SPOKANE, Wash. – The Biden administration released two reports Tuesday that say dam removal on the lower Snake River may be necessary to restore salmon stocks to sustainable levels in the Pacific Northwest 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 is not going to restore the salmon,” said Brenda Mallory, council president. “The Columbia River System is the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest.”
If the four Snake River dams are eventually removed, it would be the largest such project in US history. In 2012, Elwha Dam on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state was removed to restore habitat. At the time, the National Park Service said the Elwha Dam removal was the largest such project in U.S. history.
Many salmon stocks continue to decline, which environmentalists blame on dams, Mallory said, and her office is leading multi-agency efforts to restore “abundant salmon stocks in the Columbia River basin.”
Mallory cautioned that the Biden administration does not endorse any long-term solution, including breaching the dams.
A draft report by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that changes are needed to restore salmon, ranging from removing one to four dams in the lower Snake River to reintroducing salmon to areas completely blocked by dams. A second report explored how power supplies could be replaced if the dams were breached.
“These two reports add to the picture — that we’re working together with regional leaders to develop — what it will take in the coming decades to restore salmon populations, meet our commitments to tribal nations, provide clean energy and respond to the many needs of stakeholders across the region,” Mallory said.
More than a dozen salmon and steelhead runs are at risk of extinction in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Billions of dollars have been spent to restore salmon and steelhead, but the fish continue to decline, speakers said, and it’s time to try a different approach. The breach of the dam wall is opposed by grain carriers, irrigators, power producers and other users of the river. Dam supporters blame the salmon decline on other factors, such as changing ocean conditions.
“We need to move to larger scale actions,” NOAA scientist Chris Jordan said at a briefing on the report Monday.
“We are at a critical time for salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin as we see the impacts of climate change in addition to other stressors,” said Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries Administrator.
Six Republican members of Congress from the Northwest criticized the reports as biased.
“They are cherry-picking points to justify breaching the Lower Snake River dams, which will have a lasting and negative impact on our way of life in the Pacific Northwest,” U.S. Reps. Dan Newhouse, Kathy McMorris said in a statement Rogers and Jaime Herrera Beutler, all of Washington, Cliff Benz of Oregon, Russ Fulcher of Idaho and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, which is made up of river users, said electric ratepayers would see higher bills if the dams were breached. The rate increase could be as high as 65 percent, Miller said.
“The study confirms the fact that these dams are indispensable to the region if we are to meet our emissions reduction goals and maintain a reliable, affordable grid,” Miller said.
The issue has seeped through the Northwest for three decades, sparking legal battles and political debate over the future of the Snake River’s four dams, which environmentalists blame for the decline in salmon and steelhead.
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, kicked off the latest round of debate in 2021 when he released a plan that would cost $34 billion to remove and replace dam services 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.
Breaking the dams would greatly 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 reproduce and die, Murray and Inslee said.
The main benefits of the dams included making the Snake River navigable as far as Lewiston, Idaho, allowing barges to transport wheat and other crops to ocean ports. Removing the dams would require improvements in truck and rail transportation to move the crops.
Dams also generate electricity, provide irrigation water for farmers and recreational opportunities for people. Breaking the dams would require an act of Congress. Newhouse and McMorris Rogers introduced a bill to protect dams located in their districts.
In the late 1800s, up to 16 million salmon and steelhead returned each year to the Columbia River basin to spawn. Over the next century and a half, overfishing reduced that number. By the early 1950s, just under 130,000 Chinook were returning to the Snake River.
Construction of the first downstream dam, Ice Harbor, began in 1955. Lower Monumental followed in 1969, Little Goose in 1970, and Lower Granite in 1975. The dams extend from Pasco, Washington to near Pullman, Washington and stand between migrating salmon and 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometers) 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 cross slackwater reservoirs during their migration.
In 1991, Snake River salmon and steelhead were listed as endangered, requiring a federal recovery plan.
The U.S. government has spent more than $17 billion trying to restore Snake River salmon through fish ladder improvements and other measures, but little about it.
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This story has been updated to correct that the purpose of dam removal is to restore salmon stocks to sustainable levels, not historic levels.
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