Though these forecasts may be exaggerated, experts confirm that if the dams were retired tomorrow, the heaviest burdens would fall here, on farmers already down on their luck. Dan Blankenship sends more than 1 million bushels of wheat each year from his farm near Washtucna down the Snake River to Portland. If we lose the dams, we're toast. Asking Eastern Washington farmers to give up the Snake River dams is like urging a dying man to give blood, says Ken Casavant, a Washington State University economist. The stakes have risen this year because the once unthinkable act of dam-breaching has become thinkable.
Juvenile salmon making their way to the ocean are most at risk to damage from the dams.
Shunted through or over the dams on their migration to the sea, they can scrape against screens or pipes, get hammered by water pressure changes, or be exposed to lethal levels of nitrogen gas in water below the dams. Slower downstream movement through slack reservoirs also exposes them to hotter water and more predators, and may affect their ability to adapt to salt water. Also, floods of hatchery-raised fish can compete with naturally spawned salmon for food, or even prey on them. Most politicians don't support breaching the dams. U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., has been leading the opposition to breaching.