Carcassman posted: ". . . the whole idea of getting fish around dams seems a waste of time and certainly money."

I suspect that many of the people at power companies and utilities that have to provide fish passage, instream flows for fish, and hatcheries would agree with you. However, they have no legal obligations outside the area impacted by their projects. I came to regard fisheries mitigation as a legitimate cost of doing business. If the prospective benefits of a power dam are in the public interest and worth having to a energy utility, then the cost of effective - no net loss - mitigation is just part of the cost of the project, like the dam itself, the power lines, and roads and ROW.

Would you really want no anadromous fish on the Columbia River upstream of Bonneville? I think these mitigation measures are the logical price of human development in watersheds.

Sg