The agency's financial outlook should be even brighter in the future when its nuclear debt is paid. Irrigation benefits are limited to 13 eastern Washington irrigators. Upgrading equipment to keep them in business would be costly. Buying them out would be less expensive. Breaching costs, dam maintenance.
Idaho water is used to help flush juvenile fish to the sea.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation already attempts to secure 427,000 acre-feet of reservoir water each year. But to meet that goal every year, even in drought, it would have to purchase three times as much storage space. Transportation and subsidies. Taxpayers are spending millions each year on subsidies for barge transportation. That's money saved by breaching.