Seattle's new environmental plan: Tear down dams, electrocute the fish

For years, Seattle’s environmental establishment has delivered a remarkably consistent message about fish: No sacrifice is too great.

Tear down dams. Replace billions of dollars in infrastructure. Find replacement electricity. Replace barge transportation. Figure out what happens to agriculture and irrigation. Spend billions more doing all of the above. Why? Because salmon are sacred, and if human infrastructure might be harming them, we are repeatedly told that dramatic action is not only justified but morally necessary.

Unless, apparently, the infrastructure happens to be Seattle’s shiny new light-rail system.

Then electrocuting fish is just an unfortunate engineering hiccup.

You really couldn’t script the irony any better.

The Seattle Times recently reported that roughly 2,000 fish have been found dead near the I-90 floating bridge in Lake Washington, where Sound Transit’s new light-rail line crosses the lake. The suspected culprit involves an electrical system designed to protect the bridge from corrosion. Electrical current associated with the system appears to be affecting fish in the surrounding water.

Yes, you read that correctly. After years of lectures from Seattle about the dangers that dams pose to fish, a multibillion-dollar Seattle-area transit project appears to be literally shocking them.

But the best part may be buried in the engineering details.

According to the Times, engineers actually considered the possibility that the electrical system could harm fish. Fish protection was among 23 technical requirements evaluated for the project.

Its importance? Low.

Low!

Try putting those words into a report about the Lower Snake River dams and see how that goes.

Imagine federal officials announcing that protecting Snake River salmon is a “low importance” consideration compared with keeping reliable electricity flowing, moving agricultural products or maintaining river transportation. Seattle environmental activists would be rappelling down the Space Needle by lunchtime.

Instead, we have spent years listening to demands that the four Lower Snake River dams be breached because of their alleged harm to salmon. The Seattle Times has repeatedly covered the campaign and the broader argument that dams and reservoirs are a major impediment to salmon recovery. Environmental groups have portrayed dam removal as an urgent necessity, despite the enormous economic, transportation and energy consequences that would follow.

And those consequences are hardly trivial. The Lower Snake River dams provide reliable, carbon-free hydroelectricity. They support the movement of agricultural products and other goods. Their power is available when the region needs it, unlike weather-dependent resources that produce electricity only when conditions cooperate.

That brings us to perhaps the most delicious irony of all.

What do you suppose helps power Seattle’s electrified future?

Hydropower.

Seattle City Light reports that more than three-quarters of the electricity it delivers comes from hydroelectric generation. It also purchases electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power produced by the federal Columbia River power system.

To be clear, nobody can follow an individual electron from a particular Snake River turbine, through the regional grid and into Sound Transit’s electrical system. Electricity doesn’t come with little return addresses attached.

But the larger absurdity is hard to miss.

Seattle is heavily dependent on carbon-free electricity produced by dams while its environmental establishment campaigns against dams because they supposedly hurt fish. Then the region builds an electric transit system — precisely the sort of electrification environmentalists routinely celebrate — and electrical equipment associated with that project starts killing fish.

We have apparently discovered the circle of environmental life in the Pacific Northwest: Generate carbon-free electricity with dams. Condemn the dams for harming fish. Use hydroelectricity to electrify transportation. Shock the fish with the electrical infrastructure. Then go back to demanding that the dams come down.

Apparently the fish needed an ORCA card.

None of this means concerns about salmon should be dismissed. Salmon recovery is a serious and complicated issue involving habitat, ocean conditions, predators, hatcheries, water temperatures, dams and numerous other factors. Reasonable people can disagree about the costs and benefits of the Lower Snake River dams.

But that is precisely why the double standard deserves ridicule.

Infrastructure involves tradeoffs. Hydroelectric dams involve tradeoffs. Highways involve tradeoffs. Wind farms involve tradeoffs. Solar facilities involve tradeoffs. And yes, even Seattle light rail involves tradeoffs. A serious environmental policy weighs those benefits and costs instead of deciding beforehand that one type of infrastructure is virtuous and another is evil.

Yet the Lower Snake River dams are routinely discussed as though virtually any environmental impact is grounds for dismantling them. Meanwhile, when a marquee Seattle infrastructure project is associated with roughly 2,000 dead fish, we discover that fish protection had been assigned “low importance” among the engineering requirements.

There is another uncomfortable difference. The Lower Snake River dams aren't actually designed to kill fish. Billions of dollars have been spent throughout the Columbia and Snake River system on fish passage and salmon recovery efforts. Yet Seattle activists still demand their removal.

Sound Transit, meanwhile, discovered dead fish near its electrical equipment in early August, and the issue did not become public until roughly a month later.

Imagine the reaction if 2,000 dead fish suddenly appeared downstream from Lower Granite Dam and officials waited a month before telling everyone about it.

Something tells me “low importance” wouldn't make it into the press release.

Maybe this episode will inspire a little humility the next time Seattle’s political and environmental establishment lectures the rest of the Northwest about the infrastructure it believes should be destroyed in the name of saving fish.

Or maybe not.

But before Seattle demands that Eastern Washington give up carbon-free hydroelectric dams to protect fish, perhaps it should make sure its own trains aren't electrocuting them with electricity that may, somewhere along the way, have come from a dam.

Only in Seattle could we contemplate tearing down dams to save the fish while using dam-generated electricity to kill them.