Washington State’s Skykomish River is born at the confluence of its north and west forks and drains a sliver of the western Cascades, where a looming Mt. Index has pondered its course for millennia.
It’s a pretty picture, one where steelhead and salmon enter the fray seasonally, and one that could be marred by a $150 million hydropower project being championed by the Snohomish County Public Utility District (holders of the unfortunate acronym, SnoPUD).
The Skykomish is currently protected from hydropower development by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NWPCC). For SnoPUD to move forward—and effectively strip the river of long-term protections—the utility entity is asking NWPCC to de-list the Sky in order to dam it.
According to the Save the Sky River Coalition, which includes support from conservation groups such as American Whitewater, American Rivers, the Sierra Club, and more, you can help prevent this:
“Comments are due no later than September 17, 2013 to the NWPCC (Northwest Power and Conservation Council), urging them NOT to allow self-interested utility companies or other developers to weaken NWPCC Fish and Wildlife Protections. SnoPUD wants an exception to the NWPCC Comprehensive Plan that prohibits dams of any kind on fish-bearing rivers and streams in our region.”
Click here, for comment form.
Read more, here.
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.