The US Army Corps of Engineers hatched a genius plan to save endangered species of salmon populating Oregon’s Willamette River: build a big ass vacuum that would suck up young salmon and deposit them into equally big ass storage tanks. Those tanks would get loaded onto trucks which would then deposit the salmon downstream.
The problem is that it was massively expensive, and nothing like it had ever been attempted before. Government officials also didn’t think it would work and wildlife advocates said it was a dumb idea.
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The football field-sized vacuum was pitched in an effort to save a species whose journey to reproduction was being cut off by a series of 13 hydroelectric dams. The risky, unproven, wildly expensive plan was all set to kick off when, on January 4, 2025, just days before handing the reins of the presidency back to Donald Trump, President Joe Biden signed legislation halting the Army Corps’ plan in favor of a much simpler solution: turning off the dams.
The decision to rapidly alter the plan from an unproven theory to something as simple as removing the obstacle in the salmon’s path followed a thorough scientific review that found the Army Corps’ plan wouldn’t prevent the extinction of salmon, it would merely delay the inevitable.
Additionally, the Army Corps’ concern that turning off hydropower would cause undue harm to locals who depend on its energy was found not to be that serious, as less than one percent of the region’s power and subsequent financial viability comes from the dams. It doesn’t help that electricity generated by Willamette dams is about five times as costly as energy generated by other hydroelectric dams nearby.
Turning off the dams would return a natural flow to the river system and allow the salmon to migrate once again. If this idea sounds too good to be true, something like it has already been attempted with tremendous success, and it happened quite recently, and in the same state.
Native tribes in the northwestern United States landed a major victory for salmon populations as they oversaw the removal of four hydroelectric dams blocking the natural migratory patterns of local salmon.
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