A powerful argument for why dam removal makes good scientific, economic, and environmental sense—and requires our urgent attention The Snake River, flowing through the Northwest, was once one of the world's greatest salmon rivers. As recently as a hundred years ago, it retained some of its historic bounty with seven million fish coming home to spawn there. Now, due to damming for hydroelectricity over the past fifty years, the salmon population has dropped close to extinction. Efforts at salmon recovery, through fish ladders, hatcheries, and even trucking them over the dams, have failed. Hawley argues that the solution for the Snake River lies in dam removal, pitting the power authority and Army Corps of Engineers against a collection of conservationists, farmers, commercial and recreational fishermen, and the Nez Perce tribe. He also demonstrates the interconnectedness of the river's health to Orca whales in Puget Sound, local economies, fresh water rights, and energy independence. This regional battle has garnered national interest, and is part of a widespread river-restoration movement that stretches from Maine's Kennebec to California's Klamath. In one instance, Butte Creek salmon rebounded from a paltry fourteen fish to twenty thousand within just a few years of rewilding their river, showing the incredible resiliency of nature when given the slightest chance. In this timely book, Hawley shows how river restoration, with dam removal as its centerpiece, is not only virtuous ecological practice, but a growing social and economic enterprise.

Steven Hawley, journalist and self-proclaimed "river rat," argues that the best hope for the Snake River lies in dam removal, a solution that pits the power authorities and Army Corps of Engineers against a collection of Indian tribes, farmers, fishermen, and river recreationists. The river's health, as he demonstrates, is closely connected to local economies, fresh water rights, energy independence-and even the health of orca whales in Puget Sound.

Dam removal wasn't a realistic option in the twentieth century, and people who suggested it were dismissed as fringe environmentalists. Over the past twenty years, dam removal has become increasingly common, with dozens of removals now taking place each year in the US. Same River Twice tells the stories of three major Northwestern dam removals - the politics, people, hopes, and fears that shaped three rivers and their communities. Brewitt begins each story with the dam's construction, shows how its critics gained power, details the conflicts and controversies of removal, and explores the aftermath as the river re-established itself.