The city is understandably delighted by the size of the salmon runs this year–“An estimated 1.2 million pink salmon and 25,000 Chinook are crowding into the upper Skagit River.” And so is Seattle City Light, who happily spin hydroelectric dams as good for salmon.
UPDATE: Seattle City Light reminds me that, so far as the Skagit River is concerned, the hydroelectric dam is “good for salmon.” It’s upriver enough it doesn’t interfere with spawning and the Chinook that return are wild as Brando on a bender. I retract my air quote aspersions.
Seattle City Light uses its dams to manage the flow of water on the Skagit. This offers some relief from flooding impacts and provides enough water to protect eggs and fry during periods when river flows would be naturally low.
But as Sightline reminds us, not all salmon are created equal. Hatchery-raised (some might say “coddled”) salmon aren’t the same ecological indicators as wild salmon, who have to swim upstream both ways. And, over all, wild salmon are returning to spawn in as little as three percent of their former numbers.
So while a visible salmon crash has been averted, the fact remains that the fate of the Columbia Chinook still very much hangs in the balance. A lot of work has been done to make salmon return a practical possiblity, but that has been, in a sense, the low-hanging fruit. Changing human impacts so that wild salmon can recover will require tougher decisions on breaching dams, and even more jesuitical parsings of whether cutting energy greenhouse gas emissions in fact demands more hydropower investment.
One of the reasons Seattle City Light is so happy about the record return of salmon on the Skagit River is that these are wild fish. Of the Chinook in the river, over 95 percent are wild and they account for half of the wild Chinook in the Puget Sound.
Our Skagit Hydroelectric Project is above natural barriers for salmon and we operate it to protect spawning fish. We also support habitat preservation and restoration backed by continuing research.
Seattle City Light takes its stewardship responsibility for this jewel of the Pacific Northwest very seriously and is pleased to see the payoff from its work.
All right, Scott. You can be happy without caveat on the Skagit, and I’ll make a note in the post. I don’t mean to run down City Light restoration work in any event; Chinook runs since 2000 are moving absolutely in the right direction: up! I just wanted to put the good news in context of what the rivers used to support.