IEAB Independent Economic 

Analysis Board

Noelwah R. Netusil, Chair 

Hans Radtke, Vice-Chair 

Kenneth L. Casavant 

Daniel D. Huppert 

Joel R. Hamilton 

Lon L. Peters 

Susan S. Hanna 

Roger Mann 

Review of the SOS 

Revenue Stream Report 

Independent Economic Analysis Board 

Task Number 118 

February 25, 2007 

Document IEAB 2007-1
IEAB 1 
Executive Summary 

The IEAB reviewed the “Revenue Stream: An Economic Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of 

Removing the Four Dams on the Lower Snake River” prepared by the Save Our Wild Salmon 

(SOS) organization. We prepared a short summary of the content of that report and provide the 

following five main comments on the report. 

1. The Revenue Stream estimate of the cost of hydropower replacement if the dams were 

removed is substantially below the cost estimates reported in the Corps of Engineers 

Lower Snake EIS in 2000. This is crucial, because the cost of replacement power is 

potentially a large continuing cost if the four lower Snake River dams were removed. 

Based upon our review of the Corps of Engineers’ cost estimate, the Revenue Stream 

report underestimates hydropower replacement costs by enough to invalidate their main 

result that the region could save money by removing the dams. 

2. The Revenue Stream report is not a peer reviewed analysis, the work was not conducted 

by an open public process, and many of the sources that the report relied on came from 

reports that were also not products of an open, public, peer reviewed process. 

Consequently, the IEAB does not have a solid basis to either accept or reject many of the 

cost and benefit estimates in the Revenue Stream report. 

3. The Revenue Stream report does not discount future benefits and costs of dam removal. 

Discounting recognizes that people give greatest weight to immediate costs and benefits. 

Because some large costs of dam removal occur immediately, while other costs and 

benefits occur slowly over many years, lack of discounting could have a significant 

impact on the conclusions of the report. 

4. The Revenue Stream Report estimates the cost of maintaining the salmon program in 

the Columbia basin with and without the four lower Snake River dams, and then poses 

the difference between these two costs as a cost saving. The cost estimates reflect a 

diverse mix of Federal agency budgets and estimated additional salmon recovery costs. 

It is not clear that the agency budgets reflect full or accurate cost estimates, or that they 

rely on a common definition of costs. 

5. The Revenue Stream report argues that dam removal will have substantial additional 

benefits due to the recovered fishery. The reported recreational fishery benefits rely 

heavily on a study by Don Reading (2004), which the IEAB reviewed in December 2005. 

We concluded that Reading had made a number of methodological errors which 

seriously biased his benefit estimates upward. The non-fishery recreational benefits are 

derived from a study by John Loomis (1999) which the IEAB reviewed during our 

overall review of the Corps’ EIS in 2001. We had significant concerns about some of 

Loomis’ results as well, and the numbers actually used in the final Corps EIS differed 

substantially from those presented in the original Loomis study. Hence, the Revenue 

Stream’s reported benefits from salmon recovery in the Snake River appear unreliable. 

The IEAB concludes that the Revenue Stream report prepared by Save Our Wild Salmon has a 

number of deficiencies that raise serious questions about its acceptability as an alternative to the 

IEAB 2 
Corps of Engineers Lower Snake EIS. Although it may now be out of date and was not perfect, 

the Corps EIS has been widely accepted as a credible analysis of the impacts of removing the four 

lower Snake dams. 

The Corps EIS set a high standard as an open, public and peer reviewed analysis that has not been 

matched by any other study of dam removal, and is certainly not matched by the Revenue Stream 

report. Because Revenue Stream uses numbers from reports that do not result from an open peer 

reviewed process, it is difficult to assess the validity of these studies, whether they use appropriate 

methodology, rely on good data, or use compatible assumptions. 

The Revenue Stream report itself reflects some inappropriate methodology choices. SOS’s choice 

to not address the likely distribution of costs and benefits over time or to discount future costs and 

benefits is a major failing of the report. In other cases, the Revenue Stream report does not 

clearly document the methodology they used to derive their estimates, making it impossible for us 

to replicate or critique their numbers. 

While the IEAB concludes that there are enough problems with the Revenue Stream report that it 

cannot be viewed as a credible alternative to the Corps Lower Snake EIS analysis of the impacts 

of removing the four lower Snake dams, we want to emphasize that the EIS is not necessarily the 

last word on the topic. When the IEAB served as formal reviewer of the Corps EIS, one of our 

conclusions was the region should “... invest in improved estimates of economic benefits from

dam breaching to reduce the range of uncertainty and to improve confidence in them ...” At the 

time the IEAB had a number of criticisms and suggestions for how the analysis could and should 

be improved. Because there are a number of weaknesses to the Corps study, because some of the 

assumptions and methodologies used by the Corps are controversial, and because the world, 

especially the power cost world, is a much different place than it was in the late 1990s when much 

of the Corps analysis was done, it is easy to see why people continue to question whether the 

Corps EIS is the final word on the topic. 

Perhaps it is time for the region to consider doing a follow-on study of the four lower Snake dams

that would address some of the weaknesses of the Corps study, and that would update the study to 

reflect the many changes in the regional economy, regional transportation systems, power 

generation and transmission, the successes and failures of current recovery efforts, and the 

improved models of fish biology, dam passage and ocean survival now available. 

IEAB 3 
Review of the SOS Revenue Stream Report

This review of the report “Revenue Stream: An Economic Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of 

Removing the Four Dams on the Lower Snake River” by Save Our Wild Salmon (2005) was 

prepared by the IEAB at the request of the Council. The SOS report is available on the web at 

http://www.wildsalmon.org/library_files/revenuestream8.pdf

Content of the Revenue Stream Report

The Revenue Stream report claims to be an economic analysis of the costs and benefits of 

removing the four lower Snake dams. In fact the report contains very little new economic 

analysis. Instead, it is mostly a compilation of numbers from several other economic studies, 

most notably the Corps Lower Snake EIS (2000), plus several more recent studies, woven into a 

conclusion that SOS argues supports removing the four dams. 

The approach used in Revenue Stream was to look at costs – the costs that would be faced by the 

region if the dams are kept in place and the costs if the dams were removed. The costs addressed 

in each case are essentially the same cost categories that were used by the Corps in their Lower 

Snake EIS. SOS reasoned (as did the Corps) that some costs would be avoided if the dams were 

removed – especially the O&M costs of the dams, locks and powerhouses, and some of the 

current spending on salmonid passage and recovery. The dam removal scenario would also 

involve some costs, most notably the costs of removing the earthen embankments of the dams, 

shoring up infrastructure that would be impacted by dropping the reservoir pools, transporting 

commodities by alternative modes following closure of the waterway, and the cost of replacing 

the hydropower that would no longer be generated by the breeched dams. 

The cost estimates for Revenue Stream’s with-dam and without-dam scenarios are summarized in 

Table 1, below. Rather than using annualized costs1

 like most other studies of this kind, SOS 

presents these costs as the sum of costs for the first ten years, and the sum of costs for the first 

twenty years. Their table indicates that costs without-dams would be less than the costs withdams. Thus they conclude that the region could actually save money by removing the dams. 

While the primary focus of the Revenue Stream report is on the costs that could be saved by 

removing the dams, SOS also address the benefits of dam removal. They refer to the estimated 

$550 million annual economic benefits of a recovered Idaho salmon sport fishery developed in a 

study by Don Reading. While they note that Reading’s estimate has been criticized as too high, 

they take Reading’s estimate as a lower bound of benefits for the entire Pacific Northwest region 

of the recovered salmon sport fishery. 

Thus their conclusion that the dams should be removed rests on their assertion that dam removal 

would both lower costs and result in large economic benefits from a recovered salmon fishery. 

 

1

 The “annualized cost” of an uneven sequence of expenses is the constant annual payment needed to pay off a loan

with a principal equal to the present value of the stream of annual expenses..

IEAB 4 
Table 1: Numbers from Revenue Stream Report 

Total for 10

years 

Total for 20 

years 

 Estimate Attributed to low high low high

Cost of Keeping the Lower Snake River Dams

 ($ billions)

2004 Federal and Snake River Salmon Plan NOAA 6.00 6.00 12.00 12.00

Additional Salmon Recovery Costs with Snake 

River Dams

Yakima Indian Nation 1.42 2.34 2.84 4.68

Dam operation and maintenance Correspondence with 

Corps 

0.34 0.34 0.67 0.67

Sediment Control with Snake River Dams Corps McNary & Lower 

Snake Mgt Plan 

0.03 0.36 0.05 0.71

Major Dam Repairs Corps Lower Snake EIS 0.06 0.06 0.11 0.11

 Totals as reported on page 6 of report 7.84 9.09 15.7 18.2

Cost of Removing the 4 Lower Snake River Dams

New Federal Columbia and Snake River Plan SOS synthesis from 

various sources 

3.10 4.50 6.20 9.00

Additional Salmon Recovery Costs after Lower 

Snake River Dam Removal 

SOS synthesis from 

various sources 

0.96 1.16 1.91 2.32

Dam Removal and River Restoration Corps Lower Snake EIS 0.79 0.79 0.79 0.79

Power Replacement Rand, NW Energy

Coalition 

0.79 1.70 1.58 3.40

Transportation Infrastructure Investments,

Converting Barge to Rail 

American Rivers & SOS 0.02 0.23 0.02 0.23

Increased Shipping Rates BST Associates 2003 0.07 0.13 0.14 0.26

Irrigation Investments Corps Lower Snake EIS 0.42 0.42 0.42 0.42

Private Well Modifications Corps Lower Snake EIS 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.07

Municipal and Industrial Well Use 

Modifications 

Corps Lower Snake EIS 0.01 0.06 0.01 0.06

 Totals as reported on page 11 of report 6.19 9.08 11.10 16.60

Benefits with Dams

Commercial Fishing IEAB 0.56 0.56 1.11 1.11

Sport fishing SOS, Reading 0.86 5.56 1.72 11.12

Non-fishing Recreation Corps Lower Snake EIS 0.37 0.37 0.73 0.73

 Totals as reported on page 15 of report 1.78 6.54 3.57 13.10

Benefits if dams were removed

Commercial Fishing Institute for Fisheries 

Resources 

1.27 1.27 2.55 2.55

Sport fishing Reading 5.56 5.56 11.12 11.12

Non-fishing Recreation Corps Lower Snake EIS 2.23 3.60 4.46 7.20

 Totals as reported on page 15 of report 9.09 10.50 18.20 20.90

IEAB 5 
Comments on the Revenue Stream Report:

1. The Revenue Stream estimate of the cost of hydropower replacement if the dams 

were removed is substantially below the cost estimates reported in the Corps of 

Engineers Lower Snake EIS in 2000. This is crucial, because the cost of replacement 

power is potentially a large continuing cost if the four lower Snake River dams were 

removed. Based upon our review of the Corps of Engineers’ cost estimate, the 

Revenue Stream report underestimates hydropower replacement costs by enough to 

invalidate their main result that the region could save money by removing the dams. 

Both the Corps EIS and the Revenue Stream report agree that the cost of replacing the 

hydropower would be a major cost associated with removing the lower Snake dams. The SOS 

report uses the results from several other reports to construct estimates of this replacement power 

cost that are much lower than those developed by the Corps. 

The Revenue Stream report begins with the 2002 Rand report. That report concluded that 

replacing the lost generation with energy efficiency and wind power would not impede economic 

growth in the region and could create as many as 15,000 long-term jobs. Terry Morlan's 2002 

review of the Rand report for the Council (based on Council staff efforts) outlined a number of 

deficiencies of the Rand analysis, including the following. (1) Rand’s figures for the amount of 

conservation potential in the region greatly exceed the Council staff’s estimates of how much 

conservation could be achieved. (2) Rand assumed that this conservation could be achieved much 

more cheaply than Council staff analysis suggests. (3) Since Rand used regional economic 

activity (which vastly overstates the benefits of the power) as its criterion, high-cost options, 

especially those which involve lots of local spending, will appear to look good. The essence of 

Morlan’s review comments is that using renewables and conservation would not reduce cost to 

replace the lost power below the cost of combined cycle generation, on which the Corps of 

Engineers based their cost estimate. These criticisms suggest that the Rand study is a shaky 

foundation on which to build an analysis of the replacement power costs of dam removal. 

Revenue Stream then turns to a 2002 NRDC - NW Energy Coalition study "Going with the Flow: 

Replacing Energy from the Four Lower Snake Dams" for its numbers. We have not been able to 

document whether the $79 million lower bound was taken directly from this report. The $170 

million upper bound was apparently the result of some updates and modifications to the NRDC - 

NWEC report numbers. This upper bound also appears to incorporate some of the same electricity 

conservation cost assumptions from the Rand report, which were criticized severely in Terry 

Morlan's memo. 

The Corps EIS estimates of power replacement costs were considered at the time to be credible 

and subject to much less controversy and uncertainty than most parts of that study. The Corps 

and NPCC analyses of power costs are the result of a transparent, public, peer reviewed 

processes, which contributes to their credibility. The SOS estimate was based on several studies 

that were not peer reviewed and not conducted in an open public process. It is very difficult for 

the IEAB to evaluate the alternative models used in these different studies, based upon different 

approaches, different assumptions, and different results. The Revenue Stream report risks the 

appearance that it picked low replacement power cost numbers from various reports that suit their 

IEAB 6 
purposes. 

The Corps EIS reported its replacement power costs in three sub-categories. Using a 4.75% 

discount rate, the annual equivalent cost of the replacement power itself, based on the cost of 

combined cycle turbine generation, was $238 million per year. The annual cost impact to replace 

the transmission reliability provided by the dams would be $21.5 million, and the annual cost of 

replacing lost ancillary services would be $9 million, for a total of $267.5 million per year. It is 

unclear whether Revenue Stream’s replacement power cost estimates include the transmission and 

ancillary services costs, which could be even higher for conservation and renewables than for 

combined cycle generation. If they did not include them, it would be one more major failing of 

the report. 

We note that if the Corps replacement power costs (which the IEAB considers to be the more 

credible numbers) were inserted into the Revenue Stream report in place of the power costs 

estimated by SOS -- this change alone would be enough to reverse their results. It would be 

cheaper for the region to keep the dams. 

2. The Revenue Stream report is not a peer reviewed analysis, the work was not 

conducted by an open public process, and many of the sources that the report relied 

on came from reports that were also not products of an open, public, peer reviewed 

process. Consequently, the IEAB does not have a solid basis to either accept or reject 

many of the cost and benefit estimates in the Revenue Stream report. 

In general, an analysis gains credibility if it is conducted in an open public process, and if the 

results are subjected to formal peer review. This was not the case for the Revenue Stream report, 

and it was not the case for many of the reports which were used as sources in compiling that 

report. 

We contrast this with the approach used by the Corps for their Lower Snake EIS. The Corps 

process was open, with many opportunities for stakeholders, agency staff, analytic professionals, 

and the general public to participate in and comment on the analysis. The IEAB participated in 

this process, both as informal reviewers during the course of the economic analysis, and as formal 

reviewers of the final economics results. 

The Revenue Stream report raised some legitimate concerns about the results of the Corps EIS. 

The IEAB also voiced some concerns in its formal review of the economics part of the EIS. 

However, our advice was as follows: 

“Our recommendation to the Council and others regarding the economic appendix is 

threefold: (1) consider the costs of dam breaching estimated in the economic appendix as 

the best estimate currently available; (2) invest in improved estimates of economic 

benefits from dam breaching to reduce the range of uncertainty and to improve confidence 

in them; and (3) in the meantime make decisions based upon the estimated costs, 

biological feasibility, and other measures of positive outcomes while relying less on the 

magnitudes of estimated recreational benefits and existence values for salmon and natural 

river conditions.” (http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/ieab/ieab04_00.pdf, page 5.) 

IEAB 7 
In order to displace the Corps EIS as the best available economic analysis of the cost of removing 

the lower Snake River dams, any new study is going to have to also be an open, public, and peer 

reviewed process. The Corps study would be the likely starting point, but there is ample 

opportunity to update the analysis to current conditions, to fill in the gaps, and remove some of 

the uncertainties. 

3. The Revenue Stream report does not discount future benefits and costs of dam 

removal. Discounting recognizes that people give greatest weight to immediate costs 

and benefits. Because some large costs of dam removal occur immediately, while 

other costs and benefits occur slowly over many years, lack of discounting could have 

a significant impact on the conclusions of the report. 

The approach used in the Revenue Stream report was simply to add up the costs with the dams in 

place and the costs if the dams were removed and then compare the two. Two time periods were 

used for the summations – the first ten years, and the first 20 years. There was no attempt to 

display the likely distribution of costs and benefits over time or to discount future costs and 

benefits. 

Some costs and benefits would occur immediately with removal, while other costs and benefits 

would occur only with a time lag of years following removal. If the dams were removed, the 

removal costs would be immediate, the costs to replace the lost power would start immediately 

and continue indefinitely, the costs of major dam upgrades and repairs that would be avoided if 

the dams were removed would be some time in the future, and any benefits and cost savings 

associated with recovered fish stocks would be spread over time. 

The Corps Lower Snake EIS economic appendix noted that: 

“For most water-related projects, the bulk of project costs tend to be incurred during 

project implementation. Benefits, on the other hand, are typically realized as uneven flows 

of income or monetary benefits over a much longer time.” (Corps EIS, Appendix I, page II6, http://www.nww.usace.army.mil/lsr/final_fseis/study_kit/main_report/appendix_i.pdf) 

To reflect this, the Corps used a discounting procedure in its evaluation of future costs and 

benefits. This approach is widely accepted for project economic analysis, and is standard for 

NEPA analyses like the Corps study. The Corps study used three discount rates of 6.875 % (the 

standard rate used by the Corps), 4.75% (the rate customarily used by BPA), and 0% (a rate 

requested by the tribes, and used to illustrate the effects of discounting). The Corps then reported 

these results as annual equivalent costs and benefits. 

Revenue Stream’s failure to account for the different future time paths of various cost and benefit 

streams, and its failure to account for the time value of money by using a discount rate, are major 

failings of the report, and severely reduce its credibility. Note that the Revenue Stream report 

actually used some of the annual equivalent cost numbers from the Corps EIS, mixing them in 

with undiscounted costs estimated from other sources in its ten-year and twenty-year cost totals. 

This is certainly incorrect methodologically, but it is difficult to sort out what effect this 

combination of incompatible numbers would have on their bottom line. 

IEAB 8 
4. The Revenue Stream Report estimates the cost of maintaining the salmon program 

in the Columbia basin with and without the four lower Snake River dams, and then 

poses the difference between these two costs as a cost saving. The cost estimates 

reflect a diverse mix of Federal agency budgets and estimated additional salmon 

recovery costs. It is not clear that the agency budgets reflect full or accurate cost 

estimates, or that they rely on a common definition of costs. 

The costs of continuing the 2004 Federal salmon plan in the basin was constructed from a number 

of Council, Corps, and other reports. For an estimate of the “with” Snake River dams alternative, 

SOS used a summary of Federal agency budgets, called the “cross-cut” budget, including 

expenditures by BPA, Corps of Engineers, Departments of Interior, Commerce (NOAA 

Fisheries), Agriculture, Energy, and EPA. During FY01 – FY06 the total actual budgets ranged 

from $453.1 million to $640.3 million, and averaging roughly $600 million/year. Additional costs 

of recovery funding (reportedly estimated by the Yakima Indian Nation) of $142 to $234/yr are 

added to the Federal costs to obtain a total “with dams” annual cost of $742 - $834 million/yr. 

This cost is then contrasted with estimated costs of continuing salmon programs with the four 

dams removed. 

This cost of the salmon plan “without” the Snake River dams is assembled from a variety of 

estimates. The Council’s “Human Effects Analysis of the Multi-Species Framework Alternatives. 

Phase II Final Report” (CH2M Hill, March 2000; Council Doc. 2000-5) is used to estimate the 

ongoing costs of facility modifications and hydrology strategies (Table 4-10, p. 4-27). Other 

sources are used to estimate a broader range of costs totaling $310 - $450 million/yr. In some

unspecified fashion, the report concludes that the overall costs of the salmon plan would drop by 

35 – 55% and that the “additional costs” for recovery would drop by 45%, resulting in a total cost

“with” dams of $388.1 to $578.7 million/yr. [These figures differ from those in the published 

report, as they incorporate corrections that SOS announced after the report was distributed.] 

There are some weaknesses to this approach to estimating cost savings. First, the Federal agency 

budgets are not necessarily a good measure of costs to society associated with the salmon 

program. Nor is it clear that the overall program budget would be reduced to the extent suggested 

by the Revenue Stream report after removal of the 4 lower Snake River dams. Budgeting 

decisions are clearly influenced by a variety of concerns and issues. Further, some sources of 

information for the calculations performed in the calculation are not clear or reviewable. And the 

selection of specific numbers from a variety of unpublished reports makes verification difficult, if 

not impossible. The failure of SOS to clearly show how it estimated salmon program cost savings 

is another major failure of the Revenue Stream report.

5. The Revenue Stream report argues that dam removal will have substantial 

additional benefits due to the recovered fishery. The reported recreational fishery 

benefits rely heavily on a study by Don Reading (2004), which the IEAB reviewed in 

December 2005. We concluded that Reading had made a number of methodological 

errors which seriously biased his benefit estimates upward. The non-fishery 

recreational benefits are derived from a study by John Loomis (1999) which the 

IEAB reviewed during our overall review of the Corps’ EIS in 2001. We had 

significant concerns about some of Loomis’ results as well, and the numbers actually 

used in the final Corps EIS differed substantially from those presented in the 

IEAB 9 
original Loomis study. Hence, the Revenue Stream’s reported benefits from salmon 

recovery in the Snake River appear unreliable. 

The biggest component in Revenue Stream’s estimate of benefits was based on Don Reading’s 

$550 million estimate of the benefits of a recovered salmon and steelhead fishery in Idaho. When 

the IEAB reviewed the Reading study, it found a number of serious methodological errors. 

Reading inappropriately used changes in gross economic activity, rather than changes in regional 

income as his measure of benefits. He also made a modeling error, using total retail spending by 

fishermen, where he should have used gross margin numbers to drive the calculation of the 

community multiplier effects of this spending. Both of these errors were very serious and 

resulted in large overestimates of the benefits of a restored salmon fishery. SOS has severely 

compromised the credibility of the Revenue Stream report by including Reading’s numbers. 

The estimates of the benefits to the commercial fishery from the Institute for Fisheries Resources 

are not peer reviewed, and are not from an open public process, so the IEAB has no way to judge 

their legitimacy. 

Note that in December 2005 the IEAB completed a report on “The Economic Effects from

Columbia River Basin Anadromous Salmonid Fish Production.” The household personal income

resulting from commercial and sport salmon harvest were $141.6 million per year, under the 

assumptions that hatchery production, smolt to adult returns, and harvests were at early 2000s 

levels. Of this about 63% occurred in the Columbia River, 19% in US ocean fisheries, and 18% 

in Canadian ocean fisheries. These numbers would certainly increase if the fishery were to 

recover, but whether they would increase by the five times or more necessary to meet the 

Revenue Stream estimates is questionable. 

Note that this brings up the question of exactly how much recovery of fish numbers would follow 

from removal of the dams. For the Corps EIS, fish biologists used fish life cycle and river 

passage models to estimate the effects of dam removal on fish numbers that would be available 

for harvest. It is unclear what returning fish numbers were used by SOS or how they were 

derived. 

Revenue Stream attributes its $360 million annual value of non-fishing recreation on the freeflowing river following dam removal to a study by John Loomis, commissioned by the Corps as a 

part of the Lower Snake EIS process. Following considerable discussion of the Loomis 

methodology and numbers, involving the IEAB and others, the Corps in its final EIS used revised 

estimates (based on a 4.75% discount rate) of $38.9 to $329.2 million per year. These numbers 

that were actually used in the Corps EIS are substantially below the Loomis river recreation 

numbers that were used in the Revenue Stream report. 

Conclusions

The IEAB concludes that the Revenue Stream report prepared by Save Our Wild Salmon has a 

number of deficiencies that diminish its credibility. An alternative analysis, the Corps of

Engineers Lower Snake EIS, has been widely accepted as a credible analysis of the impacts of 

removing the four lower Snake dams. 

IEAB 10 
The Corps EIS set a high standard as an open, public and peer reviewed analysis that has not been 

matched by any other study of dam removal, and is certainly not matched by the Revenue Stream 

report. Because Revenue Stream uses numbers from reports that do not result from an open peer 

reviewed process, it is difficult to assess the validity of these studies, whether they use appropriate 

methodology, rely on good data, or use compatible assumptions. 

The Revenue Stream report itself reflects some inappropriate methodology choices. SOS’s choice 

to not address the likely distribution of costs and benefits over time or to discount future costs and 

benefits is a major failing of the report. In other cases, the Revenue Stream report does not 

clearly document the methodology they used to derive their estimates, making it impossible for us 

to replicate or evaluate their numbers. 

While the IEAB concludes that there are enough problems with the Revenue Stream report that it 

cannot be viewed as a credible alternative to the Corps Lower Snake EIS analysis of the impacts 

of removing the four lower Snake dams, we want to emphasize that the EIS is not necessarily the 

last word on the topic. When the IEAB served as formal reviewer of the Corps EIS, one of our 

conclusions was the region should “... invest in improved estimates of economic benefits from

dam breaching to reduce the range of uncertainty and to improve confidence in them ...” At the 

time the IEAB had a number of criticisms and suggestions for how the analysis could and should 

be improved. Because there are a number of weaknesses to the Corps study, because some of the 

assumptions and methodologies used by the Corps are controversial, and because the world, 

especially the power cost world, is a much different place than it was in the late 1990s when much 

of the Corps analysis was done, it is easy to see why people continue to question whether the 

Corps EIS is the final word on the topic. 

Perhaps it is time for the region to consider doing a follow-on study of the four lower Snake dams

that would address some of the weaknesses of the Corps study, and that would update the study to 

reflect the many changes in the regional economy, regional transportation systems, power 

generation and transmission, the successes and failures of current recovery efforts, and the 

improved models of fish biology, dam passage and ocean survival now available. 

IEAB 11 
References:

On Revenue Stream report:

“Revenue Stream: An Economic Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of Removing the Four 

Dams on the Lower Snake River”, Save our Wild Salmon, 2006. 

http://www.wildsalmon.org/library_files/revenuestream8.pdf

“GROUPS' LOWER SNAKE DAM-BREACHING REPORT ELICITS 

RESPONSES”, Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Bulletin, November 17, 2006. 

http://cbbulletin.com/Free/192434.aspx

“Debate should be Based on Fact not Fiction”, Northwest River Partners, December 

2006. http://www.nwriverpartners.org/documents/CurrentReflections8Dec2006.pdf

“A Review of Revenue Stream: An Economic Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of 

Removing the Four Dams on the Lower Snake River”, Northwest River Partners, 

November 27, 2006. 

http://www.nwriverpartners.org/documents/NWRPreviewofSOWRevenueStreamRepo

rt11-27-06.pdf

On the Corps Lower Snake EIS:

US Army Corps of Engineers, Lower Snake River Juvenile Salmon Migration 

Feasibility Study, 2000. http://www.nww.usace.army.mil/lsr/

Independent Economic Analysis Board, “Technical Review of Lower Snake River 

Juvenile Salmon Migration Feasibility Report / Environmental Impact Statement 

Appendix I – Economics”, April 20, 2000. 

http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/ieab/ieab04_00.pdf

Independent Economic Analysis Board, “Review of Economic Appendix I of the Corps’ 

Lower Snake Feasibility Study”, June 21, 2000. 

http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/ieab/DREWSummary.htm

Salmon Program Costs: 

Cross-Cut Federal agency budgets for the Columbia Basin salmon plan. Available from the 

Federal Caucus website at: http://www.salmonrecovery.gov/Key_ESA_Activities/cross_cut/ 

CH2M Hill. Human effects Analysis of Multispecies Framework Analysis. NPCC Report 

2000-5 http://www.nwcouncil.org/edt/framework/humaneffects/default.htm

On the Cost of Replacement Power:

Christopher G. Pernin, Mark A. Bernstein, Andrea Mejia, Howard Shih, Fred Reuter, Wilbur 

Steger, “Generating Electric Power in the Pacific Northwest: Implications of Alternative 

IEAB 12 
Technologies”, Rand, 2002. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1604/

Morlan, Terry, “Rand Analysis on Generating Electric Power in the Pacific Northwest”, 

Memo to Council members, October 9, 2002. 

http://www.nwcouncil.org/news/2002_10/6.pdf

David Marcus and Karen Garrison, “Going with the Flow: Replacing Energy from Four Snake 

River Dams”, Northwest Energy Coalition and Natural Resources Defense Council, 2002. 

Executive Summary is available at 

http://www.nwenergy.org/publications/docs/sum_cl_energy.html. Full report is available 

from Natural Resources Defense Council. 

NW Fishletter, “Study Says Snake Dams can be Replaced with Clean Energy Resources”, 

April 25, 2000. http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/fishletter/fishltr101.html#9

Value of Fish / Recreation:

Independent Economic Analysis Board, “Economic Effects from Columbia River Basin 

Anadromous Salmonid Fish Production”, January 2005. 

http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/ieab/ieab2005-1.htm

Don Reading, “The Potential Economic Impact of Restored Salmon and Steelhead Fishing in 

Idaho”, 2005. http://www.idahorivers.org/pdf/FishingEconReport.05.pdf

John Loomis, “Recreation and Passive Use Values from Removing the Dams on the Lower 

Snake River to Increase Salmon” March 1999, Available on Corps EIS web site

http://www.nww.usace.army.mil/lsr/REPORTS/rec_passive/pass_rec.htm

Independent Economic Analysis Board, “Review of the Estimated Economic Impacts of 

Salmon Fishing in Idaho”, December 2005, http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/ieab/ieab2005-

2.pdf

Other Costs Associated with Snake River Dam Removal:

BST Associates. 2003 (June). “Lower Snake River Transportation Study”. Available at 

http://www.AmericanRivers.org/site/DocServer/lsr transportation study final report.pdf

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