Throughout the Pacific Northwest, dams have altered streamflow and water temperatures, impounded water over historic habitat, and prevented fish from migrating freely to the ocean and back to their homewaters. As their presence has increasingly put threatened and endangered fish in jeopardy, engineers have tried to design work-arounds including fish ladders, truck and haul programs, selective water withdrawal towers, juvenile downstream barging, and even a salmon cannon! All of these experimental projects bend the basic survival needs of the fish to the will of humans-- and it isn't working.
It has happened on the Deschutes River and the Snake River. The North Santiam is the next watershed in which agencies want to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to modify infrastructure without meaningful evidence to support that strategy. The Army Corps of Engineers is currently accepting scoping comments to develop alternatives under an Environmental Impact Statement. We need your help telling the Army Corps of Engineers that restoring volitional access for wild salmon and steelhead to the headwaters of the North Santiam River is critical to the survival of the Upper Willamette salmon and steelhead populations. Without access to their historic spawning grounds, and ability to freely swim back to the ocean, Detroit Dam will jeopardize their survival.
Comments on the plan are being taken until January 23rd, 2018.
