On the Snake River, Dam’s Natural Allies Seem to Have a Change of Heart

The wheat Bryan Jones grows in Eastern Washington begins its journey to Asia on barges along the lower Snake River. The river, once a wild, muscular torrent, was made barge friendly a quarter-century ago by four of the nation’s most controversial hydropower dams.

A tame river keeps Mr. Jones’s business viable. So why is he is spending time with the guides and fishermen who want to remove the dams? In part, because he feels the tug of environmentalist arguments that the dams will endanger wild salmon that, even more than wheat, are the region’s natural bounty.

“I always believed dams were economically too big of a hurdle to attack,” said Mr. Jones, who is 52. “But I began to realize that we are potentially losing runs of salmon” along this tributary of the Columbia River.

It is still a relatively rare phenomenon, but one becoming more noticeable: some members of the dams’ natural constituency, like farmers, are talking to their downriver antagonists about a future that might not include the four lower Snake River dams. There is talk of reconstituting a regional rail system to deliver Mr. Jones’s wheat to Portland, Ore. There is talk of a wind farm to replace the electricity — enough to power most of Manhattan — generated by the four dams.

The conversations are still in their early stages, and political support for the dams remains strong. Congressional ties to the Bonneville Power Administration, which provides electricity from the dams to regional utilities and businesses, are many, and few politicians want to back an action that could raise electricity bills and cost jobs. At best, wind power is intermittent and expensive; in 2005, regional electricity costs were more than 25 percent less than the national average.

But the pressures on the hydrosystem’s traditional operations are accumulating, and conversions like Mr. Jones’s have taken on an enhanced significance. As former Gov. John A. Kitzhaber of Oregon said in an interview, “by not talking to each other, not trying to figure out the real economic issues, we’re setting up a situation where someone else is going to figure out our future for us.”

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