After $3M effort, Idaho officials hope they killed off invasive quagga mussels in Snake River
By Clark Corbin; Idaho Capital Sun Idaho Capital Sun Idaho state officials are hopeful that the approximately $3 million effort to kill invasive quagga mussels detected in the Snake River in September was successful. But they don’t expect to know if they wiped out all of the mussels until waters warm up and water sampling surveys resume next spring. The plan to kill the mussels involved treating a 16-mile section of the Snake River near Twin Falls with a copper-based chemical that was hazardous to mussels and fish and required state officials to airlift boats into otherwise inaccessible portions of the river. Some state employees even camped on tiny islands and river banks for days on end in an effort to kill the mussels before they could reproduce rapidly, which…