The Era of Impossible Choices

Soon, officials and residents in the northwestern U.S. will have to make a choice of the sort where any course of action taken will have repercussions that cascade down through many generations, and not only for themselves but for the rest of the U. S. as well.

It's a choice, moreover, where whatever course you choose will be wrong and do damage, but it is the sort of choice we will have to make many times in coming years, as we face the depletion of essential resources in the face of strong population growth.

At issue is the proposed removal of four hydro-electric dams on the Snake River, in order to prevent the imminent extinction of salmon on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Salmon traversing these rivers must traverse four dams on each, and each dam crossed claims a large number of fish.

Both the salmon and the dams are essential to the local economy, and to our national food supply and power supply. If the dams remain in place, an important source of food will become extinct, and extinct means forever. Aside from the loss of income to fishing communities, and the loss of yet one more source of food, there is a question of how many niches in the life-chain can be vacated before we lose the biodiversity necessary to support human life.

We also have never needed hydro-electric power, and other alternatives to gas and coal, so urgently. These four dams together supply enough power to supply a city the size of Seattle, according to the Bonneville Power Administration, which operates the dams. The authority states that it will cost ratepayers up to $500 million annually to replace the power that will have to be replaced if the dams are breached. I add that not only will Northwestern ratepayers take the massive hit from the loss of these dams, but so will users in every other area in the U.S.,inasmuch as utilities are interdependent and need to buy power from any place on the grid that it is available, especially since there is now no excess generating capacity at all since deregulation of the utilities, leaving the nation extremely vulnerable to disruptions and emergencies as it is.

So there we have it: we may either deal with a decimated food supply or the loss of yet another major source of electricity at the same time that fossil fuel supplies are in decline. At this time, only three nuclear power plants are being planned, yet both our population growth and the possible need to electrify our transportation means that we will have ramp up the construction of power plants steeply in the next few years to meet the swelling demand. Additionally, all sites suitable for hydro have been thoroughly exploited, and many aging dams are silting up rapidly and will have to be restored or replaced.

The ugly choice confronting those living on the Snake River watershed is only one of the many wrenching decisions we will have to make as we continue down the slope of fossil fuel depletion, as well as depleting supplies of fresh water. Food or fuel? Water or food?