Final Feasibility Report and Environmental Impact Statement for Lower Snake River Juvenile Salmon Migration-Appendix I, Economics (Executive Summary) February 2002.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District completed their examination of alternatives to manage the Lower Snake River to accommodate juvenile salmon migration. The Corps has selected a recommended plan (preferred alternative), which is a modified version of Alternative 3, Major System Improvements (Adaptive Migration), with increased focus on adaptive migration capabilities. Appendix I of the FR/EIS focuses on the economic impacts of the alternatives that were considered and incorporates the Corps' interpretation of the findings of the Drawdown Regional Economic Workgroup (DREW).

Breaching Dam Myths (180K) August 2000.
By Ed Whitelaw. This article responds to popular misconceptions about the expected economic impacts of bypassing the dams on the lower Snake River. The article originally appeared in the Autumn 2000 edition of Oregon Quarterly, a publication of the University of Oregon. The author is a professor of economics at the University of Oregon, and president of ECONorthwest.

Review of the DRAFT Lower Snake River Juvenile Salmon Migration FR/EIS (464K) April 2000.
By ECONorthwest. For the Western Conservation Office of Trout Unlimited, ECONorthwest applied the principles of the economists' letter to prepare a critical review of the economic analysis in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Draft FR/EIS for Lower Snake River Juvenile Salmon Migration. Trout Unlimited submitted the report to the Corps as written comments on the FR/EIS. The authors examine the Corps' analytical methods and their findings for individual economic sectors.

Making Sense out of the Economic Babble: What Are We Trying to Learn from the Economic Analysis of Salmon Restoration Alternatives on the Snake and Salmon Rivers? (56K) December 1999.
By Thomas M. Power. As different salmon recovery proposals are made, more economic analyses are also being carried out to examine the social rationality of the new proposals. But the different analyses reach different conclusions about the economic cost and value of various alternatives. In this report, the author argues that the growing battle of competing economic studies is not primarily due to the inadequacy of economists' tools. Rather, the source of the wide differences in the studies and their conclusions is tied to the fact that we as a people have not developed a consensus about what we mean by economic benefits and economic costs, especially when those terms are applied to natural resource and environmental issues. This report seeks to clarify the different approaches to "salmon economics" embodied in the various economic studies and criticisms of them. The author is Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Montana in Missoula.

An Economic Strategy for the Lower Snake River (204K) November 1999.
By Ed Whitelaw and Ed MacMullan. This report examines the potential economic consequences of proposals to bypass four federal dams on the lower Snake River and offers a prescription for capitalizing on the bypass to enhance local and regional economic conditions. The analysis concludes that, rather than "devastate" the economy, as many have claimed, the negative impacts from the bypass would be manageable and should be and can be addressed. Bypassing also would have substantial, positive impacts. The study incorporates the preliminary findings of the Drawdown Regional Economic Workgroup (DREW) assembled by the Army Corps of Engineers to estimate the economic impacts of bypassing the four dams and illustrates where DREW underestimated some of the potentially most powerful, long-run, positive impacts. The authors are economists with ECONorthwest.

Four appendices accompany this report:

Appendix A: Local and Regional Economies in our Analysis (2.8MB)
Appendix B: Autonomous Economic Forces (144K)
Appendix C: Characteristics of Economic Transitions (132K)
Appendix D: Impacts of the Bypass (200K)

Irrigation after Partial Removal of the Four Lower Snake River Dams (156K) November 1999.
By American Rivers. Farmers grow orchards, vineyards and other crops on 37,000 acres of land irrigated by water drawn from a reservoir created by Ice Harbor Dam. Bypassing Ice Harbor Dam would render existing irrigation infrastructure useless. Providing an alternative irrigation system would permit farmers in two rural eastern Washington counties to continue growing irrigated crops if the four lower Snake River dams are removed. In this report, American Rivers, proposes that the federal government to be the primary source of funding for the alternative irrigation system.

Grain Transportation after Partial Removal of the Four Lower Snake River Dams: an Affordable and Efficient Transition Plan (139K) September 1999.
By Dr. G. Edward Dickey. Bypassing the four dams on the lower Snake River would eliminate barge traffic on the Snake River and move the head of navigation from Lewiston, Idaho to the Tri-Cities, Washington, near the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. If the waterway is closed, grain will continue to be shipped to deepwater ports or Columbia River terminals and prudent, timely investments in rail and highway infrastructure could provide an affordable transportation alternative to the lower Snake River waterway. The report recommends federal and state funding to upgrade highway and rail infrastructure, and loans and grants to the private sector for grain elevators, terminals, and rail cars. States, in collaboration with local governments and stakeholders, would identify specific investments, which would be approved by the Secretary of the Army. The author served as the Chief of the Planning Division for the Army Corps of Engineers and the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) during the Bush Administration.

Restoring the Lower Snake River: Saving Snake River Salmon and Saving Money (2.3MB) 1998.
By Philip S. Lansing and Eve Vogel. In this report the authors compare the costs of maintaining and operating the four dams on the lower Snake River to the costs of bypassing the dams. They include the costs that users don't pay and U.S. taxpayers subsidize, namely barge transportation and electricity to pump irrigation water, and existing salmon restoration expenditures. The authors conclude that bypassing the dams on the lower Snake River would produce an economic benefit of $87 million each year. The authors wrote the report for the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC).

Independent Economic Analysis Board (IEAB) Review Comments 1998.
The IEAB at the Northwest Power Planning Council reviewed the assumptions and methods of the report by Lansing and Vogel. The IEAB concluded that two assumptions seem especially indefensible: (1) that all of the system costs and salmon recovery expenditures (including costs of fish related constraints on generation) will be ended when the dams are bypassed, and (2) that the power lost if the dams are bypassed can be measured by the lost firm energy only and can be replaced at only 1.6 cents per kWh. Both of these estimated savings are so important to the calculation, that even small changes could reduce or even reverse the estimated benefits of dam bypassing.

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