By now, the dredging machinery would have been
sucking 319,000 cubic yards of sand and silt from the bottom of the
Snake River west of Lewiston, Idaho. Barges would be hauling the
muck downriver and dumping it out of the way. Then tugboats would
have dragged giant rakes across the spoils, trying to recreate
habitat for salmon and steelhead.
All that disturbance
would have kept the river channel at least 14 feet deep, to
accommodate commercial barge traffic from the busy inland seaport
at Lewiston, which ships 1 million tons of farmers’ grain per
year.
Last fall, the Army Corps of Engineers OK’d
this dredging plan in an environmental impact statement. The
dredging season was to run from January through March, this year
and for another 19 years.
But environmental groups,
including the National Wildlife Federation, sued to stop the
project, saying it would harm habitat for fish that are already in
trouble. U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik in Seattle agreed in
December, and issued a temporary injunction that effectively delays
any dredging, at least until this time next year.
There
are better solutions, the groups say, including using spring flows
and reservoir drawdowns to flush sediments past dams, and reforming
upriver agricultural and timber practices that create sediment.
Their opinion is shared by state wildlife agencies and Indian
tribes.
Federal engineers “didn’t really
consider all of the alternatives to dredging,” says Bill
Sedivy, director of Idaho Rivers United.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Dredging plans stall on the Snake River.
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