America's Forests 2010 / October
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October 2010 - THE TETONS AND THE SNAKE RIVER – Fall Color in the Aspens -western Wyoming.
THE TETONS AND THE SNAKE RIVER – Fall Color in the Aspens -western Wyoming.
The headwaters of the Snake River comes out of Yellowstone National Park and proceeds into Jackson Lake. The river here flows out of Jackson Lake dam within Teton National Park. Controversy again is heating up to remove 4 key federal dams on the lower Snake river to give salmon and steelhead more area to inhabit. This is one of the longest rivers in the west and over the years dams have been placed for several very good reasons. (1)- to provide flood control (remember the mid-west and southern floods of 2009, 2008 and 2007?) (2)- irrigation. These dams provide the water that all of southern Idaho and SE Oregon need to grow food crops. (3)-hydro-electric power generation. Without those dams, you can turn the lights out in Boise, Nampa, Twin Falls, Idaho - Ontario, Vale, Baker City, Oregon and dozens of smaller communities.
We have built thousands of wind turbines lately to help generate electricity along the Columbia river, but we can't replace the power lost in one hydro-electiric dam. (When the wind doesn't blow... the turbines are not producing power).
By 2020, according to US Energy Dept. studies, we'll need to generate twice the electricity and food, as what we are currently producing.
We cannot produce enough "green-energy" to meet these needs. If we covered the US in wind generators and solar panels, we could only meet
a fraction of our current needs let alone future needs.