By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
The Associated Press

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The Biden administration on Tuesday released two reports arguing that removing dams on the lower Snake River may be needed to restore salmon runs to historic levels, and that replacing the energy created by the dams is possible but will cost $11 billion to $19 billion.

The reports were released by the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

“Business as usual will not restore salmon,” said Brenda Mallory, chair of the council. “The Columbia River system is the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest.”

Many salmon runs continue to decline, which environmentalists blame on dams, Mallory said, and her office is leading multi-agency efforts to restore “abundant runs of salmon to the Columbia River Basin.”

Mallory cautioned that the Biden administration is not endorsing any single long-term solution, including breaching the dams.

On Tuesday, a draft report by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found changes are needed to restore salmon, ranging from removal of one to four dams on the lower Snake River to reintroduction of salmon to areas entirely blocked by dams. A second report studied how power supplies could be replaced if dams are breached.

“These two reports add to the picture — that we are working alongside regional leaders to develop — of what it will take over the decades ahead to restore salmon populations, honor our commitments to Tribal Nations, deliver clean power and meet the many needs of stakeholders across the region,” Mallory said.

More than a dozen runs of salmon and steelhead are at risk of extinction in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Billions of dollars have been spent on salmon and steelhead recovery, but the fish continue to decline, speakers said, and it is time to try a different approach. Dam breaching is opposed by grain shippers, irrigators, power producers and other river users. Dam supporters blame declining salmon runs on other factors, such as changing ocean conditions.

“We need to go to larger-scale actions,” NOAA scientist Chris Jordan said in a briefing on the report Monday.

“We are at a crucial moment for salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin when we’re seeing the impacts of climate change on top of other stressors,” said Janet Coit, an administrator for NOAA Fisheries.

The issue has percolated in the Northwest for three decades, sparking court fights and political debates over the future of the four dams on the Snake River that environmentalists blame for the decline in salmon and steelhead.

U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, kicked off the latest round of debates in 2021, when he released a plan saying it would cost $34 billion to remove and replace the dams’ services in order to save salmon. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, both Democrats, are also preparing a report, with their recommendations expected later this summer.

Last month, Murray and Inslee announced that replacing the benefits provided by the four giant hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state would cost $10.3 billion to $27.2 billion.

Breaching the dams would significantly improve the ability of salmon and steelhead to swim from their inland spawning grounds to the Pacific Ocean, where they spend most of their lives, and then back to their original spawning grounds to procreate and die, Murray and Inslee said.

Major benefits of the dams include making the Snake River navigable up to Lewiston, Idaho, allowing barges to carry wheat and other crops to ocean ports. Eliminating the dams would require truck and rail transportation improvements to move crops.

The dams also generate electricity, provide irrigation water for farmers and recreation opportunities for people.

The dams have many supporters, including two GOP members of Congress representing eastern Washington state. The dams are also supported by barge companies, farmers and other business interests. Breaching them would require an act of Congress.

Republican U.S. Reps. Dan Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of eastern Washington have introduced a bill to protect the dams, which are located in their districts.

In the late 1800s, up to 16 million salmon and steelhead returned to the Columbia River Basin every year to spawn. Over the next century and a half, overfishing whittled that number down. By the early 1950s, just under 130,000 Chinook were returning to the Snake River.

Construction of the first dam on the lower river, Ice Harbor, began in 1955. Lower Monumental followed in 1969, Little Goose in 1970, and Lower Granite in 1975. The dams stretch from Pasco, Washington, to near Pullman, Washington, and stand between migrating salmon and 5,500 miles of spawning habitat in central Idaho.

The dams have fish ladders, but too many of the salmon die as they swim through the dams and across slack water reservoirs on their migrations.

In 1991, Snake River salmon and steelhead were listed as endangered species, requiring production of a federal recovery plan. Over the next three decades, environmental organizations sued the federal government six times, arguing that the recovery plan was inadequate.

The U.S. government has spent more than $17 billion trying to recover Snake River salmon, through improvements to fish ladders and other measures, with little to show for it.

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By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Some Republican members of Congress from the Northwest are accusing a GOP Idaho lawmaker of conducting secret negotiations with the Democratic governor of Oregon over a controversial proposal to breach four dams on the Snake River to save endangered salmon runs.

But Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, replied that he has for several years been telling “everyone who would listen” about his proposal for a comprehensive solution to save salmon.

“How is that secret?” Simpson asked this week. “My staff has had discussions with nearly every governor, member of Congress, and U.S. senator in the Columbia Basin on this proposal.”

Simpson’s plan to remove the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Granite, Lower Monumental dams also includes a 35-year moratorium on lawsuits, ending costly litigation over the dams’ environmental impact.

That provision prompted more than a dozen Northwest environmental groups to oppose the plan. Democratic lawmakers have also been lukewarm to the proposal.

On Wednesday, Reps. Dan Newhouse, R-Washington, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington, and Cliff Bentz, R-Oregon, issued a strongly worded statement upon learning of a Freedom of Information Act release detailing coordination between the offices of Simpson and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown regarding the proposal to breach the four dams.

“For months, Rep. Simpson has been speaking with us about his sweeping dam-breaching proposal, touting transparency and an open process while telling us it was simply a ‘legislative concept’ for the Northwest delegation to consider,” the lawmakers, who oppose breaching the dams, said.

“What he didn’t tell us was that he has been coordinating for months with Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s staff behind the scenes to shepherd his proposal through Congress with little to no support from Pacific Northwest representatives – Republican or Democrat,” the lawmakers said.

“It’s clear this proposal is not just a starting point, but rather a radical and fully-baked plan he is actively seeking to put into law,” they said.

The three Republicans also suggest Simpson’s discussions with Brown could hurt an agreement signed last year by the governors of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana to work together on solving an issue that has bedeviled the Northwest for decades.

The documents were released in response to a public information request by the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group that opposes Simpson’s plan.

“We rarely agree with Rep. Newhouse, but when it comes to removing the Snake River dams, we too insist that there must be a transparent, open process that involves all stakeholders,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “A deal made behind closed doors with just the good ol’ boys will be worse for salmon, worse for the river and worse for the region.”

The center opposes Simpson’s proposal, which would suspend key federal environmental regulations and exempt 80 other dams in the Columbia River basin from accountability for clean water and harmful impacts on salmon and other species.

In his statement, Simpson called the Center for Biological Diversity “one of the extreme environmental groups that is opposed to my concept because it would end their business model of keeping the stakeholders in the region in perennial litigation over the four Lower Snake River dams.”

Simpson’s “Columbia Basin Initiative,” proposes removing the earthen portions of the four dams, while making all the regional stakeholders whole. Most of the proposed $33.5 billion cost of the plan would replace the power the dams generate, the barging capacity they provide between the Tri-Cities region of Washington and Lewiston, Idaho, plus irrigation and other benefits.

Brown’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

But Simpson on Wednesday issued a statement defending the proposal he has worked on for three years, involving some 300 meetings.

“I expected pushback when this all started,” he said. “What I did not expect was colleagues with whom I have worked for a number of years on a number of issues to question my integrity, to insinuate I have lied about my motivation and in fact have nefarious intentions — to — what? Sabotage the economy of my own state?”

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BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A coalition of 17 environmental groups is speaking out against a key part of a sweeping plan to remove the lower Snake River dams to save salmon and steelhead.

The groups said in a letter to Democratic senators in Oregon and Washington that the 35-year moratorium on fish- and dam-related lawsuits included in Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson’s proposal in exchange for dam removal was too high a price to pay, the Idaho Statesman reported Saturday.

A years-long ban on lawsuits will make federal and state laws on clean water standards and species protections harder to enforce, the groups said in the letter to Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden.

The groups urged the lawmakers to oppose the proposal “as written,” but said they generally support the idea of breaching the dams and helping impacted communities. The letter argues that the reason salmon aren’t yet extinct on the Snake River is because of lawsuits to protect their habitat under environmental laws that were enacted after the dams were already built.

“The Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act are critical to protecting wild salmon and protecting water quality, and when you are removing the enforcement of those for many years, you could actually be doing more harm than the dams are causing,” said Kurt Beardslee, executive director of the Wild Fish Conservancy.

Simpson last month released his $33 billion legislative concept to breach the dams and mitigate affected industries and communities through a wide range of investments. It includes funding to replace power produced at the dams, to help farmers get wheat and other grains to market, and to help communities like Lewiston.

To address what some in the region see as the “slippery slope” of dam removal, the concept includes a 35-year moratorium on ESA, Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act lawsuits on most of the remaining dams in the Columbia River Basin and it would extend federal licenses at those dams for 35 years.

It would also set up regional watershed partnerships between agricultural interests, conservation groups and Native American tribes aimed at improving water quality. Farmers participating in the voluntary partnerships would be shielded from Clean Water Act lawsuits for 25 years.

Some environmental groups such as the Idaho Conservation League, Trout Unlimited and the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition support Simpson’s proposal. But the congressman has also faced stern criticism from agricultural groups, state legislators and county commissioners from both Idaho and Washington.

Todd True, an attorney from the environmental law firm EarthJustice who has represented many of the salmon advocates who support Simpson’s concept, said he sees it as the type of comprehensive proposal that could help save the fish. But he sees Simpson’s proposal as a starting point instead of a finished product.

“It’s not perfect. There are difficult issues that it raises. We are ready to have the hard conversations to find a way forward and resolve those issues,” he said. “The limits on access to the courts is one of the difficult issues.”

David Moskowitz, executive director of The Conservation Angler, one of the groups that signed the letter, said while his group opposes Simpson’s proposal, the groups agree it can be improved and hope the senators from Washington and Oregon do so. For example, he said it might be possible to narrow the litigation moratoriums.

“I think the Oregon and Washington delegation should be able to really work on the positives that are there and on the things that are too broad right now, like this litigation prohibition,” he said.

Moskowitz took them to task for leaving it to an Idaho Republican to try to save the fish.

“Where are the creative Democrats? Plenty of their constituents support making a change and don’t support the status quo, and we don’t support the status quo even though we are opposed to this proposal as written.”

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By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Environmental groups are vowing to continue their fight to remove four dams on the Snake River in Washington state they say are killing salmon that are a key food source for endangered killer whales.

But instead of working with federal agencies, conservationists intend to seek removal of the dams through the political or legal systems.

Agencies of the U.S. government announced in late July that the four huge dams will not be removed to help salmon migrate to the ocean. That decision was finalized Tuesday in a so-called Record of Decision.

The decision thwarts the desires of environmental groups that fought for two decades to breach the dams.

“This is definitely not the end,” said Robb Krehbiel of Defenders of Wildlife. “I don’t see how this doesn’t end up in court.”

But he is also encouraged by signs that governors of Northwest states, particularly Democrats in Oregon and Washington, are looking for a negotiated solution.

“To say we need a new approach, that we need leadership from our elected representatives, and that we need to find a solution that works for all of us is to state the obvious,” said Todd True, an attorney for Earthjustice.

The ROD was issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration, and sought to balance the needs of salmon and other interests.

The plan calls for spilling more water over the dams at strategic times to help endangered salmon migrate faster to and from the ocean, a tactic that has already been in use.

Dam critics have panned the Trump administration plan as inadequate to save salmon, an iconic Northwest species. They contend the dams must go if salmon are to survive.

“To us, the lower Snake River is a living being,” said Shannon K. Wheeler, chair of Idaho’s Nez Perce Tribe. “We are compelled to speak the truth on behalf of this life force and the impacts these concrete barriers on the lower Snake have on salmon, steelhead, and lamprey.”

The tribe will go to court, to Congress and to state capitols to find a way to restore the river, Wheeler said.

Scientists warn southern resident orcas are starving to death because of a dearth of chinook salmon that are their primary food source. The Pacific Northwest population of orcas — also called killer whales — was placed on the endangered species list in 2005.

The dams have many defenders, including Republican politicians from the region, barge operators and other river users, farmers and business leaders.

Republican members of Congress from the Northwest hailed the recent federal decision.

“Federal water infrastructure makes our way of life possible throughout the West,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., as part of a joint statement that included similar sentiments from Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, and Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore.

The Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, made up of river users, also defended the dams.

“Salmon, orcas and other wildlife are threatened by climate change,” said Executive Director Kristin Meira. “The clean power and efficient commerce provided by the system’s hydroelectric dams and navigation locks are key to our region’s ability to reduce our carbon footprint.”

The four hydroelectric dams were built from the 1960s to the 1970s between Pasco and Pomeroy, Washington. Since then, salmon populations have plunged.

The dams have fish ladders that allow some salmon and other species to migrate to the ocean and then back to spawning grounds. But the vast majority of the fish die during the journey, despite $17 billion spent so far on efforts to save them.

The 100-foot-tall dams generate electricity, provide irrigation and flood control, and allow barges to operate all the way to Lewiston, Idaho, 400 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

The federal agencies concluded that removing the four dams would destabilize the power grid, increase overall greenhouse emissions and more than double the risk of regional power outages.

The four dams are part of a vast and complex hydroelectric power system operated by the federal government in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The 14 federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers together produce 40 percent of the region’s power — enough electricity for nearly 5 million homes.

But the dams have proven disastrous for salmon that hatch in freshwater streams, then make their way hundreds of miles to the ocean, where they spend years before finding their way back to mate, lay eggs and die.

The dams cut off more than half of salmon spawning and rearing habitat, and many wild salmon runs in the region have 2 percent or less of their historic populations, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

On the way to the ocean, juvenile salmon can get chewed up in the dams’ turbines.

In all, three federal judges have thrown out five plans for the system over the decades after finding they didn’t do enough to protect salmon.

The most recent case occurred in 2016, when a federal judge in Portland ordered dam managers to consider removing or altering the four dams. That order led to Tuesday’s record of decision.

“The differences between the plan adopted by these agencies today and the plan the court rejected in 2016 are hard to discern,” True said Tuesday. “And the plan the court rejected in 2016 was not materially different from plans the court had rejected in 2003, 2005, 2009 and 2011.”

The Save Our Wild Salmon coalition contended federal agencies cannot deliver a comprehensive solution. Rather, the effort must be led by stakeholders, tribes, politicians and citizens, the coalition said.

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By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press

PORTLAND (AP) — A long-awaited federal report released Friday rejected the idea of removing four hydroelectric dams on a major Pacific Northwest river in a last-ditch effort to save more than a dozen species of threatened or endangered salmon, saying such a dramatic approach would destabilize the power grid, increase overall greenhouse emissions and more than double the risk of regional power outages.

The four dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington are part of a vast and complex hydroelectric power system operated by the federal government in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

Environmental groups who have pushed for years for the dams to come down immediately blasted the report. The three agencies in charge of overseeing the sprawling hydropower system recommended an alternative that includes a variety of strategies, including fine-tuning the amount of water that spills over the dams for fish.

“Rather than seizing this opportunity to heed the public’s call for working together for a solution that revives salmon populations, the draft plan is built on the same failed approach the courts have rejected time and again,” said Todd True, an attorney for Earthjustice who has represented environmentalists and fishing groups in ongoing litigation over the dams.

“We need a different approach and leadership from elected officials.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has voiced support for demolishing the Snake River dams.

The 14 federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers together produce 40% of the region’s power — enough electricity to power nearly 5 million homes, or eight cities roughly the size of Seattle. They also contain a system of locks that allows cities nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) inland from the Pacific Ocean access to Asian markets via barges that float down the massive rivers to the sea. Roughly 50 million to 60 million tons of cargo navigate the Snake and Columbia river system each year.

Yet the towering dams have proven disastrous for salmon that struggle to navigate past them on human-made fish ladders as they swim upstream to spawn and die after spending most of their lives in the Pacific. Salmon are unique in that they hatch in freshwater streams and then make their way hundreds of miles to the ocean, where they spend years before finding their way back to their natal streams to mate, lay eggs and die.

Snake River sockeye were the first species in the Columbia River Basin listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1991. Now, 13 salmon runs are listed as federally endangered or threatened.

The Columbia River System dams cut off more than half of salmon spawning and rearing habitat, and many wild salmon runs in the region have 2% or less of their historic populations, said Meg Townsend, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“The science shows that pulling out the four lower Snake River dams is the only way to save Columbia River salmon,” she said.

Townsend and other scientists also warn that southern resident orcas are starving to death because of a dearth of the Chinook salmon that are their primary food source.

The Puget Sound population of orcas — also called killer whales — was placed on the endangered species list in 2005. A mother orca that carried her dead baby on her back for 17 days brought international attention in 2018 as their numbers have dwindled to 72 animals.

The U.S. government has spent between $15 billion and $17 billion on improved salmon passage over years, but nothing has changed for the salmon, True said. Yet the Pacific Northwest’s power supply and ability to use energy more efficiently have vastly improved in the past 20 years, he said.

The Bonneville Power Administration, which sells the power from the system, “is looking at a very different future than they were 10 years ago, or even five years ago,” True said.

Opponents of dam removal say they want salmon to flourish, but they aren’t sure breaching four major hydroelectric dams will help — and it could instead damage the regional economy and the stability of the power supply.

Reservoirs behind some of the dams allow the Bonneville Power Administration to even out the more erratic power supply from wind and solar by spilling water to generate electricity on short notice. And a move away from low-cost coal plants in the Pacific Northwest has some worried about what the future could hold for ratepayers if the Snake River dams are removed, said Kurt Miller, of Northwest River Partners, which represents community-owned utilities across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

“This is a much, much bigger issue than the Snake River dams. If worldwide salmon populations are doing poorly because of climate change and carbon, does it make sense to tear out 1,000 average megawatts of carbon-free electricity?” he said.

“For so many reasons, it’s bad public policy.”

The report Friday addressed those concerns in its recommendation regarding the dams.

Hydropower generation would decrease by 1,100 average megawatts under average water conditions, and 730 average megawatts under low water conditions, the report said. The risk of a regional power shortage would more than double and the lowest-cost replacement power would be $200 million a year, the report said. Those adjustments would increase the wholesale power rate up to 9.6%, the authors wrote.

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bonneville Power Administration to revisit the impact of the hydroelectric system in 2016 while overseeing litigation over salmon.

In all, three federal judges have thrown out five plans for the system over the decades after finding they didn’t do enough to protect salmon.

Friday’s report is a draft and will be subject to 45 days of public comment. A final report — including the agencies’ final decision — is expected in September.

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