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While I applaud the 9th Circuit Court for its decision against the Bush Administrations attempts to avoid any responsibility for salmon recovery, I can just hear the conservative pundits ranting and raving about the "Liberal" 9th Court while not providing any solution other than "stay the course". Of course, this delays any help for salmon recovery to probably the next presidency, so I guess no one is really in a rush to save the salmon.

Has anyone looked into partially breaching the 4 dams on the Snake River for salmon access, but leaving the structure and power house and transmition capability intact? We could then attempt to recoup some of the lost energy through wind power. The four dams in question have a total of 3,033 mw of nameplate capacity, although I don't know if they come near that in actual production. The smallest utility-scale wind turbine is rated at 700 kw (.7 mw), and the newest larger scale turbines approach 5 mw. Assuming the larger rated model were used, you would need 600 turbines to replace the nameplate capacity, fewer if the dams don't actually put out that much. Now 600 turbines at 4 sights on the Snake River might just be too much, but, it sure merits looking into. It also beats the heck out of throwing more money at lawyers to keep fighting this.
I understand that there is the further question of water diversion that this does not address, but maybe there could be a compromise reached by just breaching the first two dams, I don't know. I just know that there are a heck of a lot of people, and salmon, sick and tired of the endless debate and delays and infighting.

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