Video by Brigida Sanchez
Snake River Dams Water Cooling Systems
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Walla Walla District
Sept. 12, 2018 | 2:28
The four lower Snake River dams are multiple-use facilities that provide navigation, hydropower, recreation and fish and wildlife conservation benefits. When the dams were constructed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built adult fish ladders to allow adult salmon and steelhead to swim through dams as they return to their natural spawning areas.
The Corps’ engineers developed a system that cools the Snake River by augmenting it with flows from Dworshak dam and by incorporating cooling upgrades within Lower Granite and Little Goose dams’ fish ladders.
The following B-roll captures the dams and the cooling systems used to insure the fish ladders are cool enough for safe fish passage.
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