Re:Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity
by pc2g4d on Friday September 09, 2016 @02:09PM
(#12464666)
At least regarding the Columbia and its tributaries, British Columbia is much further upstream away from the ocean, so the salmon impacts of building dams there are less. At least that's my understanding. Also, I expect their dams were built later and thus with fish ladders. (Grand Coulee has no fish ladders whatsoever, being built mostly in the 1930's.)
It's not just about the salmon, although I believe they're worth considering in and of themselves. It's also about the cultures and practices, the foods, etc., that have diminished since the dams interfered with the salmon run. Fish ladders are vastly better than nothing, but even then the rates of passage are significantly less than on an undammed river.
As far as generating mix, it really depends where you live. East of the Cascades there's plenty of wind, plus the Columbia and Snake rivers for hydroelectric. Not to mention a bit of nuclear. Pretty cool map here: http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-1
I live in the heart of the PNW and most of my power comes from COAL. The rest; natural gas. It's insane. We could power three states by damming a few rivers. I'm not an expert, but I also think it's more than possible to do that in a way that still let's salmon spawn, depending on how well things like fish ladders and run-of-the-river actually works. I'm pretty sure BC get's the majority of their power from hydro, and from how much time local fishermen spend up there, the salmon are doing just fine.