Klamath Dams

More in the news today about the dams on the Klamath River, with dam owner Pacificorp saying fish ladders wouldn't likely be an effective way to get salmon back upstream. They propose trapping and trucking salmon instead. Whatever.

I was under the impression that fish ladders were an integral part of any dam that was on a river with migrating fish. I guess not.

Still, there's the calls for tearing down the dams instead, thus reverting the Klamath to its original state. I'll never understand that. Sure, the salmon might be suffering from low flows, disease and such with the dams there, but I don't see how removing the dams would rectify that situation. At least with the dams there you could release additional water from time to time to keep the flows up.

I don't know what the answer is to this fishy problem, but I don't think tearing down the dams will help anything. We need both the water and power the dams provide.