle could we contemplate tearing down dams to save the fish while using dam-generated electricity to kill them.

Email Chris Cargill of the Mountain States Policy Center at ccargill@mountainstatespolicy.org.