Bonneville Dam

by Rudy Klobas

The Bonneville Dam and hydro electrical plant have had a great deal to do with our economy. The truth is that hydroelectricity is destroying the salmons lifecycle. It is important to know more about Hydroelectricity, Salmon cycle and, H.E.I. (Human Environmental Interaction) effect our environment. Here is some information about hydroelectricity.

Where does hydroelectricity start? It starts at the top of a watershed in the Colorado Rockies. At the top of this mountain, the rain from the clouds falls down on the watershed and drifts to one side and accumulates at the Bonneville Dam. Wonder what happens to the water? The people who work at the dam, turn on a shaft. The shaft siphons off small amounts of water at a time and the water flows through pipes and into a turbine. The turbine spins at a high velocity and shoots the water back out of a tube on the other side of the dam. When the turbines spin, it causes little electrons to spark and serge up big copper wires and out of the dam. Before the power comes to our homes, it has to go through giant transformers. The transformers break down the electrons into smaller amounts of electricity. If it did not do this we would be fried alive by a gigantic surge of power. At the end of the long lines, the power comes into our homes, where it can finally be used for our enjoyment.

However, while we are enjoying our electricity, salmon are dying in the process. So, I think if your going to kill salmon, you might as well know more about them.

There are seven stages to the salmon cycle. All salmon start off as eggs. The egg of the salmon is about ¼ the size of a penny and is always laid in a gravelly stream. Most of the eggs the adult salmon lays dies. Usually, only about 15-20 salmon per nest survive.

After a period of time, the egg develops an eye and a backbone. In about a month and a half, the egg hatches and becomes an Alevin. Alevin are small salmon that have a yolk sack. Two weeks later, the Alevin loses its yolk sac and turns to a buttoned up. Soon, they are little salmon which develop tiny dorsal fins and turn color. At this stage, they are called smolt. Smolts are silvery in color and are big enough to get caught by a fisherman net.

At the second to the last stage, the salmon has filled in and is now an adult. Adults are the biggest of all. At this time, the adult finds a mate. The last stage is spawning. When the salmon are adult and are ready to spawn, they swim back to the stream where they were born and mate. In the small stream, the adult salmon lay their eggs in a hole of small gravel. This completes the salmon life cycle. But at the end of this cycle, the salmon are dying due to the hydroelectric power. The hydroelectric power plants are destroying the habitat of other animals. That’s why we have the Human Environmental Interaction or HEI, a fancy word for problems and issues like the Bonneville dam.

There have been problems going on with the Bonneville dam. Since 1938, Teddy Roosevelt bought the first bag of concrete for the HEI foundation. HEI has been addressing the problem of the salmon before the plans of the dam were even conceived. Now, the salmon are having more trouble because of the turbines. The fish are getting caught up in the flow of water. However, people like the Army Corp. Of Engineers are trying to help the salmon by building and maintaining fish ladders. The fish ladders help the salmon and other fish travel safely through the dam and go freely out the other side.

Another issues the HEI is addressing is over fishing of salmon. When the salmon actually get through the fish ladder, they have to face many fishermen and other predators like birds that wait for them on the other side of the dam. We need to provide protection for our precious salmon by limiting the number of fisherman who can fish. The fishermen illegally take more fish than they should, this in turn, causes the fish count to go down. Out of all these problems the salmon has to face, HEI, and the Bonneville dam, the salmon that are lucky, survive and keep spawning and reproducing.

After reviewing the problems and the salmon life cycle, we need to look at what we can do to change these problems. The dam was built, we can’t change our actions or out economy would be ruined. So, think about when you turn on a light, we should think about where the electricity is coming from and how the spinning turbines are killing one more salmon. Therefore, every time you leave a room, turn off the lights, you could be saving a salmon.