This option also was supported by most of the participants in a recent forum on the salmon recovery issue in Twin Falls. The forum was one of a series held around the state by the University of Idaho for the Corps of Engineers. If the dams were breached, there would be no biological reason to take irrigation water from southern Idaho, Bowles said. The natural drop of the river would determine velocity, and the faster-moving water would not be slowed by reservoirs to heat up. The four federal dams were built between 1961 and 1975 to provide inland navigation to Lewiston and to generate power.
Taxpayers pick up the difference.
Barge traffic provides about 60 jobs in the Lewiston area, but many of them also involve other types of shipping, such as workers who load shipping containers onto barges also load them onto trucks and railroad cars. The bulk of the power is generated during high flow periods in spring and early summer. Like Upper and Lower Salmon Falls and Bliss dams in the Magic Valley, they generate power only as water comes down the river. One of the four reservoirs also provides irrigation water to about 36,000 acres. The proposal to breach the dams includes provisions to continue that irrigation.