Sandhill cranes need our help to block plans to dam Crab Creek

Sandhill cranes dance and honk by the hundreds and thousands each spring in a place called Crab Creek, near the very center of Washington. State officials propose to build a dam that will destroy this place: Lower Crab Creek tops the list for new dams in Washington.

Quietly, state officials are moving the decision to Washington, D.C., where Congress may soon decide whether to fund studies to commit taxpayers to billions of dollars in new dam construction. So, let's spend a moment on Crab Creek.

Where is Crab Creek? From Seattle, drive Interstate 90, cross the Columbia River at Vantage, take the exit and drive south for eight miles. Here, Crab Creek — more than 140 miles long and draining a vast area — flows into the Columbia, near Beverly and Schwana, Grant County.

If your image of Crab Creek is sterile Eastern Washington desert, reconsider. Lower Crab Creek is among the Northwest's richest wildlife habitats: 19,000 acres designated as Columbia National Wildlife Refuge and Washington state Lower Crab Creek Wildlife Area.

The Columbia National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1944 as a feature of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project "for use as an inviolate sanctuary ... for migratory birds" and "as a refuge and breeding ground for migratory birds and other wildlife," including more than 150 species of birds.

Crab Creek also provides important habitat for migrating salmon. As the Northwest Power and Conservation Council writes: "Crab Creek Subbasin offers enormous opportunity to conduct fisheries enhancement to help mitigate for other fisheries that have been lost." Crab Creek provides spawning habitat for a summer/fall chinook salmon population that "returns to spawn in Red Rock Coulee year after year." Endangered summer-run steelhead also spawn in Lower Crab Creek. Rainbow trout are present throughout the creek and provide high-quality fisheries.

Washington's proposed Crab Creek Dam would cost $2.7 billion and flood tens of thousands of acres of wetlands, streams, lakes and shrub-steppe habitat. The dam would also flood up to 8,600 acres of existing farmland, requiring the state to use its eminent domain powers to condemn private property.

Why are elected officials pushing new dams? Their stated purposes are to provide water to industrial farms along the Columbia River; and, "augment" streamflow in the Columbia River for the benefit of endangered salmon.

Flooding farms in Lower Crab Creek to provide water to farmers elsewhere makes no sense. Nor does it make sense to flood out critical fishery habitat under the guise of helping migrating salmon — not to mention the water-quality problems that would occur when solar-heated, chemical-laden slackwater from Crab Creek Reservoir is released into the Columbia.

More than 500 people attend the popular Othello Crane Festival every spring and the town of Othello gets an economic lift from this marvelous gathering of thousands of sandhill cranes. These folks (kids, too) will be sick at heart if we build a huge dam that floods the Crab Creek wetlands. Where will the cranes go then?

With a $2.7 billion price tag, Crab Creek Dam is a bad deal all the way around. Farmers will never be able to pay the dam's cost, so you, the taxpayer, will pay.

A dam at Crab Creek would result in a tragic loss of wildlife, including the dancing and honking sandhill cranes. Wildlife can't talk to Congress. You can. Pick up the phone and tell your representatives to oppose new dams in Eastern Washington.