The dam? They weren’t going to pass recertification without salmon passage mitigation. But instead of using proven methods, they tried something experimental: a tower that can draw water from multiple levels in the reservoir for the outlet. That is to address the stratification of water from three roughly equal input rivers with different temperature profiles.
The idea isn’t bad. The problem is execution. The tower cannot operate without drawing surface water. The surface water comes from a river that, during summer and early fall, flows at over 80 degrees F with a pH of 11. For some reason, they operate it with almost entirely surface water in July-August-September. One would almost think they were going for a complete fish kill of the native trout and steelhead in the lower river.
The only saving grace we’ve had is that the watershed of the “hot” tributary has been in a drought state for several years, reducing it’s contribution as a percentage compared to the cool tributary and the cold tributary. But whitefish have almost disappeared, the native trout have had significant increases in disease, and the steelhead have seriously declined.
