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Mitigating the effects of high-head dams on the Columbia River, USA: experience from the trenches

  • EIFAC 2006: DAMS, WEIRS AND FISH
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Abstract

Worldwide, humans have tremendously altered freshwater ecosystems and arguably, construction of dams has had the greatest effect. Maintaining natural ecological processes and developing mitigation strategies that will maintain species while retaining dam benefits is challenging. In the Columbia River, USA, over the last 30 years more than US$7 billion has been spent on efforts to save historically large runs of salmon. These efforts have included improving passage conditions at dams through construction of efficient fish ladders for adult salmon, effective fish passage facilities for downstream migrating juvenile salmon, voluntarily spilling water to decrease the number of downstream migrants that pass through turbines, modifying dam operations to provide more constant flow and providing additional flow from storage reservoirs to create more natural flow through areas inundated by dams. Construction of hatcheries to offset losses in habitat for wild fish has also occurred. Further, for salmon from the Snake River, the largest tributary to the Columbia River, a large percent of juvenile salmon smolts are collected at upstream dams and transported in barges to the lower river to avoid passage through dams, turbines, and reservoirs. Experiences in the Columbia River suggest that the sum of all of these actions may keep salmon stocks from going extinct, but the technological fixes will not likely provide complete mitigation for altered freshwater ecosystems.

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Acknowledgments

Although the author has over 30 years of experience, it pales in comparison to the efforts expended by staff over the last 45 years to gain knowledge on anadromous fish in the Columbia River. The majority of research to determine effects of Columbia River dams on upstream and downstream migrating anadromous salmonids was conducted by our organization at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Marine Fisheries Service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The number of field technicians, field biologists, supervisory biologists, and data analysts over the years has numbered in the hundreds and are too numerous to identify individually. To them we give our sincere thanks, as we would not have the information presented here without their efforts.

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  1. Fish Ecology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, 2725 Montlake Boulevard East, Seattle, WA, 98112-2097, USA

    John G. Williams

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  1. John G. Williams
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Correspondence to John G. Williams.

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Guest editors: R. L. Welcomme & G. Marmulla

Hydropower, Flood Control and Water Abstraction: Implications for Fish and Fisheries

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Williams, J.G. Mitigating the effects of high-head dams on the Columbia River, USA: experience from the trenches. Hydrobiologia 609, 241–251 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-008-9411-3

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