If other measures to help the fish aren't working in five or 10 years, the dams will have to be breached, the Fisheries Service said it expects to declare. It implies that water temperature conditions have improved since the dams have been put in place. The discussion supporting this hypothesis is flawed and misleading. Only disabling the dams would meet water quality standards, the agency said. Doug Arndt, chief of the Corps' fish management division for the Northwest, said the EPA's harsh rating for the non-breaching alternatives came as a surprise.
Temperature is a tough, tough issue in the Snake River, . . .
Breaching dams is not going to resolve our temperature problem. Allowing timber cuts, planting crops and grazing cattle on streambanks of Snake tributaries helps heat up the water, he said. The EPA questions information used by the Corps as the basis for concluding that even an undammed river would frequently exceed the state's 68-degree standard for temperature. Sloppy information-gathering earlier in the century, and flawed analysis in the last year or so, may have led to that conclusion, the EPA charges. The Army Corps' Arndt said that while the EPA is focused on meeting water quality standards, including temperature, his agency was merely told to check out alternatives for improving salmon survival.