HydroPASSAGE: Advancing Hydropower for Fish and Industry

#engineering #biology #laboratory #fish #hydropower

[pancakeface]

I am grateful for the work you are doing to improve salmon survival as they pass through dams. Having followed the "salmon issue" for most of my 7-decades of life, I've noticed a couple of concerns. For one, although we've allocated a lot of human and financial capital to the problem over the years we have achieved limited success in recovering the remaining wild salmon stocks, while the runs continue more-or-less on the decline. The other concern is the lack of a broad societal awareness of the benefits salmon contribute (a) to the environment, (b) of the magnitude of economic benefits salmon contributed in the past and could contribute once again (salmon runs were over-exploited and already depleted before the first dams came online, so society did not see the full impacts dams would have on salmon resources), and (c) the health benefits of consuming salmon to humans.
I contend we grossly undervalue the totality of the benefits salmon could give us as we try to engineer our way out of the problems dams and their reservoirs pose to salmon survival. So, with all due respect, I would ask the scientific community to consider the possibility certain dams may not provide sufficient offsetting benefits relative to their negative impacts on salmon, and opine on possible selective dam removal. We have many ways to make electricity, move goods, and control flooding. Thanks to the scientific community our ability to do these things, and many others, continuously improve. But salmon evolved and adapted to require specific habitats not found in our hydropower system(s). And I truly believe salmon can and do give us much more than we recognize. Thank you.