I'm no environmentalist. I don't want to see Dworshak removed out of hysteria or the like. The environmental agenda of removing dams is obsurd in the extreme.

But I did a little math regarding Dworshak and the water it "holds" in the 57 miles (approximate, the mileage varies from site to site) in the reservoir behind Dworshak.

According to the most recent report on the matter, Dworshak holds back 3,468,000 acre feet of water. One acre foot is 43,560 cubic feet of water. Converted to gallons, 43,560 cubit feet of water is 325,851.428 gallons of water. If you do the math, Dworshak Dam holds back approximately 1,130,052,752,304 gallons of water. One gallon of water weighs 8 lbs. In the case of Dworshak, the dam is holding back 9,040,422,018,432 lbs or 4,520,211,009,216 tons of water.

Now consider the dikes in New Orleans that weren't going to fail under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina and the I35 Bridge in Minneapolis that "wasn't in danger of collapsing". One failed, the other collapsed.

If Dworshak Dam breaks or collapses, the devastation will go all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The likelihood that it would take all eight dams between it and the Pacific Ocean would increase exponentially with each dam breached and the water behind that dam unleashed.

The debris (including the logs sitting at the PFI plant in Lewiston) that water would collect as it headed for the Pacific Ocean would serve as a battering ram as it went. There would not be a community in proximity to the affected stretches of the Clearwater River, Snake River, and Columbia River that would survive including Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.

In light of the fact that the money that should have been used to repair and replace failing infrastructure within the United States (like the dikes at New Orleans and the I35 Bridge in Minneapolis) has been diverted to other uses while these structures were allowed to continue to degrade, what is the real truth about Dworshak?

Is the dam truly safe or isn't it? Can we trust what the government says with regard to this dam or would we be smart to be skeptical. There's one sure thing about it; if Dworshak breaks, the "save the dams" movement will be moot because there won't be a dam left between Dworshak and the Pacific Ocean. In one fell swoop, they will all be gone.