When I spoke with the Columbia Basin Tribes, another economic benefit became apparent. Promised fishing rights by an 1855 treaty, which was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 1979, the tribes have vowed legal action if dam breaching is not part of a comprehensive salmon recovery plan. Since salmon hold significant spiritual value for the tribes, they have been unwilling to assign a dollar value to their fishing rights if the federal government were found to have abrogated them. But the taxpayer-advocacy organization, Taxpayers for Common Sense, has. It calculates that the minimum price tag to indemnify the tribes would be in the tens of billions of dollars.
History provides an example for weighing both.
In the 1940s the people of northwestern Wyoming became bitterly divided over whether to maintain a ranching economy in Jackson Hole or turn to tourism and recreation by expanding Grand Teton National Park, just as the people of the Pacific Northwest are today divided over the future of four dams out of the more than 200 in the region. Eventually Grand Teton National Park was expanded, and, with open space and wildlife preserved, hunting, fishing, tourism, and its associated service industries have given Jackson Hole one of the strongest rural economies in the nation. Ranching has continued as well. Restoring the wild salmon population and the free-flowing rivers they need to flourish could do the same for the Pacific Northwest. Unlike cheap water, electricity, and subsidized water transportation, they aren't replaceable, they are currently scarce, and people long for them.