A tie 4-4 vote by the high court upholds a lower-court decision ordering barriers to salmon migration be removed, ending a bitter decades-old controversy.

By Hal Bernton, Seattle Times staff reporter

June 11, 2018

The U.S. Supreme Court is leaving in place a lower court order that forces Washington state to restore salmon habitat by removing barriers that block fish migration.

The justices split 4-4 Monday in the long-running dispute that pitted the state against Indian tribes and the federal government.
 
The tie means that a lower-court ruling in favor of the tribes will stand. Justice Anthony Kennedy stepped aside from the case because he participated in an earlier stage of it when he served on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court,” said the brief statement released by the Supreme Court.

At issue is whether Washington state must fix or replace hundreds of culverts. Those are large pipes that allow streams to pass beneath roads but can block migrating salmon if they become clogged or if they’re too steep to navigate.

“It is a fantastic day for the tribes and the fish. It is a fantastic day for anyone in Washington who cares about these resources,” said John Sledd, a Seattle-based counsel for the tribes.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who had challenged the 9th Circuit ruling, said the Supreme Court ruling marks the end of the case, which had gone on for nearly 20 years.

Ferguson said that the federal government provided faulty designs for culverts but that the Washington taxpayers will be footing the entire bill for the culvert replacements.

“The Legislature has a big responsibility in front of it to ensure that the state meets its obligation under the court’s ruling,” Ferguson said.

The case initially was filed by 21 Washington tribes with treaty-protected fishing rights in 2001. At issue is the state’s obligation to repair road culverts that block salmon from their spawning habitat.

Oct. 10, 2023
By Lynda V. Mapes

ELWHA RIVER — With the plonk of fishing tackle in clear, green water, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s first fishery on a free-flowing river in more than a century got underway.

“I am so proud of my tribe today,” said Russell Hepfer, vice chairman of the tribe, to a gathering of more than 100 people from the community and beyond to share in ceremony before starting the fishery on Monday. There was a welcome song, a prayer song and, of course, a salmon song.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Hepfer said. “The laughs, the joy we all feel in our hearts, is just tremendous, it’s historic.”

Two dams blocked nearly 90 miles of river and tributary habitat on the Elwha, or more than 90% of the river, since 1911. But both the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams were gone by August 2014 after a couple of years of demolition in what was the largest dam removal project ever undertaken.

And on Monday, the wait for a run of salmon healthy enough to be fished was over. A broad fishing moratorium on the river remains in place, but the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, in agreement with Olympic National Park and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, was able to fish for coho salmon for tribal and subsistence use.

It is a small fishery — just 400 coho out of a total run of 7,000 — but to Loretta Charles, 91, the tribe’s oldest living member, it has immense meaning — big as the fish the Elwha once was famous for. “My dad used to catch fish on this river big as me,” she said.

Vanessa Castle, natural resources technician with the tribe, caught two big coho on Monday, one she estimated at 15 pounds. “This completely filled my spirit to be back on the water again, to be able to exercise my treaty rights just as my ancestors did and fought for,” Castle said. She was excited to cook the fish for family dinner — the first salmon from her tribe’s river for her son Braven, 5. “It means everything,” Castle said, “to have that food security to know that I can catch a fish to feed my family.

“It is good to be back out there and to be able to do this … and I know my ancestors were standing with us.”

Tribal member Sara Moore, a dental technician at the tribal clinic, seemed to even surprise herself with the coho she pulled from the river on a beautiful slow slide of the Elwha, with its deep, shadowy pools. She grinned holding her fish for a portrait, and said she didn’t yet know what she was going to do with her prize.

The fishery is by pole and line, which is not traditional gear. But to give everyone a chance at such a limited fishery, net fishing is being put off until later in the month. Tribal members were game, giving the unfamiliar gear a go.

Chairwoman Frances Charles gave it a try, quickly getting the hang of long graceful casts that landed the gear practically on the nose of a big lunker, but the fish was not biting. She seemed too happy to mind, witnessing this day. “We knew it was going to happen,” Charles said. “But it is something very humbling, and honoring, to have this day come forward.”

There were spawned out salmon on the banks, and the air smelled of fish in a marvelous fructifying funk that is the death that brings new life to the river. Autumn gold glowed on the maples, reflected in the river’s teal green water. Eagles floated overhead, and ravens gronked.

Coho are making the strongest recovery so far in the river. In all, an estimated 6,821 coho returned to the river in 2022 — and about 36% of those fish were of natural origin, meaning they spawned on their own and were not born in the hatchery, according to the tribe. That was the largest coho return in four years, 10% higher than in 2021; 30% higher than in 2020, and more than three times the return in 2019, according to the tribe.

The success was boosted by relocations of surplus hatchery coho from the lower river to the mainstem and tributaries, in seven years between 2011 and 2021. Today relocation is no longer necessary. “The fish are doing it on their own,” said Mike McHenry, fish habitat manager for the tribe, who has worked on Elwha River recovery for 32 years.

“Here we are, we can have a cautious fishery and the tribe can get back into the river,” McHenry said, “which is what really this was all about.”

Chinook remain listed as a threatened species and their return, while improving, is still modest, at 3,998 adults in 2022 — but that is twice the pre-dam removal average.

Dam removal on the Elwha was a grand experiment, and a unique chance to start over, with 83% of the watershed permanently protected within Olympic National Park. The park is a core stronghold for wild fish populations and is among the largest protected areas for salmon on the West Coast.

Knocking down the dams also restarted the flow of sediment, gravel and big wood in the river, crucial to the river’s ability to build the jams and side channels so essential to a natural river’s complexity. Fish need a range environments, from deep pools to big mainstem water to quiet side channels.

The fishery marks the beginning of a new era for the tribe. “It will be a great time to introduce our children to the river, and hopefully be able to revive some of those basic ceremonies around it,” said Lower Elwha Klallam tribal member Wendy Sampson, 44. “I do think this is an amazing time for our young teenagers who have never fished on this river.”

She sees a revival that goes beyond fish. The recovery of the river has also helped bring back history and culture to the tribe, and the surrounding Port Angeles community.

Tribal member Carmen Watson-Charles is the Native American liaison for the Port Angeles School District. The week before the fishery, she took middle school students to sites on the river for science classes covering everything from river water chemistry to the tribe’s first salmon ceremony and dissecting a salmon to learn its anatomy.

Dam removal also re-exposed the tribe’s creation site, making visible once more a cultural treasure that living generations had only heard about, but never seen. “To see that rock, it was a rare, big rock, it had two holes, just like in the oral history, shaped like coil baskets,” said Jamie Valadez, a tribal member and longtime language instructor for her tribe and Port Angeles public schools. “It was a reclaiming of place and connection.”

The river’s restoration remains in its early stages. Steelhead are recovering, but chum remain depressed, and pinks are just beginning to bump up in numbers. Distribution of fish in the river is part of an emerging picture of how recovery will play out. Few fish as yet are utilizing the upper river.

The dams were built in the early 1900s to provide hydroelectricity to spur development, without fish passage. Over the years the river’s storied fish runs declined.

The Elwha has been a source of inspiration for dam removals elsewhere, including on the Klamath River in Northern California. That project is now underway, and will take the place of the Elwha as the largest ever dam removal in the world. “I think the Elwha gives people hope for what might be possible,” said Matt Beirne, director of natural resources for the tribe.

Mel Elofson, assistant habitat manager for the tribe and a tribal member, is 65, and heard about the dream of dam removal on the Elwha from his elders all his life.

“Now I’m getting to witness it for my elders who were unable to see it,” Elofson said. “I am getting to be their eyes.”

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/tribe-catches-coho-salmon-on-free-flowing-elwha-river-a-first-since-dam-removal/

By Nicholas K. Geranios, The Associated Press
July 31, 2020

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The U.S. government announced Friday that four huge dams on the Snake River in Washington state will not be removed to help endangered salmon migrate to the ocean.

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

The Final Environmental Impact Statement 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 fish migrate faster to and from the ocean, a tactic that has already been in use.

Environmental groups 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.

“This plan is not going to work,” said Joseph Bogaard, director of Save Our Wild Salmon.

“The federal failure to remove the dams despite clear supporting science is a disaster for our endangered salmon and orcas,” said Sophia Ressler of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Scientists warn that 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.

Todd True of Earthjustice called the plan “a slap in the face to Native American Tribes, rural fishing communities and anyone in the Northwest who cares about the future of our salmon, orcas and the economic well-being of our river and ocean communities.”

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

Three Republican members of Congress from Washington state hailed the decision.

“We have always said that our rivers and the benefits they provide are the lifeblood of our region,” Reps. Dan Newhouse, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jaime Herrera Beutler said in a joint statement

“The benefits of the dams along the mighty Columbia and Snake rivers are far too precious for our region to go without,” they said. “We are proud to see a comprehensive, science-based process come to fruition.”

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.

The 100-foot (30 meter) 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 final report was similar to a draft plan issued in February, which 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% 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.

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. Four of those runs return to the Snake River.

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, 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.

A record of decision on the plan announced Friday will be released in September.

© Peter Marbach

July 11, 2024
By Lynda V. Mapes and Gregory Scruggs

In a long-awaited breakthrough, the U.S. and Canada have reached an agreement in principle renewing the Columbia River Treaty, which governs the use of the most important river flowing through the two nations.

The modernized treaty, which will need to be approved by the U.S. Senate and the Canadian prime minister, was announced Thursday. It updates the treaty that has managed the Columbia Basin and its hydropower dams for more than 50 years. The dams control flooding while also providing reliable flows critical for irrigation, fish, electricity and other needs.

The potential deal comes at a time when the Northwest is facing surging demand for power. The development of data centers and more people adopting electric vehicles and appliances are squeezing power supplies. The region could need as much as 4,000 megawatts of additional power to keep pace with demand over the next five years. Meanwhile, lower snowpack and drought conditions are drying up hydropower.

The treaty will reduce the amount of power the U.S. sends to Canada, but also affords the U.S. less storage capacity in Canadian reservoirs to protect downstream communities in Washington and Oregon from floods for a minimum of 20 years.

A new Columbia River Treaty with Canada

Sources: Columbia Basin Inter-tribal Fish Commission; Northwest Power and Conservation Council; Conflicting stakes and governance relating to the co-management of salmon in the Columbia river basin (U.S.A.) by Nicolas Barbier (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)

The treaty with Canada will manage floodwaters and flows into the Columbia, the Northwest’s largest river system.

“These new terms will go a long way toward helping meet the growing demands for energy in the region and avoid building unnecessary fossil fuels-based generation,” Bonneville Power Administration CEO John Hairston said in a news briefing on Thursday.

The deal allows Canada more opportunities to import and export hydropower into the U.S. market, a crucial boost to both countries striving to reach clean-energy goals, President Joe Biden said in a statement.

The agreement was a deep disappointment for fish and river advocates.

“To be blunt, this was a follow-the-money agreement,” said Bill Arthur, chair of the Columbia and Snake River Campaign for the Sierra Club. “Basically the fish got the inadequate status quo, and everyone else got bags full of money.”

Negotiations on the new treaty began in 2018, with the penultimate round of talks held in Seattle last August.

Payment to Canada reduced

Under the new terms, the U.S. will reduce the amount of energy it sends over the border, an arrangement known as the Canadian Entitlement, which the U.S. currently values at between $229 million and $335 million annually. (British Columbia estimates the entitlement is worth $200 million in Canadian dollars.)

Beginning in August, the U.S. will transmit around 40% less power over the border. By 2033, these reductions will translate to roughly 600 megawatts of additional U.S. transmission capacity and 230 megawatts of energy savings annually, according to the Bonneville Power Administration.

Canada will also assume transmission rights under the new treaty terms, which means that the U.S. will no longer pay for the cost of moving energy on the grid to fulfill its power-sharing obligation. While this new arrangement means Canada will incur additional cost, it will also allow for more flexibility as Canada will effectively become an owner, rather than a renter, of electricity transmission capacity.

“The Canadian Entitlement was always projected to go down over time,” B.C. lead negotiator Kathy Eichenberger said in an interview. “This provides Canada certainty over 20 years and stability for the compensation of the operation of our dams for power coordination.”

In exchange for receiving less U.S. power and taking over the transmission rights, Canada will benefit from an expanded intertie north of Spokane funded by Congress under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, though exactly how much additional electricity could move between the two countries remains unclear.

Less flood control for the U.S.

The U.S. will pay Canada $37.6 million per year, indexed for inflation over 20 years, in exchange for 3.6 million acre-feet of storage in Canadian reservoirs, less than half the old treaty’s 8.95 million acre-feet of water storage.

“U.S. flood risk management will be more conservative than today because of treaty changes,” said Michael Connor, the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works.

U.S. officials estimated the new flood-control system would result in unchanged water flows in seven out of 10 years.

The deal narrowly averts an uncharted scenario whereby the U.S. would no longer have legally binding flood control with its upstream neighbor. The existing treaty’s 60-year-old flood-control provisions are set to expire in September, after which point the U.S. will have to request that Canada hold water in its reservoirs to avert downstream flooding in Washington and Oregon, but Canada will not be under any legal obligation to do so.

Next steps

While utilities, shipping interests, riverfront communities, environmental advocates and tribal governments await the exact text of the proposed new treaty in order to better understand the specifics, the goal is to bring the agreement in principle to the region for consideration and discussion, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in an interview Wednesday. “We need to hear from the region.”

Negotiators from the two nations will continue to work to finalize details of the treaty and submit it to the Senate for ratification — by the end of the year, Cantwell said.She said the importance of the treaty is immensely significant to the prosperity of the Northwest, whose congressional delegation has pressured the Biden administration to get a deal done in recent years. Cantwell, along with Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, have been key figures lobbying both governments to reach an agreement.

“There is no way to truly estimate the tremendous economic, environmental and recreational value of the Columbia River to our state and region,” she added in a prepared statement Thursday.

River and fish advocates had argued a modernized treaty had to put ecosystem health on the same level of importance as hydropower and flood control. “The ecosystem-based function should have been the third leg of this discussion,” said Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe. “Restoration work that has been happening in the past and currently has not been enough to recover salmon species; they have remained barely above extinction.”

The tribes expect federal agencies to respect treaties with Native nations, Wheeler said. The Nez Perce and other Columbia River tribes signed the treaties with the U.S. government ceding their lands but in turn reserved their rights to fish in the Snake and Columbia forever.

Northwest civic, faith, clean energy and conservation organizations that worked to guide the negotiations for years are “frustrated and disappointed,” said Joseph Bogaard, of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition.

“This agreement maintains the primacy of power production and flood-risk management and continues to leave salmon and the health of the river uncertain and at risk,” Bogaard said. “This river is sick, and its fish are in trouble. We will be engaged to ensure the agreement is as good as it can be, but salmon and the river are starting at an extreme disadvantage.”

Even as the agreement was announced more than 700,000 sockeye heading over Columbia River dams were stopped by hot water in the Okanogan River just south of their Canadian spawning grounds. Whether they will ever reach home is uncertain.

Seattle Times: 'U.S. and Canada reach deal on Columbia River Treaty' article link

March 14, 2023
By Jenn Smith

SAMMAMISH — On the morning of February 8, Maanit Goel donned a white T-shirt and black blazer, turned on his computer screen and faced the state Senate Environment, Energy & Technology Committee.

As a constituent of the 45th District, he was testifying in support of proposed legislation to require large fashion retailers and manufacturers to disclose whether they’re offsetting carbon emissions and taking other steps to mitigate environmental impact.

The high school student was making time to do what he loves most: advocating for ways to better protect our planet.

Goel, 17, an Eastlake High School junior, is involved in more than half a dozen environmental initiatives, locally, nationally and globally. His testimony supported the work of the Washington Legislative Youth Council, of which he is a member. The fashion industry billis one of two pieces of legislation the council is championing this session.

He works on two other conservation passion projects: raising awareness about the impact of dam systems on salmon, orca populations and Indigenous people, and showing young people the environmental harm caused by deforestation from the palm oil industry.

Goel doesn’t come from a family of earth scientists or environmental activists. He hasn’t spent years researching climate change impacts or environmental protection policies. And when he heads to college, he says he’ll likely study computer science.

But he’s gained momentum for seeking solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems, and he’s helping to educate and mobilize people around those solutions.

“A constant value that was instilled in me at a young age is that my role here is to help uplift the communities around me. So I was really just looking for any opportunities that I could plug into,” he said.

Getting people involved

Goel’s main strategy for getting people’s attention is asking them to be creative and to care.

On Jan. 13, he rallied more than 100 youth and community activists on the Capitol steps in Olympia to support breaching four Lower Snake River dams. Environmentalists believe breaching the dams would help protect native salmon and orca populations.

A couple of weeks after the Senate hearing in February, he brought up the Lower Snake River dam issue with the youth ocean advocates at Seattle Aquarium on behalf of the Washington Youth Ocean & River Conservation Alliance. Goel is WYORCA’s president.

After a rainy Saturday morning shift among squealing children and densely packed crowds of visitors, the young adult advocates took their seats in a semicircle of stacking chairs in an aquarium classroom. Like most of them, Goel wore a youthful Pacific Northwest ensemble: a relaxed graphic T-shirt layered beneath a lichen-green zip-up jacket, blue jeans, black and white sneakers. His crown of dark, curly hair bobbed as he greeted everyone with a bright smile and upbeat tone.

Within his 30-minute time slot, Goel bounced between slides at a fast clip, pacing and hand-talking his way through explanations of how the dams adversely impact salmon migration, the food supply for orcas and Indigenous land and fishing rights, as well as the cost of conservation efforts and how WYORCA wants to map out tentative solutions regarding Washington’s waterways.

At the end, several teens snapped photos of the last slide with Goel’s contact information and WYORCA’s Instagram handle. A couple of them chatted with him afterward.

He’s presented this topic with classmates across K-12 classrooms and often gets questions about what happens when a dam is removed and what could replace it.

“I love seeing that because it shows that they’re listening and they really care about the issue and want to see action,” he said.

Solutions and humor

Perhaps Goel’s magic lies in the fact that he doesn’t underestimate the power and influence of his generation. They’re the ones who mobilized more than a million strong globally in 2019, striking from school to demand government action on climate change. But after the strikes, Goel said the youth movements came to a crossroads.

“There was a feeling that this is the big, landmark environmental thing which suddenly enters the mainstream. And then nothing really came of it. We didn’t see any major legislation passed. And I think that was really disheartening for a lot of people, including myself,” he said.

While the rallies were waning, the environmental warnings were increasing. He sought alternative ways to take action.

Goel started his freshman year at Eastlake remotely due to the state’s pandemic protocols. Instead of school-based clubs, he got involved in various groups virtually. This included the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit EarthEcho International; he now serves on its Youth Leadership Council. The children of marine explorer Philippe Cousteau Sr. founded the organization, honoring the family’s legacy in ocean exploration and marine conservation.

Half the world’s population is estimated to be under age 30, and “it’s critical that we have opportunities to build the support for young people to engage in ocean protection and animal conservation work at an early age,” said Sean Russell, EarthEcho’s associate director of youth engagement and partnerships.

Russell and Mina Adabag, a 16-year-old Youth Leadership Council member from Minneapolis, said Goel is particularly effective in empowering students to demand change in spaces where they’re often the youngest people in the room.

“He just has an infectious level of enthusiasm for this work that brings people along with him in the movement,” Russell said.

Adabag remembers meeting Goel when they were preparing to co-moderate a session at a climate summit. She told him she was nervous about the presentation.

“And he was like, I am, too. And then he started sending me inspirational quotes from Dwayne ‘The Rock’”’ Johnson,” she said with a laugh. “He really just injects joy into the group.”

Maintaining humor and energy in the movement matters. Young people face multiple barriers in environmental activism, including ageism and the challenge of traveling to conferences and hearings while balancing class schedules and school commitments.

Leveraging tech

Technology and social media, however, have made it easier for young activists to connect, collaborate and educate.

In talking with legislators across states who want to pass laws for global supply chain transparency, Goel learned how they struggle to get such bills passed. The urgency to take action can get lost on voters, especially when they don’t see a direct impact locally.

That’s why Goel wants to pursue digital strategies like gamification in the conservation movement, to deliver information directly.

Goel created Pokok-Ed, an online game to teach kids about environmental ethics and the dilemmas around palm oil plantations. Most plantations are located in Malaysia and Indonesia; he hopes the game brings the issue closer to home.

“In the game students are playing as palm oil farmers so they can see why things like deforestation and child labor rise out of necessity versus ‘I want to go kill forests.’ They can learn about and understand the complexities,” he said. “One of the things you have to do in order to have people contribute to environmental solutions is to have them understand the solution, why they’re doing it, what the issue is and why this is the solution that works.”

https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/washington-teen-keeps-youth-at-the-root-of-environmental-movement/

By Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times environment reporter

Salmon and steelhead are in hot water — a problem scientists warn is going to get worse because of climate change.

Steelhead returning this year to the Columbia and Snake rivers migrated out of the river during horrendous conditions in 2015, which included record low flows and high water temperatures.

Those steelhead also were at sea during the so-called “blob” — a mass of warm water that began forming off the West Coast in 2013   and wreaked havoc in the ocean, including depressed food supplies for marine animals of all sorts.

Now those steelhead are migrating back through reservoirs where water temperatures at some Columbia and Lower Snake River dams, thanks to a record Northwest heat wave, have been stuck this summer above 70 degrees for days on end — potentially lethal for salmon and steelhead.

“They are just getting creamed everywhere they turn; conditions in the Columbia and Snake are the worst I have ever seen them,” said Steve Petit, a steelhead biologist with Idaho Fish and Game for 32 years before retiring, he hoped, to fish the Clearwater River that runs past his home.

But not this year. The state of Idaho closed all rivers for sport harvest of steelhead this week because there are so few fish. Only about 400 steelhead had crossed Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River when the agency announced a fall steelhead season closure,  a precipitous drop from the 10-year average of more than 6,000 steelhead over the dam near Lewiston, Idaho.   

Steelheaders all over the region are reeling — just not the good kind of reeling.

“Until this year, I had a narcoticlike steelhead fishing habit,” Petit said. But this year he’s fishing in the Kamchatka region of Russia for a last hurrah. “Then I’m probably going to just put all of my gear on eBay and sell it. I just don’t see any future for our fish. And I am not alone. All my friends that are in our 70s have just given it up, they don’t fish anymore. It’s too painful.”

Read the full story with graphics at the Seattle Times website.

By Lynda V. Mapes
October 16, 2021

Under questions from Indigenous leaders about the threat of extinction for Snake River salmon, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has called for a study on how to replace benefits of the four Lower Snake River dams.

Inslee and Washington’s senior U.S. Sen. Patty Murray are expected to have more to say about the study in the coming weeks.

Inslee made his remarks Thursday at a virtual fundraiser for Washington Conservation Voters, convened remotely by CEO Alyssa Macy and featuring a panel discussion with Inslee, Macy, and Shannon Wheeler, vice chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe.

Macy, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon, has led Conservation Voters and nonprofit Washington Environmental Council, where she also is CEO, to endorse, for the first time, dam removal on the Lower Snake to recover salmon.

Spring summer Chinook runs on the Lower Snake are among the most endangered in the Columbia Basin. Once home to 40% of all Chinook returning to the Columbia Basin, today many Chinook runs to the Snake are nearly extinct, with as few as 50 fish coming back to spawn.

The Nez Perce Tribe has been a leader in the fight for dam removal. In his remarks Thursday, Wheeler said the salmon are crucial to the Nez Perce and other tribes that have united around dam removal, from the interior of the Columbia Basin to the salt water of Puget Sound.

Restoring salmon is imperative to live up to the treaty promises made to tribes that ceded millions of acres to the U.S. — but reserved their rights to fish, hunt and gather in their traditional territories forever, Wheeler said. “The thing to recognize here is salmon are in crisis.”

Losing salmon when they could be saved, for people whose cultural identity depend on them, “is something short of genocide,” Wheeler said in an interview. “But it is right there.

“The fear is that when this chain of events starts happening, it really puts our people in a disarray of who we are. Not only historically, but what is in our blood, what is in our heart. There is that emptiness that will be there for our people, to have to live in that type of sadness, from something that we can fix, and change and correct.”

Dam removal has long been opposed by river users, including barging companies that rely on the dams for cheap, efficient transportation, and public utilities that rely on hydroelectric energy from the dams for their customers.

Irrigators pumping from a pool created by one of the dams say they are open to dam removal if compensation is provided to adapt their equipment so they can keep farming.

Inslee first called for the study at a salmon orca summit convened by tribes all over the region in July. He stressed this week that he is making no announcement at this time about dam breaching. But he called for a study to be completed by next summer on replacing the benefits of the dams.

“I think the next step is for us to define how to replace the services of the Snake River dams if they are breached,” Inslee said. “We know they are a salmon impediment.
“We know salmon are at the brink of extinction.”

A poll recently released by Washington Conservation Voters found nearly 60% of the state’s voters support a plan to remove the Lower Snake River dams to prevent salmon extinction if the plan also includes investments in clean energy, transportation for farm products, and irrigation.

The poll of 800 voters in the state was conducted by The Mellman Group.

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But Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, representing ports, utilities and other river users, said Inslee “is really getting the cart before the horse, unless he has already decided in his mind the dams should be breached.”

It’s illogical, Miller argued, to talk about replacing the dams’ services until the Northwest has fully decarbonized its energy sources.

“Gov. Inslee has called the climate crisis an existential threat to humanity. We know it is an existential threat to salmon, so getting rid of carbon-free resources before the rest of the grid is decarbonized just doesn’t make sense,” Miller said.

Lower Snake River dam removal has riled the region in legal fights and debates for decades. But the debate took on new energy last winter when Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, of Idaho, proposed spending billions in the infrastructure package now before Congress to replace benefits of the dams and breach them to benefit salmon.
The proposal never gained traction with Washington lawmakers — but the issue if anything is picking up speed as tribes add their clout to an issue only made more urgent by climate warming that is stoking extinction risk.

The future is being written by decisions being made now, Macy said. “We must center on environmental justice … honor and uphold tribal sovereignty with our actions.”

The study should spur a regional consideration about how to seize the moment for innovation, Wheeler said, to not only make people whole in a transition to dam breaching but “smarter, better, stronger and richer.

“The conversation that has to happen now is about how to really put this country on high for the future and in the global race to be number one in how we do things, the way we take care of our house. The way we take care of our environment is in consideration when we do business. That is the new world today.”

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2515 or lmapes@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @LyndaVMapes. Lynda specializes in coverage of the environment, natural history, and Native American tribes.

Lynda V. Mapes
May 26, 2020

The Columbia is the great river of the West, winding from the north to meet its largest tributary, the Snake in Eastern Washington, then dividing the states of Oregon and Washington on its push to the sea. Big and powerful, its wild energy has been tamed to engineered stair steps controlled by locks and dams.

But what has worked well for navigation and carbon-free hydropower production has been a killer for salmon, as its now-lazy reservoirs heat up in summer. When the water gets hot enough for long enough, salmon stop migrating, and even die of stress and disease.

Today Columbia and Snake River salmon, and orcas that depend on them, are at risk of extinction. And Washington state regulators are taking a new regulatory role to chill fish-killing hot water at four dams in the lower Columbia, and four in the lower Snake.

Regulators also have a new tool to work with, in a just-published analysis of heat pollution in the river by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), open to public comment until July 21,

Temperatures always have spiked in the rivers at times in summer, even before the dams. But today, the effects of the dams combined with the cumulative effects of climate change, push temperatures in the Columbia and lower Snake rivers over the state maximum temperature of 68 degrees for weeks on end, the EPA found.

Impacts vary by dam location, and time of year. In general, temperatures are highest in August, and the lower down in the Columbia Basin the dam, the bigger the problem. John Day Dam, east of The Dalles, was the biggest offender in the EPA’s analysis, with the biggest cumulative temperature impact.

Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director at Columbia Riverkeeper, said only dam removal on the lower Snake can save orcas and salmon from extinction. “We are beyond tinkering at the edges,” he said.

The nonprofit and other conservation and fishing groups initiated litigation that ultimately led to publication of the EPA’s analysis, and opened the door for the state Department of Ecology to take a new regulatory role for the state at eight federal dams, four on the lower Columbia and four on the lower Snake.

This is the first time Washington has engaged its authority to regulate water-quality standards, including temperature, at federal dams — though it already does so at nonfederal dams all over the state. There are many steps ahead in the process, including public review, and rights to appeal.

Temperature is not a new problem on the Columbia and Snake. Releases of cold water from big storage dams upstream and infrastructure built at several dams already are used to help cool water temperatures in summer. But the cooling effects are soon swamped by hot water downstream.

So much heat is baked into the river by climate change that on the lower Columbia, the temperature standard could not be met at three of the four dams in August even in an entirely free flowing river, the EPA found.

That just shows the state standard is unachievable, some said — particularly with summer water temperatures already over the limit before the Columbia and Snake even cross the borders from B.C. and Idaho into Washington. “We and our members acknowledge that temperature is a really serious issue,” said Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest River Partners, which represents industrial river users and utilities.

“But we are concerned the plan that eventually emerges from this could be really costly for electricity customers across the region, without being able to achieve the goal,” Miller said. “That would be a bad outcome.”

It’s too early for that kind of talk, state regulators say.

“Everyone wants to jump to ‘Oh this is impossible,’ ” said Vince McGowan, water quality program manager for Ecology, which will work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams, to implement state temperature standards. The Corps has two years to generate temperature management plans for the dams. A whole suite of actions could be taken to cool the rivers, up to and including dam removal.

“This is just the beginning, we are going to have that opportunity to talk about what can happen and what is feasible,” McGowan said.

“We are on a path where we can have those conversations with dam operators working with us on how they are going to meet our temperature standards,” McGowan said. “Which are just critical for protecting and restoring salmon runs.”

STRUGGLING FISH
Temperature is only one of the problems facing Columbia and Snake salmon — but when the problem is severe and sustained, hot water is a major threat to survival for fish already struggling to hang on.

More than a dozen runs of salmon and steelhead are listed as threatened and endangered in the Columbia and Snake rivers. Despite spending billions of dollars to save Columbia Basin salmon, since the first listing in 1991 not a single salmon run has recovered. Now another species is at risk: the southern resident orcas, down to a population of just 72, in part because they cannot reliably get enough Chinook salmon, their preferred food, to eat.

The orcas take fish out of a vast hunting range. But the Columbia and Snake are such important food sources some scientists believe the orcas cannot beat extinction without dam removal on the lower Snake to boost runs in the river, once the source of 40% of all Columbia Basin spring and summer Chinook. “I really believe if they don’t take the lower Snake dams out we are not going to recover the whales,” said Sam Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington, who has led a multiyear study of nutritional stress in the southern resident orcas based on analyzing hormones in the whales’ scat.

The EPA documented a warming trend in the Columbia and Snake rivers since 1960 of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.75 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus half a degree. Salmon are cold-water animals and even slightly elevated temperatures for extended periods can kill them. The problem is predicted to get worse, because of rising air temperatures and changing weather, snowpack and runoff patterns. How much worse depends on how much people pollute and warm the atmosphere with carbon emissions, primarily by burning fossil fuels.

It’s a world that wasn’t thought of back when the dams were built — most of them before Washington adopted its temperature standard under the Clean Water Act.

SPECTACULAR RIVER
Until the dam-building era began in earnest in the early 1930s, the wild Columbia was a spectacular slasher of a river, sticklebacked with bone crushing rock, swirling with sucking whirlpools, foaming with rapids, chutes and drops, and rainbowed with spray as it smashed its way through rock walls in a 1,290-mile run from B.C. to the Pacific.

Home to every species of salmon and steelhead, the river was alive in every season of the year and thronged with salmon 10 to 16 million strong, the wealth of native people living from its abundance.

But the river is now also a unique source for hydropower, with a steep drop draining the snowmelt from mountain ranges across the 259,000-square-mile Columbia River basin. Eventually 281 larger dams were built throughout the basin, home to 40% of the hydropower capacity of the entire nation, juicing power lines all over the West.

But dams also alter rivers in many ways that on the Columbia and lower Snake are combining with climate change to heat the river by an order of magnitude more than any other cause, the EPA found. The dams create a backwater effect that extends upstream, in large impoundments of water. That also slows water travel times, to 7 to 15 times longer between upstream and downstream points in the river today than under free flowing conditions in the Columbia, and 8 to 13 times longer on the lower Snake, the EPA reported.

The channel widths of the river also are wider in reservoirs that act as slow-moving heat sinks. The run-of-river dams on the main-stem Columbia and lower Snake also don’t have the deep, cold water reserves of the big storage dams upstream, or the cooling freshets of free flow.

The Snake was a hot river in summer even before the dams, notes Matt Rabe, director of public affairs for the Corps’ Northwestern Region. But the dams and climate change have combined to create a much bigger temperature problem for fish over many more days in summer, despite what the Corps has already done to attack the problem.

“Obviously,” Rabe said, “temperature is something everyone has had their eye on for a long time.”

But the lower Snake River heats up, too: At Ice Harbor Dam, temperatures exceeded the state standard on average in August 100% of the time.

The EPA findings are stoking long-simmering controversy in the region over dam removal on the lower Snake River. Using a mathematical model to assess the temperature impacts under varying conditions, the EPA estimated a free-flowing lower Snake River would be within state temperature limits, even in August.

The Columbia and Snake are essential sources of chinook salmon for southern resident orcas, providing food at a hungry time of year before the orcas make their way to their summer feeding grounds in the Salish Sea, the transboundary waters between the U.S. and Canada, and Puget Sound.

January 31, 2019

By Lynda V. Mapes 

Summer temperatures in portions of the Columbia and Snake rivers are up by 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1960 because of the combined effects of climate change and dams, according to a new draft analysis by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Temperatures are so high, sometimes exceeding 70 degrees, that they kill migrating salmon.

The state Department of Ecology on Wednesday initiated a public comment period on proposed new regulations on federal dam operations. Ecology’s goal is to for the first time initiate work toward meeting state water-quality standards, including temperature, at federal dams on the Columbia and Snake. Washington has long had an uppermost temperature limit of 68 degrees (20 degrees Celsius) in state waters, but it’s never been enforced at federal dams.

“This is a big deal,” said Heather Bartlett, head of Ecology’s water-quality division. “We want for the first time to have parity at federal dams with the nonfederal dams. They are either meeting state standards, or they have set up a strategy to meet them.”

It is up to dam operators to determine how they would come into compliance with state standards, under plans such as those already implemented at dams run by private investor-owned utilities, irrigation districts, public utility districts and municipalities.

“It’s a path, not a light switch,” Bartlett said of the compliance process, which is intended to strike a balance between environmental protection and energy generation.

But some were skeptical about how much can really be done.

Ritchie Graves, head of the hydropower division for the West Coast region at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the Snake historically heated up in summer above the standard before the dams were built, with temperatures nearing 79 degrees at its confluence with the Columbia. What can be done with the dams in place today to modify temperature already is being done, Graves said.

“It’s all well and good to say there is a new sheriff in town, [saying] we are going to get to 68 degrees, but I am not sure how you get there,” Graves said. “In the face of climate change, can you achieve that?”

The state wants to ensure its standards are met, but recognizes the value of regional hydropower generation, Bartlett said.

“The energy sector they fill is an important niche. I look at what we are doing as a good balance between the need to meet the state standard and the need to provide the region with cheap electricity,” she said.

Action by the state to regulate federal dams is sure to stoke ongoing controversy over the structures, and their effect on salmon and orcas. Those are already the subject of litigation, legislation and lobbying before the state Legislature this session.

Dams are important for hydropower, irrigation and barge transportation. But in summer their mileslong reservoirs can act like giant heat sinks. Portions of the rivers get hot — so hot they exceed in some places the state’s upper limit on temperature of 68 degrees for weeks at a time.

Unprecedented Analysis

In examining water-quality data from 2011-2016, EPA’s Region 10 office found river temperatures in August to exceed 68 degrees more than 90 percent of the time at seven of 11 dams on the Columbia, and two of four dams on the Lower Snake. The John Day dam is the worst, with on average 65 days each summer in which the river exceeds 68 degrees, measured in waters just below the dam, known as the tailrace.

The agency looked at the source of the problem, and determined climate change and dams are the dominant forces raising river temperatures, with impacts that are an order of magnitude higher than any other influence. Nothing else, not inputs from tributaries, agricultural water withdrawals or permitted discharges to the river, came close.

In addition to dams constructed between 1932 and 1982, the warming trend due to climate change has significantly affected the rivers since the 1960s, and the impacts continue to increase, the agency found. Climate change has increased summer temperatures in the Columbia and Snake by 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1960 with .5 degree margin of error, according to the EPA.

The EPA also modeled potential water temperatures under different conditions, and found that taking out the four Lower Snake River dams can dent the problem, bringing temperatures there into compliance in August. Nothing, however, was projected to fix the Lower Columbia River in August, where the best option for fish is protecting refuges of cold water that currently exist, particularly in tributaries.

The EPA’s draft report was released to the state, tribes and federal agencies in December for peer review as part of a separate process long in the works for the EPA. The agency is also working for the first time to set temperature limits in the rivers under the Clean Water Act.

Columbia Riverkeeper was successful in 2014 and again in 2017 in winning settlements that are spurring the EPA to issue pollution discharge permits for the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation for operations of dams on the Columbia and Snake.

It is the issuance of those permits, which Ecology now has under review, that opened the door for the state to regulate federal dam operators to work toward meeting all of Washington’s water quality standards. The public comment period closes on Feb. 19.

Next, EPA will issue its permit, with Ecology’s conditions, for public review.

Many are eager for Ecology to step into a regulatory role and work with dam operators to make progress on water temperatures at federal dams.

“The temperature standard has been violated for some time,” said Dennis McLerran, an attorney advising Columbia Riverkeeper and a former administrator of EPA Region 10 under the Obama administration.

Heat Kills

The damaging effects of climate change and water temperature on salmon migration and spawning in the Columbia and Snake are well-known. Sockeye were slaughtered in the Columbia in 2015, a year of record heat and low flows, with thousands of fish dying before they could even make it back to their home tributaries to spawn.

Steelhead were the next to suffer, struggling home in hot water and record low numbers in 2017.

Scientists predict salmon are in for worse conditions as the climate bakes, particularly species at the southern edge of their range and traveling long distances to inland spawning grounds.

The conditions faced in 2015, when 95 percent of sockeye headed to the Stanley Basin of Idaho died in the Columbia, were extreme in terms of drought, low flows and hot weather.

Lower Columbia River waters are so warm that sockeye salmon have sought out the cool water trickling out of the Little White Salmon hatchery pipe outflow for relief. Many are diseased, including the sockeye swimming in the background, with large patches of fungus from warm-water exposure. In addition to dams constructed between 1932 and 1982, the warming trend due to climate change has significantly affected the rivers since the 1960s.

But because of climate change, those could become typical conditions, scientists found in a 2018 paper published in the scientific journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

That is because climate change means more winter moisture comes as rain rather than snow. Less snowpack leads to lower stream flows earlier in summer, even as air temperatures warm. Warmer water also expands the range of predators, and warm water aids the spread of disease. If the water is hot enough for long enough, fish eventually become lethargic and die.

Some federal agencies had a wait-and-see reaction to Ecology’s new role. At the Bureau of Reclamation, Michael Coffey, spokesman for the agency, said the bureau has an excellent relationship with Ecology, and was ready to work as required toward solutions.

“I am sure when they are ready to sit down and have conversations with us, we are more than happy to find … solutions for the challenge we face,” Coffey said.

Federal dam operators already are taking steps to moderate temperature at the dams, said David Wilson, a spokesman for the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from the dams. Cold water is released from the depths of the reservoir behind Dworshak Dam in Idaho in summer and provides significant cooling in the upper portion of the Lower Snake River. However, the cooling benefit diminishes toward the mouth of the Snake, the EPA analysis found.

Pumps also have been installed to move cool water in to fish ladders at Lower Granite and Little Goose dams, also on the Lower Snake, Wilson said. On the ground, habitat work on both rivers also is underway to address changing climate conditions and anticipate what fish and wildlife will need to survive, Wilson said.

Columbia Riverkeeper won another lawsuit last September, requiring the EPA to issue its first temperature limits for the Columbia and Snake. That work is ongoing, pending the result of an appeal from the U.S. Department of Justice to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

It was for the development of those temperature limits that the EPA’s Region 10 office undertook the assessment of the effects of climate change on the rivers.

McLerran said Ecology has an important role to play that can start making a difference now for orcas and salmon.

“This is a chance to get a seat at the table … to address more water quality issues that are really impacting the salmon and the orcas. There are likely things that could help that doesn’t necessarily call the ultimate question on dam removal that could make a difference in salmon and orca recovery.”

He envisions a gradual approach.

“Let’s take a hard look at all the things that make a difference, knowing management for the river is changing, and see what could be done. We may reach a determination that we can’t meet the standard, and then there are harder questions to come.”

The state Legislature already this session is smack in the middle of the state’s long-running conflict over the Lower Snake River dams, with a proposal from Gov. Jay Inslee to put $750,000 in the state budget to study the effects of dam removal. Ports and municipalities and public utility districts from Pasco to Lewiston have written Inslee strongly opposing the idea, which came out of his orca-recovery task force.

“After decades of using other arguments in their attempts to justify removing the four Lower Snake River Dams some environmental groups have latched on to the plight of the orcas,” the letters state. ” … these groups are using the orcas to play on the public’s sympathies.”

The Orca Salmon Alliance, a consortium of 17 environmental groups, also wrote to Inslee, urging that Ecology pursue its authority to implement water quality attainment plans at the dams.

Both sides already are gearing up to make their case to lawmakers. Dam busters are organizing a Free the Snake Advocacy Day on Feb. 4, and the Washington Association of Public Utility Districts organized a “what you need to know” briefing for lawmakers about the Columbia and Snake river dams Wednesday, with briefings from dam operators and power marketers.

Meanwhile, a fight over dam operations on both rivers has ground on in the federal courts for more than 20 years. A new environmental impact statement — including an analysis of the effects of the dams in the era of climate change — was court-ordered in 2016, and is underway.

Federal agencies recently issued a new timetable for the review per an order from President Donald Trump. He demanded the new environmental impact statement for the federal hydropower system be completed by the end of 2020.

His order lopped a year off the schedule agencies had requested to give them enough time for their work. Trump’s new schedule also truncated time for public review and comment by eight months.

Columbia River GorgeBritish Columbia is out first with the principles that will shape its Columbia River Treaty negotiations. A U.S. position is expected this summer.

Lance Dickie / Times editorial columnist
March 13, 2014

The Columbia River Treaty is a successful, long-running agreement regarding one of the most contentious topics on the planet: water.

On Thursday, the province of British Columbia released its 14-point position for updating a transboundary water treaty that has worked since 1964.

The treaty has no expiration date, but operational elements of a basic feature of the treaty — flood control — expire in 2024. That working relationship must be renewed or be reconfigured.

 On the most fundamental level, either side must provide 10 years’ lead time for treaty termination. So 2014 opens the door to update the treaty or, theoretically, wave goodbye.

Work on the document released Thursday was led by Kathy Eichenberger, executive director of the Columbia River Treaty Review, in the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines. It represents Canada’s position. Ottawa ceded control to British Columbia, with B.C.’s authority over natural resources.

This summer, the U.S. State Department is expected to release a U.S. position shaped by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration. The agencies oversaw a review that involved four states, 11 federal agencies and 15 Native American tribes and other stakeholders.
A primary U.S. concern for revision is the Canadian Entitlement — half of the power produced. That’s a formulation Northwest utilities argue     is outdated, with no basis in economic reality.

They are particularly upset B.C.’s share is not adjusted for diminished downstream benefits or the expense of subsequent U.S. environmental legislation imposed on the hydro system, and borne by regional ratepayers.

The B.C. government, which sells its share and puts the proceeds in the provincial treasury, says to look at the bigger picture. In interviews, Eichenberger, an engineer, is quick to tally all of the benefits that accrue south of the border beyond the certainty of hydropower production and flood control.

The evidence-based arguments look at five decades of predictability and adjustments for water supply, irrigation, recreation and navigation.

Improvements to all of the above, plus   ecosystem and fisheries enhancements sought by both sides, can be achieved with rational negotiations. Perhaps.

A consortium of U.S. utilities has laid down negotiating markers that call for notification of termination if its principles are not met.

The scariest part of what lies ahead is a switch from the demonstrated success of current flood-control protocols to a vague muddle, known as “Called Upon Flood Control.”

The U.S. would manage any deluge with increased use of U.S. reservoirs, higher river volumes and a glib acceptance of more risk.

Sounds reassuring doesn’t it? I cannot wait to hear the reaction to the feds using the eight reservoirs that existing laws put into play. What will a new role in flood control do for local water supply, irrigation, recreation and aesthetics?

What will more water and faster currents mean for Columbia River navigation, sedimentation in river channels, travel times and docking?

University of Idaho law professor Barbara Cosens is a specialist in water law, law and science, and dispute resolution. She and University of Calgary law professor Nigel Bankes have jointly written on the future of the treaty.

In a phone call Tuesday, Cosens said she understands the push to modernize the treaty, and the financial frustrations created by congressional choices on ESA funding.

Five decades ago, Cosens explained, the assumption was hydropower would evolve into peaking power trumped by reliance on thermal power — nukes. Whoops. Other contemporary realities include vastly different public processes and environmental values.

Going into negotiations, treaty tensions abound. For example, Cosens said Canada expects references to U.S. use of reservoirs for flood control to mean all reservoirs. The U.S. identifies a select few.

Under the new definition of flood control, Cosens said there is no agreement on the circumstances when the U.S. can call upon Canada for help.

A solid, working relationship between the U.S. and Canada has generated power, provided predictable supplies of water and provided a half-century of flood control.

The U.S. cannot afford to pinch pennies with a valued ally. Examine the financial deal, but do not jeopardize an existing flood-control arrangement that works.

http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2023124871_lancedickiecolumntreaty14xml.html

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His email address is ldickie@seattletimes.com

By Lynda V. Mapes and Hal Bernton
Nov 22, 2020

From reintroduction of the grizzly bear to its wild North Cascades redoubt to attacking climate change, a wide range of environmental policies could see a new direction in the Pacific Northwest under a Biden administration.

For starters, government and nonprofit policy leaders say they are looking forward to a return to science as a basis for environmental policymaking. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than on climate warming.

Gov. Jay Inslee has championed Washington climate and energy policies sharply at odds with a president who dismissed the threats posed by greenhouse gas emissions in a warming world.

Inslee now has a powerful ally in President-elect Joe Biden. Biden’s campaign platform calls for dramatically stepping up a U.S. transition away from fossil fuels to set the nation on a path to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury, which means that whatever carbon pollution is emitted into the atmosphere is offset by other measures. And, since the election, there has been speculation that Inslee will be asked to join the new Democratic administration to help Biden pull off this dramatic course correction in climate policy.

Biden would need approval from Congress to authorize $2 trillion in spending he proposes to help the nation move off fossil fuels and reach an interim goal of removing greenhouse gas emissions from power generation by 2035.  

Passage of such spending or other climate legislation could be difficult even with a Democratic majority in control of the Senate and an even tougher task if Republicans are able to win runoff races in Georgia and retain control of the upper chamber.

From his first day in office, Biden also is expected to use executive orders to take a wide range of measures, including putting the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement on climate, developing new automotive fuel economy standards weakened by President Donald Trump and increasing regulations to control the release of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — during oil and gas production.

Biden also will try to block a Trump administration effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain to oil exploration, which included a post-election announcement of the beginning of a process that could result in lease sales of land before Inauguration Day.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., in a statement released Nov. 16, called the Trump administration action, a “last ditch effort” that she predicted would not withstand court scrutiny.

Biden has said he would make a big push to expand wind, solar and other renewable sources of energy, which would add federal support to a movement already underway in Washington as utilities scramble to move off of coal and natural gas generation to comply with legislative deadlines set in Washington for 2045.

Biden also is expected to continue the bipartisan support that was found even during the Trump administration for investing federal dollars in hopes of developing a new generation of nuclear energy plants.

In October, Bellevue-based TerraPower, chaired by Bill Gates, received a $80 million federal Energy Department grant, the first installment of what is intended to be a seven-year effort to test, license and build its first advanced nuclear plant, and possible U.S. locations include a site near Richland, where Energy Northwest now operates the state’s only commercial nuclear plant.

The Biden administration also is expected to revive the Environmental Protection Agency’s Obama-era opposition to the Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska.

Developers have proposed an open-pit copper, gold and molybdenum mine in southwest Alaska that has faced fierce opposition from Bristol Bay fishermen, many of whom are from Washington, who fear that salmon would be put at risk.

Biden, in an August statement, said the Bristol Bay region is “no place for a mine. The Obama-Biden administration reached that conclusion when we ran a rigorous, science-based process in 2014, and it is still true today.”

Here are other issues likely to see a push for change under Biden:

Forests

Biden could reinstate the protection for roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska, the nation’s largest, with some of its last and largest tracts of old growth.

Forest conservationists said they also hope for policies that emphasize carbon sequestration in the management of public forests, and economic incentives for rural communities to retain and protect forests.

“We need to start utilizing forests for what they can be,” said Peter Goldman, director and managing attorney at the nonprofit Washington Forest Law Center. “Carbon storage.”

Rivers and dams

Salmon activists say they want to see federal legal action dropped or overturned that challenges state authority to regulate temperature in the Columbia and Snake rivers. A renewed effort to take out dams on the Klamath River and to develop federal support for dam removal on the Lower Snake River is already underway.

“One of the best things we can do to mitigate the effects of climate change is restore healthy and free-flowing rivers,” said Bob Irvin, president of the nonprofit American Rivers. “We are thrilled Klamath dam removals are going forward and hopeful that we will see progress in moving toward removal of the four Lower Snake River dams.

“It has become very clear there are alternatives for the energy they generate and the transportation they provide, but there is no alternative for the salmon or the tribes and communities depending on salmon for eons.”

Dam proponents are willing to put all options on the table for salmon recovery, said Kurt Miller, executive director of the nonprofit Northwest River Partners, an association of utilities, ports and other businesses. But he urged that any solution has to look beyond the Snake Basin to the broader Pacific Coast recovery problem, especially climate change. Climate warming, he noted, and its effects on the ocean is a threat so dire some scientists warn Snake River salmon could be extinct within a few decades.

Endangered species

The Biden administration could reverse the withdrawal of federal Endangered Species Act protection for the gray wolf; reconsider listing for the wolverine; restart reintroduction of the grizzly bear to the North Cascades region; and restore effects due to climate change as criteria for listing and critical habitat designation.

Robb Krehbiel, Northwest representative for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, said the Trump administration’s on-again, off-again stance on grizzly reintroduction exemplified policymaking that was not based in science.

“This is the last native carnivore still missing from the Cascades,” Krehbiel said. “Bringing the grizzly back home would just be huge to restoring this ecosystem.”

The bears help maintain open, alpine meadows surely as a rototiller, as they dig in the ground with their big claws and muscular backs for insects, roots and small mammals, such as marmots and ground squirrels, said Bill Gaines, an independent biologist based in Leavenworth, who has worked on grizzly recovery since the 1980s.

Grizzly reintroduction also would restore the natural balance of animal life in the North Cascades with likely cascading effects, Gaines said.

In Yellowstone National Park, for instance, reintroduction of grizzly bears and wolves resulted in a redistribution of elk from riverbanks, allowing vegetation and birds to come back to those areas. Similar effects could happen if the grizzly were recovered in one of the few areas suited to them in the Lower 48: the more than 6.5 million acres of wild, open area comprised of the North Cascades National Park and parts of several national forests, Gaines said.

Birds

Biden could restore full protection for birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to include fines against industries for unintentional harm, such as oil spills. The more than 100-year-old treaty has been repeatedly attacked by the Trump administration.

Pollution

Under a Biden administration, the government could increase federal funding and cost-sharing for infrastructure to protect clean water in Puget Sound, including storm water and wastewater projects, and reinstate limits on water pollution implemented by fish-consumption standards devised by Washington state and tribes.

“I have been around this fish consumption issue for 20 years of my life and I did it to protect my tribe from contamination,” said Russell Hepfer, vice chairman of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribal council, and a member of the state Leadership Council of the Puget Sound Partnership. “We just took two dams down on the Elwha River. What good does opening 70 miles of habitat do if salmon have to swim through poison to get there?”

He supports reinstating limits on water pollution supported by Washington state and tribes but recently overturned by the Trump administration.

Growlers

Biden could reopen the issue of noise created by Navy training flights over Olympic National Park and the effects of Growler overflights on communities and endangered southern resident orcas.

Washington state has sued over a 2019 Navy decision to increase by roughly 33% the number of EA-18G Growlers operations from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, which has alarmed and angered some residents on Whidbey and on the San Juan Islands, as well as the Olympic Peninsula.

“We need to take a look at how to change operations and not fly over Olympic National Park and look at (effects on) people and orca in Puget Sound,” said Rob Smith, Northwest regional director of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.

Above all, he said, he looks forward to professional and permanent agency directors that base decision-making on the rule of law, science and respect for the public process to make progress on protecting the environment, a sentiment echoed by others.

“I am just glad we are talking about hopes for the future and transformational change now, instead of holding the line and trying to stop bad activities,” said Mindy Roberts, Puget Sound program director for the nonprofit Washington Environmental Council. “We have a lot of work to do but that is a lot healthier place to start.”

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2515 or lmapes@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @LyndaVMapes. Lynda specializes in coverage of the environment, natural history, and Native American tribes.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @hbernton.

@ EcoFlight

Dec 1, 2024
By Henry Brannan/The Columbian

A trio of federal agencies are considering pursuing additional environmental guidelines for the Columbia River.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation are conducting the review to comply with an agreement reached late last year after litigation by regional Native nations and environmental groups.

Environmental groups and tribes are hoping the agencies will recommend the removal of Snake River dams, which seemed likely only a few years ago. But, with Republicans set to control Congress and the White House in less than two months, it’s unclear what will happen.

The guidelines at the center of the debate are collectively called the Columbia River System Operations Environmental Impact Statement.

Despite the dense, bureaucratic name, the document is important because it shapes crucial aspects of the Columbia River’s management — including how much water dams use to generate hydroelectricity versus how much passes over spillways to help young salmon safely make it to the ocean. The federal agencies began work on the current environmental impact statement in 2016 and finalized it in 2020.

Groups had anticipated the 2020 environmental impact statement would settle the conflict over four dams on the Lower Snake River. They produce about 5% of the region’s electricity but contribute to salmon’s struggles by preventing endangered fish from reaching historic spawning grounds.

However, the 2020 document did not recommend their removal. Native nations and environmental groups sued.

The recent litigation came after more than three decades of legal battles over the government’s efforts to save endangered salmon runs, which environmental groups argue are inadequate.

Following the 2020 litigation, the Biden administration in 2021 stepped in, halting this most recent round to give parties time to negotiate an agreement.

The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, reached in 2023, paused litigation for five to 10 years. It also mandated the government review the recent environmental impact statement, conduct new research and potentially produce a supplement to the document that would change the government’s stance on issues like Snake River dam removal.

“To get a stay in that litigation, we agreed to some things,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Tom Conning said. “And one of those things is environmental compliance.”

That compliance could lead to a supplemental environmental impact statement or the slightly less significant step of a supplemental environmental assessment. Or it could lead to nothing at all.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a supplemental environmental impact statement is required when an agency “makes substantial changes to the proposed action that are relevant to its environmental concerns” or when “there are substantial new circumstances or information about the significance of adverse effects that bear on the analysis.”

In a follow-up email, Conning said the agency is looking at things that have changed since 2020, specifically citing:

• Changes to the Columbia River system’s 14 federal dam and reservoir projects
• Species that have since been listed by the Endangered Species Act
• Changes in Columbia River flows from the pending Columbia River Treaty with Canada
• Newly published research

When asked if the agencies are considering Snake River dam removal, Conning said the dams are a part of the Columbia River system, but the agencies are “looking at the system as a whole and not necessarily individual projects.”

Earthjustice lawyer Amanda Goodin said her organization expects to find out what approach the agencies are taking through a notice of intent from the trio by the end of this fall.

It’s unclear how the January transition from the Biden administration to another Trump presidency will affect the agencies’ decision-making. Goodin said it will likely have some effect, but the specifics remain to be seen.

She noted removing the Snake River dams — when combined with significant investment in areas like Lewiston, Idaho, that would lose local revenue — would be a win for environmentalists, Native nations and the region’s economy.

But Goodin added that “decision documents that came out of the last Trump administration showed no interest in that kind of win-win solution. And, in fact, (they) were pretty fine condemning salmon to extinction.”

The Corps’ Conning said the change in administrations will not change anything the agency is doing.

“Right now, we don’t (expect) basically any impact,” he said. “It’s not like we can really speculate at this point what the incoming administration or the next Congress might do.”

Republicans, who will control the presidency and both the chambers of Congress after January 2025, have opposed Snake River dam removal.

During his first term, President-elect Donald Trump showed a clear preference for cutting environmental protections for fish and ecosystems, instead increasing the amount of river water available across the West for farming.

That’s a stance he doubled down on while campaigning this summer, The Columbian reported in October.

To Goodin, the stakes of the federal agencies’ potential action could not be higher — or more time-sensitive.

“The science has made clear that we are in an extinction crisis and that we really have to act with urgency here if we don’t want to lose some of these (salmon) runs,” she said. “We don’t really have time for half-measures. We don’t really have time for inaction.”

“And if the federal government decides to not live up to its obligation and not to keep moving forward with the agreement,” she continued, “then anything’s on the table — anything that we can do to buy the fish more time, anything that we can do to keep this moving forward.”

Whatever the agencies decide on Snake River dam removal, Goodin acknowledged that the issue will ultimately have to be decided by Congress.

Seattle Times: What will a switch from Biden to Trump mean for the Columbia River? 

August 6, 2019 By Lynda V. Mapes Aboard the Lengesot in the Salish Sea — The tote was loaded and full of water, the cedar boughs cut and stacked on deck. But as Lummi tribal members headed out on their traditional waters to offer a ceremonial feeding of live chinook salmon to the endangered southern-resident killer whales, neither whale nor fish was anywhere to be found. In this historic summer of unthinkables, day after day is passing without the orcas and fish that normally enliven the waters of the inland Salish Sea. Tuesday marks a month since the southern residents were last seen in their usual home waters in and around the San Juan Islands. Usually present nearly every day at this time of year, the orcas have shown up only a handful of times this year, and then, only for brief visits before quickly leaving again for waters of the outer coast. Meanwhile, the chinook runs to the Fraser River the whales are usually hunting in their ancient foraging grounds have cratered . And on a recent weekday on the waters of northern Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands, but for a cluster of oil tankers staging offshore from the refineries in and around Cherry Point, the waters were quiet and still. “Do you have any fish?” Raynell Morris asked on her cellphone, calling one fisherman after another from the boat. Senior policy adviser in the Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office of the Lummi Indian Business Council, she and other Lummi tribal members normally would have loaded the tote with fish for the whales before heading out. But with no fish to be had at home, they decided to chance getting some from fishermen as they were out on the water. As she dialed, Richard Solomon prepared. A spiritualist for the Lummi Nation, his prayers were to be offered along with the fish for J17, a matriarch of the southern residents not yet seen this spring or summer, and feared dead. And for K25, also missing. And for the extended family of the southern residents, or in the Lummi language, qwel lhol mech ten: the people who live under the sea. “They are starving people, like we are starving, wondering where we can go, where is our food,” Solomon said. “They are looking for fish, just like we are looking.” He prayed for the whales as the boat sped over the glassy sea. “We want to find food for you. Please come home. We ask for your help, we need your courage, your wisdom and your knowledge.” The whales have to travel, though, wondering how to keep their families fed, Solomon said. “They are telling us, giving us the message about the demise of the salmon.” In this season of scarcity, human fishermen are hurting, too. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has entirely closed the chinook fishery in the San Juan Islands for the month of August, because of low returns to Puget Sound, including the Stillaguamish and Nooksack rivers and Hood Canal. Canada also has closed and cut back recreational and commercial fishing seasons on Fraser River chinook in an effort to get more fish back to the spawning grounds. “We have seen chinook populations decline for the past number of years, but this year is the worst. It is a real challenge and a great concern,” said Jocelyn Lubczuk, spokeswoman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “This is part of the biodiversity loss that is part of climate change, the warming water is posing a huge risk to chinook salmon.” In addition to long term human damage causing the decline, a natural rock slide also is imperiling the Fraser River salmon. Canadian officials are scrambling to help salmon blocked by a 16-foot-high waterfall created by the slide. After hours of searching for whales and fish, the Lummi decided to offer what they could. Aaron Hillaire, of the Lummi Nation, docked the tribal police boat used for the voyage at an ancient Lummi village site in the San Juans, dating back more than 4,000 years. Solomon had painted his face for spiritual protection. An ermine skin flashed white from his cedar hat. Morris, carrying the cedar boughs, followed him as he walked ashore. Solomon stopped and rinsed his face with cool, clean water. On the way to the village site, he suddenly stopped again, and plucked ripe blackberries, fat and succulent. He held onto them though, without eating a one. Then Morris and Solomon walked down the beach to the water’s edge, where with song and prayer, they offered the berries, floated on cedar boughs, to the whales. Afterward, sitting amid driftwood logs on the beach, Solomon scooped up a heap of white shell fragments in his fisherman’s hands, still red from ceremonial paint. He held the shells, and their memories. They had calved off from an archaeological deposit called a shell midden: bits of shell and bone left in the ground from cooking. The midden was layered in white bands in the ground stacked head-high along the shore. As he walked back to the boat, Solomon paused, looking out over the cove, and sang his grandmother’s song. She had grown up here. It felt so good to be back, he said, with the memories of this place. “This is when we get to time travel,” he said, still holding the shells, pouring them slowly, carefully, from one palm to the other. They made a soft rattling sound. Ken Balcomb, of the Center for Whale Research, keeps the official count of southern residents, and usually announces the whales born and died since the previous July. But for scientists, too, it is a summer so far without precedent. Research scheduled for summer encounters with the whales has been impossible to conduct. Balcomb said he would go out in search of the southern residents to take stock if they haven’t come home by mid-August, when Canadian scientists end their field season. Those researchers have recently been seeing the southern residents on the west side of Vancouver Island, he said. L pod was even seen off the coast of California, in Monterey Bay in April. Morris said she was not yet ready to call the offering the Lummi made for J17 and K25 a memorial. But she knows their family is in trouble. “We are here for them, and all the whale people,” Morris said. “Famine; there is no word in Lummi for what is happening.”
 

Jan. 16, 2025 
By Lynda V. Mapes / Seattle Times environment reporter

This week, mother orca Tahlequah may have surpassed her 2018 tour of grief, when she carried her dead calf for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles.

Tahlequah was last seen still carrying her latest calf — dead since at least New Year’s Eve — on Jan. 10 off San Juan Island. That evening the southern resident family, part of J pod, headed west in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Tagging data and the acoustic records of the southern resident orcas’ vocalizations have revealed typical patterns for their seasonal foraging, said Brad Hanson, biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Once the orcas leave for the strait, it becomes difficult to pinpoint them. It helps to know the southern residents’ typical behavior this time of year to figure where they might be.

J pod is one of the southern residents’ three family groups. They typically hunt for Chinook returning to B.C.’s Fraser River in September, then in October and November transition to eating Puget Sound salmon, especially coho and chum. When those runs are passed by in December, K and L pods travel the outer coast, ranging as far south as California. J pod in winter is typically at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Tahlequah and the rest of her J pod crew also often travel back this way in winter, heading east in the straight then to the Strait of Georgia, almost to the Campbell River. But there’s no telling when or if that will happen.

But not knowing how she is — and whether she is still carrying the calf — is not the same thing as not caring.

“Tahlequah’s grief is heartbreaking,” poet Tim McNulty of Sequim wrote in an email. “The world shared her 17-day mourning for her last calf. Now she mourns again, away from our view. But Tahlequah’s grief transcends language and geographies. Maybe it strikes us so deeply because Tahlequah embodies a larger, unspoken grief for our own unraveling world.”

The southern residents are endangered, with only 73 members left. The main threats to their survival include lack of fish, especially Chinook salmon; pollution, which contaminates their food; and vessel noise that makes it harder for them to hunt. All of those threats are made worse by climate change, which is upending ocean food webs, depleting summer stream flows and warming stream temperatures. Those factors hurt salmon survival — and when salmon are scarce, the other threats the southern residents face are intensified.

Philosopher and author Kathleen Moore of Oregon State University said she witnesses Tahlequah’s second loss with a mix of awe and concern. “All I know is that grief is a measure of love,” Moore wrote in an email. “The greater the love, the more devastating the sorrow. If we had no love, we would feel no loss. This mother’s expression of grief is desperately dangerous. Can we infer that her baby means more to her than her own life itself? It’s a magnificent love that she carries.”

Julie Seitz of Federal Way followed Tahlequah’s journey in 2018. Today, the orca once again is in her thoughts and heart.

“She is a life,” she said of the baby orca Tahlequah lost. “We cared so much and the mother cared so much, when I think about her baby it brings tears to my eyes … I feel sad, I want to know how she is doing, I will feel sad in my heart until I hear more.

“I pray for her comfort and her healing.”

To her, Tahlequah’s mourning also is a gift to a human society in which grief can be awkward, rushed, even marginalized. When she lost two beloved elderly dogs, Seitz said she turned to art to comfort herself, making fabric urns for their ashes — a design she even patented. “It is beautiful to see people touched by this,” Seitz said of Tahlequah. “Maybe it helps us all expand our appreciation for grief, maybe the animals are teaching us.”

She wonders daily what is happening with Tahlequah and the calf. “Do the predators come? Do the other orcas feed her? We don’t know the answers.”

For some, a least a few answers are clear. “This is a call to action,” said Alyssa Macy, CEO of Washington Conservation Action and a citizen of the Confederates Tribes of Warm Springs. “In losing another calf she is showing us two-leggeds, we humans, that we have more work to do. That is what I took from that. She is not the first of her people to lose a calf, but she is the one consistently showing us and telling us … we have work to do.”

Many Coast Salish peoples regard the orcas as family relatives. “Think of them as the highly intelligent relatives that they are,” Macy said. “I don’t know how the calf died, but my guess is it just didn’t have enough food. How awful it would be to not have enough food for your child, and then to grieve that grief.

When she heard of Tahlequah’s second tour of grief, Lummi elder Raynell Morris floated a wreath of cedar and flowers on the waters of Puget Sound, offshore of an ancient Lummi Village at what today is called Cherry Point.

“I’ve been crying a lot, praying a lot,” Morris said. “As hurtful as it is, we can’t quit advocating. We are still doing the good work. Because that is what is given to us.”

For Rob Williams, chief scientist at Oceans Initiative, Tahlequah’s grief was up close and personal. On New Year’s Eve, he and his wife bundled their 10-year-old daughter into their research boat so she could come along as they took breath samples from the new baby for research. “We were taking our calf to see her calf,” he said. But as they approached, the parents quickly figured out, “that calf is dead,” Williams said. “It was: Get her to look the other way.”

Williams is lead author on a recent paper about the accelerating extinction risk for the southern residents looming in plain sight. How much more plain could that sight be? “This is hard as a scientist,” Williams said. “It is even harder as a dad. As a parent.” Especially a second time.

He puts it this way: If a Hollywood producer asked him to consult on a script in which a whale whose family was shattered and food taken away carried her dead calf for everyone to see, not once but twice, he would reject it as unbelievable, Williams said. “And yet, here we are.

“At some point you gotta admit, she is trying to tell you something.”

Seattle Times: Where is Tahlequah? What we know about the mother orca and her calf

By Lynda V. Mapes
July 12, 2022

The Biden administration released two reports finding dam removal is needed on the Lower Snake to recover salmon to fishable levels in the Columbia and Snake rivers and that replacing the energy produced by the Lower Snake River dams is feasible.

The reports were made public at 6 a.m. Tuesday and are sure to turn up the volume on the dam removal debate roiling the region. The release by the Council on Environmental Quality on behalf of four agencies inserts the Biden administration more prominently into what has been a largely regional issue.

The administration also weighed in on the dam removal debate last March in a blog post signed by multiple top agency officials that — while not taking a position on dam removal — took note of the call by Native tribes for dam removal and of the loss of salmon in the rivers.

The draft report by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found sweeping changes are needed to restore salmon to fishable levels, from removal of one to four dams on the Lower Snake to reintroduction of salmon to areas entirely blocked by dams.

“Business as usual will not restore the health and abundance of Pacific Northwest salmon. We need a durable, inclusive and regionally crafted long-term strategy for the management of the Columbia River Basin,” said CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory, who is coordinating a federal interagency effort, launched in October 2021, to develop information and analyses in support of federal and regional decision-making in the Columbia River System.

“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.”

The report relied in part on science from the Nez Perce Tribe and state of Oregon, in addition to federal research.

Today 13 runs of salmon and steelhead are at risk of extinction in the Columbia and Snake and runs have declined to a fraction of historic abundances. Salmon in the Snake Basin are particularly hard-hit with only about 50 fish coming back to some drainages in an area that used to produce half the Chinook salmon in the Columbia Basin.

The region has spent billions of dollars on salmon and steelhead recovery but the fish continue to decline. It is time for a big step outside the status quo, according to the report. Dam breaching has long been opposed by grain shippers, irrigators, power producers and other industrial river users.

But recovery is not resulting from multiple efforts over decades, including habitat restoration, massive hatchery releases and passage fixes at the dams. “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, and this draft report delivers our scientific assessment of what we must do to make progress towards rebuilding the ‘healthy and harvestable’ fish populations in the Columbia Basin…,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries.

The report on replacement power put an $11 billion to $19 billion price tag on the cost of replacing power from the dams, depending on the method and the time frame, cost estimates that are within the range of other similar reports.

The administration has not endorsed the actions in the reports, but it is “carefully considering this information and ongoing regional efforts as it assesses long-term pathways for the Columbia River Basin,” the news release on the reports stated.
Some heralded the reports.

“The information that is being developed confirms much of what we have been saying for a long time,” said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition. “The dams are replaceable. We need a political solution. Salmon are in deep trouble and we need to move quickly.”

Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, which represents utilities, shippers and other industrial river users, was skeptical of the findings. With Chinook salmon in decline throughout the West Coast region — including on some undammed rivers — he disagreed dams were the main issue in recovery. Reducing the amount of hydropower generation also could lead to greater reliance on fossil fuel and stoke global warming that is a grave risk to salmon, Miller said.

“This feels more politically motivated than scientific,” Miller said.

After more than two decades of court battles and debates over the Lower Snake River dams, the reports add to momentum for removal, Bogaard said, even though the Biden administration has yet to take a position.

“The conversation has significantly advanced, accelerated and diversified,” Bogaard said.

GOP Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho kicked the dam removal bees’ nest in 2021, by putting a $34 billion price on removal and replacement of the dams’ services in order to save salmon. Now U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also are taking stock of comments on another report on dam removal, with their recommendation expected later this summer.

The reports come as tribes and their allies are heading to Washington, D.C., to advocate for dam removal on the Lower Snake to boost recovery of salmon and endangered southern resident orcas, which rely on salmon for their diet.

So do tribes, who are suffering ill health because of the loss of their traditional foods, including salmon, said Andrew Joseph Jr., chair of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, where salmon passage is blocked by the Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams.
“Our bodies were made for eating that salmon,” Joseph said. “For thousands of years, it was 80% of our diet. Now our immune system is weaker, and we have the worst health disparities.”

His family today has to travel two hours each way to try to catch salmon below Chief Joseph Dam.

The Nez Perce Tribe has long been at the forefront of the push for dam removal on the Lower Snake. Tribal Vice Chair Shannon Wheeler called the reports “definitely encouraging.”

“This administration is taking the climate crisis and the salmon extinction crisis seriously,” Wheeler said.

The science report will be circulated to state and fish managers for review over the next 30 days. The report on replacement power will be considered at a public meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday that can be watched online.

October 14, 2019

By  Lynda V. Mapes 

CELILO VILLAGE, Wasco County, Oregon — In a historic stand, the Yakama and Lummi nations called Monday for taking down the Bonneville, The Dalles and John Day dams on the Columbia River to restore salmon runs once the mightiest in the world.

The three big energy producers churn out enough electricity to power more than 2 million Pacific Northwest homes annually and also provide an important inland navigation route for commercial goods.

Jay Julius, chairman of the Lummi Nation, and JoDe Goudy, chairman of the Yakama Nation, gathered — on Indigenous Peoples Day — at Celilo Village, all that is left of the fishing and cultural center at Celilo Falls, the most productive salmon fishery in the world for some 11,000 years. The falls were drowned beneath the reservoir of The Dalles Dam in 1957.

Julius and Goudy said taking down the dams is the only hope to save the salmon runs their people depend on, and restore to health the endangered southern resident killer whales. The Columbia River Basin once produced as many as 10 million to 16 million salmon per year.

Returns today are a fraction of that even in good years.

Goudy said Columbus Day, a federal holiday also on Monday, celebrates the invasion of the lands and waters of indigenous people under the colonial doctrine of discovery, under which Christian Europeans seized native lands.

The lower Columbia River dams inundated many usual and accustomed fishing sites of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, and led to the decline of salmon, lamprey and other traditional foods.

“The tribe never consented to the construction of the lower Columbia River dams,” Goudy said.

“On behalf of the Yakama Nation and those things that cannot speak for themselves, I call on the United States to reject the doctrine of Christian discovery and immediately remove the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam and John Day Dam.”

Julius said the Lummi Nation stands with Yakama in calling for the removal of the dams. Tribes throughout the region are in a constant battle to defend their way of life, Julius said. “Whether defeating coal ports, opposing increased vessel traffic on the Salish Sea, repairing culverts or removing invasive Atlantic salmon, to leave to future generations a lifeway promised to our ancestors 164 years ago,” he said.

While calls for removal of the four dams on the Lower Snake River have been heard for decades, the demand to knock out some of the region’s larger main-stem dams is a first. How such a removal would even proceed, and what it would mean for energy or salmon recovery, has never been analyzed.

In addition to power generation, the dams are part of a system of locks that provide inland navigation all the way to Lewiston, Idaho. Some $2 billion in commercial cargo travels the Columbia and Snake river systems each year, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers statistics reported by The Associated Press. In 2017, that cargo included 53 percent of U.S. wheat exports.

Southern resident orcas prey on Columbia and Snake River fish, as well as fish from Puget Sound, the Fraser River in B.C. and even California’s Sacramento River. The loss of Columbia and Snake fish is probably the single biggest change in the amount of food available to them, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s recovery plan for the whales.

There are only 73 southern resident left. Lack of available, adequate, quality food is one of three main threats to their survival, in addition to pollution and noise.

The three dams are among the oldest in the Columbia and Snake River system. They back up miles of the river, which pools in reservoirs that heat up in the summer. The reservoirs lengthen the travel time of young fish heading downriver, and warmer water temperatures caused by the cumulative effects of climate change are adding to the stress salmon endure. In particularly bad years, salmon also die in the thousands before reaching their spawning grounds.

The call for main-stem dam removal adds a new drumbeat for change on the river, where power markets already are shaking up the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets electricity from the dams.

A surge of wind and solar energy on the grid — along with power generation from natural gas — have upended BPA’s historic position as the low-cost provider in the region.

BPA must foot the bill for the costs of maintaining an aging hydroelectric system and for bankrolling salmon restoration efforts. The administration is also scrambling to remain competitive when long-term contracts with public utilities come up in 2028.

Yet as coal plants increasingly are phased out of the Western power grid, hydropower will become an increasingly important asset as the regional grid operators struggle to reduce the risk of brownouts or blackouts during periods of peak demand that unfold during days when solar and wind power may be at a low ebb.

The lower Columbia dams have deep regional support that would likely make any effort to remove them an even tougher battle than the years-long campaign by salmon advocates to remove the Lower Snake River dams.

“We have great respect for the Yakama and Lummi nations and for Indigenous Peoples Day, but we believe that the lower Columbia River dams are a critical carbon free resource in our fight against the climate crisis that threatens the health and well-being of the entire Northwest, “ said a statement released by Northwest RiverPartners, which has a membership that includes ports, businesses and consumer-owned utilities.

The Portland-based BPA also released a statement responding to the tribes’ Monday announcement.

“We remain focused on continuing our work with our many partners throughout the region to address the environmental, economic and cultural issues within the Columbia River Basin,” said the statement. BPA officials declined further comment

Yakama, Lummi tribal leaders call for removal of three lower Columbia River dams

In Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee’s spokeswoman Tara Lee said that the governor “supports rebuilding fish runs to tribal communities … including improving fish passage, and exploring ways to reintroduce salmon in areas blocked by dams such as the upper Columbia.”

When ask to clarify that statement, Lee said Inslee “previously said he is open to exploring options around the dams.”

Federal agencies are seeking approval from a federal judge for operation of their hydropower system. The agencies have since 1992 been on the defensive against calls for a major overhaul on the river that go back to the first federal judge who heard the case, Malcom Marsh, in 1993.

By KIMBERLY CAUVEL @Kimberly_SVH
Oct 16, 2015
  
Even with Endangered Species Act protection, two iconic Salish Sea species are struggling, and a newly formed alliance is calling attention to their plight.

“It’s pretty critical that we have to do something, so let’s put the prey and predator together and let’s save them,” said Ken Balcomb, executive director of the Center for Whale Research based on San Juan Island.
The center is one of many local, national and international groups that recently formed the Orca Salmon Alliance.

Orca Network Director Howard Garrett said the Orca Salmon Alliance’s goal is to restore enough salmon to sustain the endangered southern resident orcas.

Alliance members shared their mission with the public for the first time at the Seattle Aquarium last week, with an Oct. 7 event called Intertwined Fates: The Orca-Salmon Connection.

Seattle Aquarium CEO and President Bob Davidson said it was a historic occasion having “orca and salmon people” all in the same room.

The connection between salmon and orcas is well known — salmon are the whales’ primary food source — but researchers often don’t focus on both.

The federal and state endangered species listings for orcas calls the decline in chinook salmon the greatest challenge to southern resident orca recovery. Yet after 10 years of federal protection for the whales, the population has not grown.

The southern resident orcas stay along the Washington and Oregon coasts in three pods, or family units, called J, K and L.

The population has remained steady at around 80 whales since 1995.

The deaths of new calves in 2013 and 2014 heightened concerns about the whales’ demise, Garrett said.

When orca J32, known as Rhapsody, was found dead and carrying a full-term calf near Bristish Columbia in December 2014, it was a “devastating blow for those who watch and care about the orcas,” he said.

The loss of Rhapsody was the final straw, “prompting many to search for ways to rebuild chinook salmon runs as quickly as possible,” he said.

And so the Orca Salmon Alliance was born.

The group has big goals for increasing chinook salmon numbers and in turn supporting the orcas that need between 100 and 300 pounds of fish per day to maintain their weight, according to NOAA.

The quickest way to progress would be removing four dams from the Snake River, which would open

140 miles of riverbed and 5,500 miles of upstream habitat for salmon, Garrett said.

Restoring chinook populations is essential because the southern resident orcas rely on the salmon for about 80 percent of their diet, unlike transient orcas that primarily eat mammals.
“Their jaws and teeth are not as robust as mammal-eating orcas,” Garrett said.

If they don’t have access to their food supply, they will starve, he said.

Earthjustice oceans program managing attorney Steve Mashuda said the legal agency has focused on protecting salmon on the Columbia River system. The Skagit River, the second largest in Puget Sound behind the Columbia, is also important for salmon.

“The Skagit River is important because it’s got the biggest opportunity for chinook recovery in Puget Sound, and it comes down to estuary health,” he said.

What’s harming the salmon?

“It’s really the classic combination of things that is concerning,” Mashuda said. “You’ve got legacy pollution, as well as new things like stormwater.”

Plus, there are dams and culverts blocking fish access to spawning areas, he said.

So what will help?

“It would be good to see a handful of really big projects to restore systems like the Skagit River to historic (salmon-bearing) capacity,” Mashuda said.

Biologist and author Carl Safina, keynote speaker at the Seattle Aquarium last week, called attendees to action at the sold-out event.

“Act now or lose them all,” he said.

There has been some good news this year. Four orcas were born, though experts say the mortality rate is high in the animals’ first year.

The Orca Salmon Alliance is asking citizens to contact state Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Jim Unsworth, who set up an online comment system called Washington’s Wild Future, or other state and federal officials to urge more action to save these Salish Sea species.

http://www.goskagit.com/all_access/new-alliance-has-big-goals-for-salmon-orca-recovery/article_88d2e83f-5b3e-5d8e-a7c3-7dae4651c7f0.html

— Reporter Kimberly Cauvel: 360-416-2199, kcauvel@skagitpublishing.com, Twitter: @Kimberly_SVH, Facebook.com/bykimberlycauvel

From the desk of Pat Ford
August 1, 2016

In late spring and summer of 2015, an estimated 250,000 adult salmon died in the main-stem Columbia and Snake Rivers while trying to reach their home waters to spawn their next generation.  The main cause was 70 days of sustained hot water in both rivers. Water temperatures at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia, and Ice Harbor Dam on the lower Snake, hit 68 degrees F on June 24, rose quickly to 72-73 degrees for two weeks in early July, and did not fall below 68 degrees again at either dam until early September.  (68F, or 20C, is the reference temperature – an aim, not a requirement – established by NOAA Fisheries to protect Columbia-Snake salmon and steelhead from the adverse effects of hot water.)  Two other factors also contributed to the kill: a low 2014-15 snowpack that led to low 2015 runoff, and the dam-and-reservoir system whose baseline stresses to migrating salmon in both rivers exacerbated the hot water effects.

This major salmon kill has sparked wide concern among people who care about the salmon and health of the Columbia and Snake.  Spring and summer river temperatures in both rivers have been rising for several decades now, and Northwest climate and salmon scientists expect the trend to continue as human-caused climate change pushes global air temperatures upward.  In the wake of 2015, many Northwest people are asking with urgency, what can we do to help salmon successfully migrate climate change?  What’s in our toolbox now, and what new tools can we add?  

To tackle these questions in some detail, I have been reading and talking to Northwest climate and salmon scientists, be they researchers, fish managers, or both.  The full result will be released in a few months, but the Hot Water Report 2016 presents an opportunity to preview some of the findings, and solicit reaction.  I begin with the first question I am asking scientists:  what lessons should people who care about salmon, and people making salmon, energy and water policies, take from 2015’s salmon kill?  Here are the main answers so far.

1.  2015 was a preview, a harbinger, of a new summer normal that climate change is establishing in the Columbia and Snake Rivers.  Most scientists I talked with believe the extreme conditions in 2015 were mainly due to natural climate variability, but also worsened by human-caused climate change and other human alterations to both rivers.  All believe these conditions will repeat and expand in extent and duration, until they constitute “a new normal” a few decades from now.  Two to six decades is the range I’ve heard; scientists are more confident of the trend than of its pace.  One of many effects on salmon is that the extent and severity of large kills like 2015’s will increase (ISAB and ISRP, 2016).  

2.  Summer migrating species – sockeye salmon, summer Chinook salmon, and summer-migrating steelhead – are most at risk.  All or major parts of the adult migration of these species, from the ocean and through the Columbia and Snake Rivers to their spawning areas, occurs in summer. [footnote:  Spring Chinook, fall Chinook, late-run steelhead, and coho are not exempt from this new summer normal, since parts of their migrations also occur in summer.  And, though attention in 2015 was on adult salmon returning from the ocean, the same hot water also beset summer-migrating juvenile salmon on their way to the ocean.  We must wait for adult returns of this age class in 2017 and 2018 for data specifically on them, but it’s certain that intensified hot water will have harmful effects on both juvenile and adult fish.] Water is already lowest then, water temperatures hottest, and the dam-and-reservoir environments that dominate both rivers most stressful due to complex combined effects with temperatures and flows.  Now climate changes are making the low waters lower, the hot temperatures hotter, and dam and development effects more stressful for these species, many of which are already endangered or threatened with extinction.  (Chapman 2011)

Sockeye seem to be at greatest risk.  In 2015, over 200,000 upper Columbia sockeye died before reaching their Okanogan and Yakima Valley spawning lakes, and 95% of Snake River sockeye were killed by hot water before reaching Idaho (NOAA 2016).  Progress that these Columbia sockeye have recently made toward renewed abundance, and endangered Snake River sockeye have made toward survival, hit a wall of hot water in 2015.  In addition, the Fish Passage Center found that “survival of adult migrating summer Chinook salmon was a historical low in 2015 coincident with high water temperatures” (FPC 2016).  Salmon are resilient to one-year catastrophes, but resilience will be ground down as what we now call extreme conditions become normal in summer.  

3.  “We knew it would come, we were surprised, we weren’t ready.”  These partially inconsistent reactions express the situation for salmon managers in 2015.  Water temperatures above biological standards for salmon have been routine in the Columbia and Snake main-stems, and some tributaries, since at least the 1990s, gradually increasing in scope and severity.  Salmon mortalities as a result have been documented prior to 2015. Plans to abate the problems were recommended or promised (NOAA 1995; EPA 2001).  Scientists warned that catastrophic episodes affecting summer migrants were likely to certain (Chapman, 2011).  Yet the 2015 episode caught most managers, and more importantly management systems, by surprise.  No plans were in place to guide response by federal, state and Tribal fish managers  [NOAA 2016, FPC 2016]. 
       
4.  The management tools available today are not sufficient.  As 2015’s catastrophic conditions become normal, the dam-and-reservoir system, as currently configured, cannot be manipulated to significantly abate the harmful effects on salmon.  The same is likely true of hatchery systems.  

A mini-demonstration is underway in 2016.  While 2016 river temperatures have not been as extreme as 2015’s, they are still warmer than past averages.  Fishery and dam managers have been weighing actions to help keep summer temperatures, in the rivers and in specific fishways, below 68 degrees F.  Limited supplies of cold water available from storage reservoirs, if used to help salmon migrating in early or mid-summer, are not available to help salmon migrating later in the summer.  Some measures to help adult salmon pose risks to juvenile salmon also present in the rivers.  Energy, navigation, and flood control probability rules that dominate the main-stems take other salmon measures off the table from the perspective of dam managers.  One fish manager put the situation he and colleagues face this way: “Which way do we want to hurt fish?  It’s our call.”  

5.  Focus on the ecological context.  The 2015 salmon kill shows that hot rivers and reservoirs, a main result of climate change now and to come, cause big problems for salmon.  Therefore, river temperatures are a lead indicator to track closely, seek to reduce, and seek to buffer salmon against.  

But climate change’s effects on salmon and rivers can’t be measured, or responded to, by attention to one parameter only.  Rising river temperatures are a lead barometer of those effects, but not a single consequence that we should try to singly fix.  Climate change is affecting the entire suite of dynamic conditions in rivers and ocean that affect salmon.  An ecosystem approach, which seeks to return toward or mimic the complex river conditions under which salmon evolved, must guide successful salmon recovery, whether in response to development and dams, or to climate change (Return to the River, 2006).  

In some future installments, I will return to some of these lessons in more detail. -PF

From the desk of Jacob Schmidt, Save Our wild Salmon intern

On June 10, three Spokane churches--Salem Lutheran, St. Mark’s Lutheran, and St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral visited the lower Snake River to discuss, salmon, dams, and treaty rights with members of Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, a Nez Perce tribal conservation organization.  They met at Wawawai, once a gathering place for the tribes, before it became an orchard town.  Wawawai now sits underwater as a result of the nearby Lower Granite Dam. This special place and its history served as the backdrop for the first of what will hopefully prove to be many interfaith events focused on the restoration of wild salmon.

Throughout the Judeo-Christian scriptures there is constant reference to the interconnectedness and life giving properties of all the waters of the Earth, from the beginning of Genesis in which God’s face hovers above the waters and in which fish are called forth to fill those waters, to the baptism of Christ in a small local stream called Jordan. The region in which we live is defined by its water. We utilize one of the greatest waterways in the world, the Columbia and Snake rivers, for recreation, sustenance, and industry. Yet God’s blessing over the waters of the Earth and Christ’s redemption of those waters through baptism do not constitute holy permission to alter and abuse our rivers and oceans.  Every commandment must be filtered through those two greatest of commandments: love God and love our neighbors. Can we love a river God made if we stop its current? Can a good steward allow for extinctions?

These members of the Inland Northwest Christian community came alongside Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment to confront the difficult past as well as to look ahead to the challenges of the future. The faithful people of the Inland Northwest must reckon with the fact that Jesuit priests burned Kalispel canoes, that Presbyterian missionaries forced a sedentary lifestyle upon the Nez Perce, and that countless others promoted the construction of dams that have been devastating to the salmon cultures of native tribes. We cannot undo these things, but we must not forget them. The Christian community of the Inland Northwest has the power to lead the way on the path toward restoration and reconciliation, as we saw on this Saturday in June.  

The event moved along at the relaxed pace I’ve come to expect and appreciate from our Nimiipuu friends, with time generously given to all in attendance to introduce themselves, ask questions, and be heard. After everyone had eaten their fill (and had an extra one or two of Sam’s cookies), a portion of the group took a walk up the hillside to catch a glimpse of Lower Granite Dam while parsing some of the economic issues surrounding the removal of all four Lower Snake Dams. Thankfully Bryan Jones was along to speak to the experience of the farming community. Upon returning to the picnic shelter, Elliott Moffett and Gary Dorr delivered a crash course in treaty law and the efforts of Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment to have them upheld.

Throughout the day I saw strong connections forming that will bear fruit in the coming months. Be on the lookout for another interfaith event at the river for Palouse area churches sponsored by Friends of the Clearwater, and a “Loaves and Fishes” event in Spokane to celebrate and hear the concerns of the food producers of our region. It is our hope that through this and future events many more will come to believe that salmon are holy, just as our native brothers and sisters do. We hope that all will see an immense beauty in the life cycle of these fish. We hope also that the faith community will rally around the very real possibility of losing that beauty and the unique culture of our native neighbors if nothing changes in the Columbia/Snake reservoir system. In the midst of the divine miracle of prodigal fish making the unlikely journey home, stand four barriers too many. On June 10 a new cast of allies joined in the process of changing the status quo through dialogue and action to truly restore salmon.

From the Desk of Pat Ford - August 8, 2016

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon’s May 2016 verdict in the long-running Columbia-Snake salmon and dams case sets clear legal sideboards for helping salmon migrate climatic changes.  (You can read the court’s verdict at [url here].  The salmon and climate change section is pages 86-102.)    

First, it makes plain what the law requires, and thus sets basic standards for any strategy and recommendations on the subject.  The standards will apply to the government’s sixth attempt in 18 years to craft a lawful plan to restore Columbia-Snake wild salmon and steelhead.

Second, it crisply summarizes the basics of climate-salmon science as we know them today.  Scientists at NOAA, the Universities of Washington and Oregon, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and others have published much research on salmon and climate change in the past 15 years.  The court finds that “the best available information indicates that climate change will have a significant negative effect” on endangered or threatened salmon and steelhead species in the Columbia and Snake Rivers.  The court finds that NOAA paid illegally scant attention to this information, much of it developed by NOAA’s own scientists, in its 2014 plan to restore Columbia-Snake salmon.

Third, the court established a public process in which that science must be assessed, and in which Northwest people’s views on salmon and climate change must be heard.  

Evan Thompson, Wed Jul 19th, 2017

A new study links a lack of salmon to failed pregnancies in Puget Sound’s resident orca pods.

Two-thirds of pregnancies in the Southern Resident population, from 2007 to 2014, appeared to have failed, according to a multi-year study by the University of Washington published in the journal PLOS ONE. The data connects the endangered orca population’s low reproductive success to stress from the low abundance of their most nutrient-rich food source, Chinook salmon.

Of the 35 pregnancies in the seven-year time span, only 11 were successful.

“That’s drastic,” Howard Garrett, co-founder of the Langley-based Orca Network, said. “We didn’t have that number until now.”

Garrett said the study corroborates “from a completely different angle” that a lack of salmon is causing the population to decline, while also stunting the orca whales’ recovery process. Less salmon directly damages reproductive success, while nutritional stress leads to the release of toxins that is normally absorbed in the whales’ fatty tissues when they are properly fed, Garrett said.

“The Chinook are the key — they’re the pivot that it all revolves around,” Garrett said.

It was also troubling to Garrett that one-third of the failed pregnancies occurred late in the gestation period, meaning the mothers invested ample time and energy into the calves. Pregnancies are typically 17 months, Garrett said.

“It’s a tremendous loss,” Garrett said. “It weakens the mother and sets back their ability to start over.”

These setbacks could also further weaken the population, said Garrett, as the mothers are at a higher risk of infection or other complications. There are 79 individuals in the L, J and K pods as of Jan. 2017, including Lolita, which is confined at the Miami Seaquarium.

The study was conducted by researchers from the university’s Center for Conservation Biology, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the Center for Whale Research. Researchers measured key physiological and sex hormones in orca fecal samples, or scat. They also used orca DNA extracted from the scat to identify the individual whales.

Dogs trained to sniff out floating orca scat from the bow of research boats trailed Southern Resident pods and could detect the scat from up to one nautical mile away.

They collected 348 scat samples from 79 orcas between 2007 and 2014.

Researchers could glean hormone progesterone and testosterone levels from the scat and also differentiate between stress due to poor nutrition and stress due to external responses, such as boat traffic in the Salish Sea, for example. They could also determine how far along the pregnant female was in the gestation period.

The pregnancies likely ended in spontaneous abortions, the study said.

Findings from the study are also said to have helped resolve a debate about which three environmental stresses are most responsible for the population decline: food supply, pollutants and boat traffic. Sam Wasser, a professor of biology at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Conservation Biology, said in a University of Washington news release that a lack of salmon is now determined as the foremost cause for low reproductive success among the Southern Resident killer whales.

Southern Residents are unlike other transient orca populations because more than 95 percent of their diet consists of salmon, while other orcas feed on marine mammals. Chinook salmon is the Southern Residents’ go-to food source.

The research teams compared the whale’s hormone data to records of Chinook salmon runs in the Columbia and Fraser rivers, which contain the most Chinook in the Southern Residents’ range. When returns of salmon at the two watersheds were high, nutritional stress was low. But, it flipped when there were poor runs at either river and nutritional stress increased.

Garrett says efforts to restore salmon with culvert removals and estuary recoveries are helping, but the population decline will likely continue unless a drastic measure is taken. Garrett said the removal of the four Lower Snare River Dams would help immensely by adding as many as 1 million fish within five or 10 years. Garrett said the dams remain active largely due to sentimental reasons.

“It’s really an irrational and emotional attachment to those dams,” Garrett said. “The reasons given don’t hold up.”

Southern Resident sightings have been rather sparse this summer, said Garrett, at a time when they should be at their peaks. But, sightings of transient whales are through the roof. Multiple groups of transients, also known as Bigg’s Killer Whales, have been seen in the Puget Sound area more and that their presence has increased gradually for about 10 years.

Garrett said he hopes the Southern Residents will still come down Admiralty Inlet and be seen from Whidbey Island between October to December if the salmon are running in good numbers.

http://www.southwhidbeyrecord.com/news/uw-study-pins-orca-pregnancy-problems-on-lack-of-salmon/

October 23, 2019

By Matthew Kincanon

At a “Spokane Loaves and Fishes,” event on Tuesday night at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist a panel of farmers, commercial fishermen, Northwest tribal members and activists discussed issues concerning the dams and salmon conservation on the Columbia-Snake River Basin.

The event, hosted by Earth Ministry and Save Our Wild Salmon, was aimed at addressing the well-being and future of the river, explained Earth Ministry Program and Outreach Director Jessica Zimmerle.

“We believe in a future in which we can honor tribal treaty rights and restore salmon and ensure the livelihood of our farmers and fishermen, all with a vibrant, free-flowing lower Snake River,” she said. 

Zimmerle then shared a success story where a campaign that Earth Ministry was involved in facilitated dialogue about closing Washington’s last coal power plant, TransAlta, in Centralia. The ensuing discussions between representatives from the plant and environmentalists resulted in plans to phase it out and transition into a solar farm.  

Zimmerle said the story was one of hope that can get people’s imaginations going for what the region could look like. 

Sam Mace, panelist and Inland Northwest director of Save Our Wild Salmon, provided an overview of the current issues regarding the salmon and opportunities for recovery. 

She said Save Our Wild Salmon, which was founded in 1991, spent a few years working on having salmon co-exist with the dams still in the system.  However, after looking at the science, economics, continued decline of fisheries, failure to honor treaty rights and impacts on commercial and sport fishing communities, they decided that they had to endorse lower Snake River dam removal. 

Mace explained that barging, which was the main purpose of the lower Snake River dams, has been declining and the energy produced by the dams is not worth what it once was, bringing into question whether the dams are worth maintaining.  

She added that the public perception of removing dams and restoring rivers has changed. 

Panelists were asked what a future that worked for all parties involved in the issue look like in the Inland Northwest. Bryan Jones, a  fourth generation wheat farmer from Dusty, responded by saying farmers should be provided with a way to ship their grain as well as assurances to those who would be put out of business.   

The Rev Bill Osborne, rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, asked if dams were needed for irrigation and transportation. Mace noted, though, that the lower Snake River dams were meant for barging rather than store water for irrigation, supporting the deeper pipes solution.    

When asked how the economy would be impacted if gran was shipped elsewhere, grain farmer Don Scheuerman said that most groups are cooperatives and that profitability at the expense of environmental and social degradation should be considered.  He added that looking for other markets, products and processing is a big paradigm type shift in terms of psyche. 

He added that decentralization of food systems would be a wise decision and grain sheds could be easily built in Spokane that can help with transitioning from chemical soil to biological-grown soil, but they are only partial solutions rather than total solutions. 

Circling back to the question about the future Nez Perce Tribe member Julian Matthews, director of “A Healing Journey,” and a member Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, described how treaty hunting and fishing rights of the tribes are the law of the land and everybody, including the tribes, are paying for the dams. 

“We’re paying for those dams, and they’re old and degrading and so we have to keep dumping all of this money into them and so how much is enough?” he asked.  

As a taxpayer, Matthews said he does not see the dams as affording everyone a good benefit. 

Zimmerle said she hopes this was the start of a conversation, with the panelists providing insights on how to carry the dialogue forward.  These included making sure elected officials are dealing with the issue, giving communities fact sheets about the salmon to help avoid spreading misinformation and show people the truth about the matter as gently as possible because getting to people who have their minds made up is difficult, among others. 

By Editor
Jan 14, 2021

Washington’s salmon are “teetering on the brink of extinction,” according to a new report. It says the state must change how it’s responding to climate change and the growing number of people in Washington.

Washington’s State of Salmon in Watersheds report says time is running out for the Northwest’s iconic fish. The report shows a trend of warming waters and habitat degradation is causing trouble for its salmon runs. Ten of the 14 threatened or endangered salmon and steelhead runs in the state are not getting any better. Of those, five are “in crisis.”

“I’m not going to sugarcoat things. Salmon are in crisis. And they need our help now more than ever,” Erik Neatherlin said. He’s is with the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office.

Neatherlin says things will only get worse as the climate changes. Glaciers that melt into cold, salmon-bearing streams are predicted to disappear.

What climate change could bring
To foreshadow what climate change could bring, look to the summer of 2015. That year, unusually warm waters and low flows killed hundreds of thousands of adult sockeye in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

The State of Salmon in Watersheds report says over the past decade, funding for habitat restoration was short by around $4 billion. That has meant that habitat restoration projects couldn’t keep pace with the amount of habitat that continues to be lost, especially in urban areas. Larger, more complex habitat restoration projects have been left by the wayside because of the lack of funding.

“We had a budget request to the governor’s office of $80 million – that is for the salmon recovery funding board, one of the grant programs. That would have funded about 30% of the projects that we have in the cue for the two-year period. So you can see, we’re not even getting very much of the project work done,” Kaleen Cottingham said. Cottingham directs the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office.

The governor’s proposed budget has about half the requested amount for that particular program. With other programs the office is funding, salmon recovery currently receives about 22% of what’s needed “to get the job done,” Cottingham said.

Forested riverbanks can provide shade and habitat for salmon. The report says that as Washington’s population grows, planners need to take salmon habitat into account. Shoreline development, including bulkheads and seawalls, can harm salmon habitat.

Neatherlin, with the Salmon Recovery Office, says newer options like soft armoring can be less harmful to habitat and “mimic more of a natural shoreline.”

“We’re starting to turn the corner on the amount of hard shoreline armoring that has occurred in the past,” Neatherlin said. “The other thing is, where we can, we’re making a whole lot of progress in opening up new estuaries.”

Critical habitat
The report says that in Puget Sound, about one-third of the region’s shoreline is armored — more than 800 miles. Thousands of new estuaries have also been opened up in Puget Sound by breaching, moving or rerouting dikes.

Those shorelines are critical for chinook, a main source of food for orca, Neatherline says.

Other issues that face salmon in Washington: fish passage barriers, pollution and predation.

The biggest pollutant for salmon is stormwater runoff. When it rains, pollution from vehicles, fertilizers and other sources runs off impervious surfaces, like pavement and rooves, into rivers and streams.

The report says solutions such as rain gardens, which can filter stormwater and remove pollutants can “make the difference between life and death for salmon.”

Joseph Bogaard is with the conservation group Save Our Wild Salmon. He says he’s not surprised about the findings, noting the steady decline of salmon over recent decades and challenges including the changing climate and habitat loss.

“From our perspective, it’s important to have a healthy, connected and resilient habitat, with a healthy watershed,” Bogaard said.

Salmon are not just an “environmental issue,” he said. They are important for tribal communities, recreation and the ecosystem, which is why it’s imperative to meet the needs of the fish.

Not all bad news
Neatherlin says, it’s not all bad news on the salmon front. For one, no new salmon species have been added to the Endangered Species List since 2007.

“That represents an incredible amount of progress,” Neatherlin said. “We also know we have some species that are approaching their abundance goals, like Hood Canal summer chum. … We know what needs to be done. We just need to amp up our efforts.”

He says tribes have helped to successfully remove dams on the Elwha, Middle Fork Nooksack, and Pilchuck rivers. Other smaller dams are also under consideration to be removed or altered.

“Certainly it’s going to be part of the activities going forward to evaluate dams,” he said.

The main goals to help salmon in Washington: consider salmon during land-use and long-term infrastructure planning; reconnect floodplains to help make streams cleaner and colder; remove barriers to salmon migration and continue to transport fish above large dams, like Grand Coulee; and continue working with tribes and fully fund salmon recovery efforts.

By Eileen Delehanty Pearkes;  July 27, 2014
 
By midsummer, the reservoirs at the top of the Columbia River hydrosystem in Canada are full. From now until early spring 2015, this stored water, governed by the Columbia River Treaty, will increase and enhance the ability to generate reliable electricity for the entire Pacific Northwest.

Downstream at Wanapum Dam, things are still looking dry. A worrisome crack in the dam has exposed a silted landscape in an historic 26-foot drawdown. This has got me thinking about the primary difference between Columbia River dams like Wanapum, Chief Joseph and Rock Island – those operated as “run-of–the-river” facilities – and the storage dams on the Columbia in Canada.

Run-of-the-river dams have small reservoirs. They capitalize on the natural hydraulics of the Columbia’s snow-charged river system. Most of the American dams on the Columbia’s main stem generate power not from stored head, but from water passing regularly through the system. In order for water to be available at these facilities in fall and winter when demands are higher, the annual spring surge of the snow-charged Columbia must be stored somewhere.

The only Columbia storage in the United States is Lake Roosevelt, behind Grand Coulee Dam. Each year, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation draws water down to accommodate snowmelt. The level varies, depending on weather. In 2013, it was approximately 25 feet from full pool, more or less equal to that experienced this year by Wanapum Dam in an emergency situation. In 2014, it has been approximately 55 feet.

Heading upstream into Canada, the typical drawdown increases. The Columbia River Treaty, signed in 1961 and ratified by both countries in 1964, governs water storage on the Canadian portion of the Columbia system. This storage makes American run-of-the-river projects fruitful, and protects urban areas on the lower and mid-Columbia from spring flood.

Between 1964-74, Canada built three major treaty storage dams. Under the terms of the treaty, Arrow Reservoir (near Castlegar, British Columbia) fluctuates up to 66 vertical feet annually. Duncan Reservoir near Kootenay Lake varies 98 feet. Kinbasket Reservoir, 85 miles north of Revelstoke, changes up to 195 vertical feet. In spring, if Kinbasket has been drained low to accommodate a large snowmelt, a visit to the “beach” can mean a long walk to the water.

Moderate or more extreme, drawdown numbers in Canada are considerably larger than what has been experienced at Wanapum. The treaty requires Canadian reservoirs to store 15.5 million acre-feet of water annually. The size of the reservoirs indicates just how wet and prolific the upper Columbia region in Canada is, contributing an average of 40 percent of the annual water flow through the international system – closer to 50 percent in a dry year.

The extreme changes in Canadian reservoirs have had a significant ecological and social/cultural impact. When the treaty was signed, those living in upper Columbia valleys experienced more impact due to the new water storage plans than people living on the mid- or lower Columbia. Many were displaced, or lost farms and livelihoods. Today, displaced families who still live in the region are reminded annually of the loss, when their farm fields, favored fishing spots, once-treasured wetlands and other landscape features are exposed as piles of inert and shapeless reservoir silt.

When they fill, the Canadian reservoirs create uniformity where diversity once existed. They silence the river system when, naturally, it would be most active – recharging wetlands with spring melt, carrying fish fry around, stirring up silt. Back-eddies, canyons, sand and gravel bars, alluvial fans and other varied, topographical features of a natural river are covered by late spring, not to be exposed again until the depths of winter, a reverse of the natural dynamics.

Each year, the landscape of a drained reservoir is exposed like an old family secret, providing an unpleasant reminder that hydroelectricity is not always green or benign. Those Americans living along Lake Roosevelt can understand this, too. Concrete dams on the upper Columbia have upended an ecological system thousands of years old.

Treaty storage reservoirs enhance and secure U.S. irrigation, flood control and hydroelectricity. The calculation of benefit-sharing in the treaty (the Canadian Entitlement) was accepted by both countries 50 years ago as a principle of fairness. Since then, the U.S. has made key decisions to protect endangered salmon, respect tribal interests and alter the predicted energy mix. These changes were imposed on the American river system by Americans.

They increase rather than decrease the value of the water Canada stores.
 
Eileen Delehanty Pearkes, an American citizen living in Nelson, British Columbia, is the author of “The Geography of Memory,” a history of the landscape and indigenous people of the upper Columbia River watershed. A work-in-progress, “A River Captured,” explores the upper basin’s transformation into a landscape of industrial hydropower production.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/jul/27/guest-opinion-value-the-water-stored-in-canada/

By Nancy Hirsh
Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016

The Spokesman-Review’s Sept. 30 article “Feds asking public to weigh in on breaching Snake River dams” allowed to go unanswered a statement claiming that, if the region chooses to remove the four outdated and expensive dams on the lower Snake River, the hydroenergy they produce will have to be replaced by building a carbon-emitting natural gas plant that adds to climate pollution.

In short, the claim is that we can have either salmon restoration or we can have carbon-free energy, but not both. This is a false choice of the kind that moved the federal court to find that the federal agencies failed to adequately consider viable options, including ones that can replace the electricity from these dams with carbon-free, clean and renewable energy and help to bring back our amazing salmon. Here are the facts they are overlooking.

The Northwest electricity grid has changed tremendously in the past 20 years. Building on our abundant hydropower resources, Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana have developed new, renewable resources totaling more than 2,500 average megawatts (aMW) from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy, with another 1,500 aMW under construction or in the final stages of approval. On top of this we continue to make strong advances in conservation and energy efficiency, saving more than 5,500 aMW of electricity over the years.

The four lower Snake River dams produce about 1,000 aMW of electricity each year, or about 5 percent of the Northwest’s supply. The claim that the only way we can replace this power is by building a new natural gas plant to burn fossil fuels is just not credible in light of the changing ways in which electricity needs are being met. Even as capacity from new renewables expands, the electric grid is evolving, and we’re becoming smarter about how we generate, consume and manage electricity.

Despite dire predictions from skeptics, utilities and electricity system operators have successfully integrated new, renewable resources and built energy efficiency equivalent to over a dozen natural gas-fired plants. We are improving how we bundle wind and solar from different geographic areas to increase reliability of renewable energy contributions to system operations. And we are beginning to use energy markets to more efficiently utilize all the existing resources we have.

Finally, the region is expanding a broad collection of energy efficiency, distributed clean renewables, energy storage and load management programs that make renewables even more reliable and affordable. In these ways and others, Northwest ingenuity has proved the skeptics wrong while also providing some of the lowest electric rates in the nation.

By the time changes to the lower Snake River system are made, the portfolio of low-carbon resources will be even more robust and more than able to meet the capacity and energy needs of the region. Meanwhile, the cost of new solar, wind and other renewables is plunging, while the cost to maintain the aging dams is only going to increase.

That’s why two recent studies, one by the NW Energy Coalition and one by Rocky Mountain Econometrics, find that we can replace the power from the four lower Snake River dams at little additional cost to customers through new, renewable energy, purchases of clean energy from existing sources, and smart planning and system coordination.

All of this is a part of building an integrated and modern electricity grid that meets customers’ needs, protects the environment and contributes our share to climate action. Our greatest asset is our ingenuity and ability to adapt. If we apply these skills to the challenge of providing carbon-free, clean energy, and restoring healthy salmon populations, we will secure a clean, reliable and affordable energy future.

That’s why we emphatically do not have to choose between restoring the ancient cycle of salmon in the Northwest that is part of our region’s way of life and having low-carbon energy. We can and should have both.

Nancy Hirsh is the executive director of the NW Energy Coalition, an alliance of environmental, labor, civic, faith and human service organizations.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/oct/22/we-can-restore-salmon-and-have-carbon-free-energy/

By Orion Donovan-Smith
October 31, 2021

WASHINGTON – While the attention of Northwest salmon advocates has been focused on a renewed debate over the fate of the Lower Snake River dams, a Washington Democrat has quietly worked to secure an unprecedented investment in salmon recovery through two bills Congress appears poised to pass.

Sen. Maria Cantwell has used her position at the helm of the Senate’s influential Commerce Committee to include more than $2.8 billion for salmon recovery and ecosystem restoration efforts in the bipartisan infrastructure bill the Senate passed in August.

Although Democrats have had to cut their social policy and climate bill known as the Build Back Better Act to half its original size to please centrists in the party, the pared-down version the House unveiled Thursday still includes nearly $2 billion more for hatcheries, habitat restoration and research to understand why more salmon are dying at sea.

After months of haggling between the party’s moderate and progressive wings, Democrats appear close to sending both bills to President Joe Biden’s desk in a matter of weeks.

“This is important investment, regardless of anything else that’s happening,” Cantwell said in an interview, nodding to the heated debate over the Snake River dams that has escalated since February, when Idaho GOP Rep. Mike Simpson proposed breaching them to help restore salmon and steelhead runs.

While even the most aggressive timeline wouldn’t breach the Snake River dams for at least a decade, Cantwell said she wanted to focus on giving salmon recovery “a huge boost at a time when it’s being most impacted – not 10 years from now, not 15 years from now, but right now.”

Each lawmaker’s ability to get things done in Congress depends in large part on the committees on which they serve. Simpson sought to use his perch on the House Appropriations Committee, which writes the checks to spend federal money, to include $33.5 billion in the bipartisan infrastructure bill to breach the dams and replace the benefits they provide.

After the Idaho Republican’s pitch failed to garner enough support to make it into that legislation, Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a member of Senate Democratic leadership, announced Oct. 22 she plans to get Congress to authorize a federal study of the cost and impact of breaching the Snake River dams.

Cantwell, meanwhile, become chair of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee after Democrats won two Senate runoff races in Georgia in January and took control of the Senate. The panel’s broad jurisdiction includes oversight of high-profile tech companies and the aviation industry, but it also oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, an agency with a major role in the nation’s fisheries.

Biden campaigned on a promise to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure – while atoning for the harm some of that infrastructure has done – and Cantwell said as soon as she took over the chair of the Commerce Committee, she knew she had a rare opportunity to secure funds to replace the culverts that block fish from many of their traditional spawning grounds.

“We said, ‘Look, if the president’s going to talk about infrastructure investment, one thing’s really clear: A lot of infrastructure has damaged our fish passage and we need to do something about that,’ ” Cantwell said.

A 2018 Supreme Court ruling requires the state to fix more than 400 fish passages under Western Washington highways, at a cost of some $3.7 billion, by 2030.

“A fractured river and stream system in the Pacific Northwest is among the diversity of challenges salmon are faced with in the region,” Dan McDonald, president of the Yakima Bait Company, said in a statement. “These investments, including $1 billion for culvert removal and modernization, mark significant progress in mitigating some of those challenges.”

Narrowly seizing control of the Senate gave Democrats access to a tool called budget reconciliation, which lets the majority party pass budget-related legislation – provisions that either raise revenue or spend federal money – without the threat of the minority party blocking it with a filibuster.

As a bipartisan group of senators negotiated the infrastructure bill, which includes about $550 billion in new spending over five years, Democrats piled the rest of Biden’s agenda into what has become the Build Back Better Act, whose total price stands at $1.75 trillion over a decade.

Whittling that bill down from its original $3.5 trillion price tag has forced Democrats to fight over limited funding for their respective priorities, but Cantwell said powerful allies like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – a California Democrat who’s also interested in coastal ecosystems – helped keep the salmon funding in the bill.

In a meeting last week with Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat who has scrutinized every piece of the Build Back Better Act to cut costs, Cantwell said Manchin didn’t object to the funds for salmon, perhaps partly because the West Virginia senator is an avid angler.

The single biggest piece of salmon recovery funding in the Build Back Better Act is $1 billion for habitat restoration grants, which could help clear a backlog of projects across the state.

According to the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office, there are 157 unfunded salmon recovery projects east of the Cascades in need of $56.6 million that would benefit salmon in the Columbia, Yakima and Snake rivers. In the Puget Sound region, there are 218 salmon restoration projects awaiting $117 million in funding.

“One billion dollars is several orders of magnitude over what has been provided for salmon recovery annually and marks an historic investment for the salmon, orcas, and citizens of Washington,” Megan Duffy, director of the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office, wrote in an email.

“This level of investment will enable transformative restoration of our estuaries and floodplains, reconnect lost habitat, move infrastructure out of harm’s way, and conduct the studies and monitoring we need to guide the state’s efforts,” Duffy said. “It will allow for implementation of the bigger, more complex, game-changing type of projects. This is a giant step toward delivering on our promises to the tribes who depend on salmon for their way of life.”

The Democrats’ bill would also make a historic investment in hatcheries, which are vital to keep enough fish in the region’s waters to feed the southern resident orcas and allow tribal, commercial and recreational fishing to continue amid dwindling numbers of natural-origin fish. State and tribal hatcheries could benefit from a new $400 million NOAA grant program, and another $19.6 million in hatchery funding would go to tribes through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“The Colville Tribes has been working for decades to restore salmon in the region and improve hatchery capacity, including a phased approach to reintroduce salmon into the blocked area above Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams,” Andy Joseph, Jr., chairman of the Colville Business Council, said in a statement. “The Tribes appreciates Senator Cantwell’s leadership to fund these Department of Commerce programs and hopes to utilize these programs in its ongoing efforts.”

An equally crucial provision, Cantwell said, is the $500 million investment in salmon research at NOAA.

“One thing that is clear is we need a lot more science,” she said. “Why are salmon dying at sea? We don’t have any science on that, so how are we supposed to make these decisions?”

NOAA monitors ocean conditions and tracks the impact of various factors on the number of salmon that return to spawn each year, but Cantwell said the agency’s past directors have routinely told Congress they didn’t have enough money for salmon research and recovery efforts.

On top of the nearly $5 billion for salmon restoration and research between the two bills, $6 billion in the Build Back Better Act would go to a NOAA fund that could partly support Northwest coastal ecosystems. The bipartisan infrastructure bill would also reauthorize the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund – which supports $650 million a year in fishery restoration and conservation programs – and includes another $33 billion for water quality programs run by the Environmental Protection Agency that could indirectly benefit fish.

While Republicans have objected to the overall cost of the Build Back Better Act and how Democrats want to pay for it by raising taxes on the richest Americans and large corporations, no GOP lawmaker has taken specific aim at the salmon provisions. Nineteen Republican senators voted for the infrastructure bill, including Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch of Idaho.

Some criticism has come from progressives who lament how some of the Democrats’ priorities, like the expanded child tax credit, have been scaled back to fit within the smaller Build Back Better Act while other provisions have stayed in the bill. David Dayen, executive editor of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, wrote Friday that while he supported the salmon restoration funds, they could be passed through separate legislation and Democrats should have focused their limited resources on other programs.

Democratic aides have worked over the weekend to craft the details of the Build Back Better Act, based on a compromise framework the White House presented Thursday. As Manchin and fellow centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., forced the party to scale back the bill, House progressives have insisted they will vote for the infrastructure package only when the Senate passes the larger bill. With Biden’s agenda and his party’s fate in next year’s elections counting on the two bills passing, Democrats in Congress are likely to strike a deal in the coming weeks.

Orion Donovan-Smith's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper’s managing editor.

Sept. 27, 2023

By Orion Donovan Smith, orionds@spokesman.com(202) 853-2524

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a landmark memorandum ordering federal agencies to do their part to restore salmon runs in the Columbia and Snake rivers and honor the U.S. government’s treaty obligations to Northwest tribes.

“It is time for a sustained national effort to restore healthy and abundant native fish populations in the Basin,” Biden said in the document, adding that it is his administration’s policy to work with Congress, tribes, states, local governments and other stakeholders “to pursue effective, creative, and durable solutions” to help salmon, steelhead and other native fish recover.

Coming less than a week after the administration committed $200 million over 20 years to reintroduce salmon above Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams as part of a settlement agreement with Upper Columbia tribes, Wednesday’s move was hailed by tribal leaders and environmental groups.

“We commend President Biden for his commitment to salmon recovery and focusing the full power and scope of the federal government on this issue,” Corinne Sams, chair of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said in a statement. “He has sent a clear message throughout the federal government that business as usual is no longer acceptable. Never before has the federal government issued a Presidential Memorandum on salmon. This is historic.”

The directive gives all relevant federal agencies – including the Interior Department, Bonneville Power Administration, Army Corps of Engineers and others – 120 days to review their programs affecting native fish. If any of those programs are not consistent with the legal responsibilities the federal government has under treaties it signed with Northwest tribes in 1855, which guaranteed Indigenous people the right to fish in all their “usual and accustomed” places, the agencies must align them with Biden’s stated goal of restoring salmon to abundance.

Chief James Allan, chairman of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, said in a statement that the tribe is encouraged by Biden’s commitment and plans to hold his administration to its word.

“We have said for years that there are many things the federal agencies can do to help these fish populations but they have flat out ignored us or refused to act,” he said. “Hopefully this marks a change in federal policy for the better, and we will continue pushing for full accountability and recovery.”

The Nez Perce Tribe, in a statement, commended the president’s pledge to respect the 1855 treaties, in which the Nez Perce and other tribes ceded some 60,000 square miles of what are now Washington, Oregon and Idaho in exchange for hunting and fishing rights.

“By publicly acknowledging that healthy and abundant salmon runs are essential, we know the Biden Administration is prioritizing the needs of the Northwest and working to uphold our Treaty,” the tribe said. “We are relying on these Federal Agencies to take the necessary, urgent actions to restore salmon populations in the Columbia Basin. We are committed to working with the Biden Administration in partnership as we move forward.”

Biden’s memorandum directs the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget to develop an “intergovernmental partnership” between the federal government, the Columbia Basin tribes and the states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana.

Biden’s move drew mixed reactions from Congress, where the region’s lawmakers largely agree on efforts to help salmon recover but have clashed – not necessarily along party lines – over proposals to breach four dams on the Lower Snake River.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., welcomed the memorandum and pledged to use her position as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to continue investing in salmon recovery.

“I’m really glad President Biden and his administration are taking salmon recovery and Tribal treaty rights seriously and working from every angle to restore fish populations in the Columbia River Basin, while meeting the region’s resiliency needs,” Murray said in a statement. “Salmon are absolutely essential for our environment, our economy, and Pacific Northwest Tribes–and ensuring we are making real federal investments in salmon recovery has long been a top priority for me.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Central Washington Republican and a vocal opponent of dam breaching, accused the Biden administration of using the announcement as a smokescreen “to give the perception that residents and stakeholders are being heard” while planning to breach the dams. The administration has so far avoided taking a public stance on the deeply contentious issue.

“While there may not be explicit recommendations to breach the Lower Snake River Dams in this memorandum, that is the goal of this Administration,” Newhouse said in a statement. “This announcement is bureaucracy at its worst and the fact remains that these dams are vital to our economy, our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, and the ability to send our commodities overseas.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Spokane Republican who also opposes removing the dams, expressed measured optimism about Biden’s order.

“While I’m pleased to see the Biden administration finally acknowledge the irreplaceable benefits the Columbia-Snake River System provides to Eastern Washington and the entire Pacific Northwest, they cannot continue to ignore the science and facts,” she said in a statement, pointing to recent improvements in certain salmon runs. “Our mitigation efforts are leading to positive results that we can – and will – build on if this administration is willing to work together to achieve measurable and defined shared goals.”

Biden nodded to the benefits dams provide – in the form of hydropower, irrigation and barge transportation – committing to “secure a clean and resilient energy future for the region” and “support local agriculture and its role in food security domestically and globally.” At the same time, he pledged to invest in the communities that depend on the dams “to enhance resilience to changes” in the dams’ operation, which suggests support for a long-term plan proposed by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho Falls, to make dam removal viable.

Along with Biden’s memorandum, the Interior Department announced $3.6 million in new funding for tribal fish hatcheries in the region. That adds to hundreds of millions in previously announced funding for hatcheries, removing culverts and other barriers to fish migration, habitat cleanup and more.
Todd Myers, environmental director at the Washington Policy Center, a think tank that opposes dam removal, said “there’s a lot to like” about all of those investments, although he wants to see lower overall federal spending to reduce the nation’s budget deficit.

Myers said he hopes the 120-day review process will produce recommendations such as culling the seals and sea lions that feast on salmon and whose numbers have exploded in recent decades, partly as a result of legislation Congress passed in 1972. On the other hand, he worries the review could result in the administration endorsing dam breaching.
Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, an association of public and cooperative power utilities that opposes dam breaching, called Wednesday’s announcement “bittersweet.”

“Northwest RiverPartners applauds the Biden Administration for going on record as recognizing the unique and essential role the region’s hydroelectric dams, including the Lower Snake River Dams, play in helping us meet our clean energy, climate, economic, and salmon recovery objectives,” Miller said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Memorandum released today builds on and extends a flawed process that has denied affected stakeholders and the public a meaningful role.”

Conservation and fishing groups, which largely support dam breaching as the centerpiece of a broader range of actions to help salmon recover, welcomed Biden’s declaration while emphasizing that it didn’t meet all their demands.

“With this directive, the President is sending a clear message to the Bonneville Power Administration, Army Corps of Engineers and other relevant agencies and leaders within the federal government that business-as-usual is no longer acceptable,” Tanya Riordan, policy and advocacy director of Washington-basd Save Our wild Salmon, said in a statement.

Mitch Cutter, salmon and steelhead conservation associate at the Idaho Conservation League, said in a statement, “We applaud President Biden and his Administration for saying the right things, now it’s time to do the right things.”

A coalition of environmental groups engaged in ongoing litigation with the federal government over salmon in the Columbia Basin applauded the announcement while making clear that it didn’t fully resolve the issues in the long-running legal fight.

“We’re heartened by the commitment the Biden Administration is demonstrating in this Memorandum to honor obligations to Tribal Nations and to restore Columbia River salmon to a healthy abundance,” Amanda Goodin, an attorney at Earthjustice involved in the litigation, said in a statement. “Now we need to finish the job. NOAA Fisheries has already concluded that the best and only certain way to recover Snake River salmon to a healthy abundance is to breach the four Lower Snake River dams.”

In August, the coalition and the Biden administration agreed to extend a deadline to reach a settlement in that litigation until the end of October. At least one more major announcement affecting salmon in the Columbia Basin is expected by then.

Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.

By Orion Donovan-Smith and Eli Francovich
Oct. 22, 2021

WASHINGTON – Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Jay Inslee on Friday announced they will lead a regional process to consider “all options” to restore declining salmon and steelhead runs in the Columbia River Basin, including the potential breaching of the Lower Snake River dams.

In a joint statement, the Washington Democrats offered the first details of an initiative they first announced in May. In a virtual gathering of conservationists last week, Inslee outlined the process, which will assess what it would take to replace the transportation, hydropower and irrigation benefits provided by the four dams between Lewiston and the Tri-Cities – and if doing so is necessary to preserve salmon in the Snake River and its tributaries.

“We approach this question with open minds and without a predetermined decision,” according to Murray and Inslee’s statement. “Both of us believe that, for the region to move forward, the time has come to identify specific details for how the impacts of breach can, or cannot, be mitigated.”

Their announcement was made a day after the federal government and conservation groups agreed to pause a 20-year legal battle over measures to preserve salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Recognizing “the urgency of tackling this longstanding challenge as salmon runs continue to decline,” they wrote, their recommendations will be finished by the end of July 2022. Before that, they plan to conduct “robust outreach” to hear from communities across the Northwest, including tribes who say their fishing rights – guaranteed by treaties – are being undermined by declining salmon runs.

The statement also laid out a roadmap for legislation in Congress to keep dam breaching on the table. Murray aims to use the Water Resources Development Act, a bill Congress passes every two years, to authorize a federal study evaluating the cost and impact of dam breaching.

That legislation should pass in the second half of 2022, and the study – conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers or another federal agency – could pave the way for Congress to authorize dam breaching in a subsequent Water Resources Development Act in 2024 or 2026. While the Murray-Inslee process will make a recommendation on dam breaching, a federal study would only examine what such a move would take.

Reactions poured in from both sides of the dam breaching debate soon after Murray and Inslee made their announcement.

A coalition of 12 conservation groups that favors dam breaching – including Columbia Riverkeeper, the Idaho Conservation League and Trout Unlimited – welcomed the initiative, especially for its emphasis on involving tribes and Murray and Inslee’s decision not to “start from scratch,” promising to draw on the extensive research already done on an issue that has been debated for decades.

In a statement, Justin Hayes, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League, credited Murray for moving the process forward in Congress but cautioned that another federal study alone would not solve the region’s salmon wars.

Chris Wood, president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, called dam breaching the “inevitable conclusion” of the Democrats’ process.

The coalition pointed to a recent poll, conducted in July on their behalf, that found while most Washington voters were unaware of an effort to breach the dams and replace their benefits, 59% of them were open to that idea when it was described to them.

The poll also found, however, that far more Washington voters believe removing the dams is unnecessary than those who think breaching must happen to save salmon. That perspective is represented by the state’s three House GOP lawmakers, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane; Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside; and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Battle Ground.

“It is becoming more and more clear that the public and stakeholders who rely on the Columbia Snake River System have been shut out of conversations between the Biden administration, federal agencies, and groups whose sole mission is to breach the Lower Snake River dams,” the three Republicans said in a joint statement.

Calling the timing of Murray and Inslee’s announcement – a day after the Biden administration announced the pause in litigation – “suspicious at best,” the GOP lawmakers said the Murray-Inslee process “appears to be nothing more than a predetermined backdoor deal in the making.”

“It should sound the alarm for anyone interested in transparency and a balanced public dialogue over the vital role the dams play in the Pacific Northwest,” they said. “There is something fishy going on, and it’s not just the promising salmon returns we are seeing on the Lower Snake River.”

That last line of the Republicans’ statement refers to the number of spring and summer chinook counted at the uppermost dam on the Lower Snake River this year, a 17% increase from a year earlier, which they have cited to argue salmon can recover without breaching the dams.

Tribes and conservation groups counter that even with that increase, those chinook and other fish that return to spawn in the Snake River Basin are far below their historic levels. That figure also includes hatchery fish, which are not counted for the purposes of the Endangered Species Act, under which Snake River spring and summer chinook are listed as “threatened.”

Samuel Penney, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Council, hailed Inslee and Murray’s move, which he said comes at “a moment of crisis for the Northwest that tribes and their peoples perhaps have seen most clearly and worryingly.”

“Salmon are at a crisis; there is a plainly intertwined climate warming crisis; and for tribes this is a moment of frank demand that the United States address 90 years of tribal and environmental injustice imposed by the Columbia Power System on tribes and their lands and waters,” Penney said in a statement.

“The Columbia Power System was literally constructed out of the rivers and reservations and homelands of 19 Columbia Basin tribes. When that destructive history is truly understood, the modesty of the present request is plain, and the science supporting it is clear: salmon need a free-flowing, climate-resilient Lower Snake River, not a series of slow, easily-warmed reservoirs. The Nez Perce Tribe and its people intend to ensure that salmon do not go extinct on our watch.”

Kurt Miller, the executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, hydropower advocacy group based in Vancouver, Washington, called Murray and Inslee’s commitment to salmon recovery “commendable,” but questioned its transparency and worried it would begin with the assumption that dam breaching is the best way to save Snake River salmon.

“You can see that they are examining whether or not you can replace the services provided by the Snake River dams,” he said. “But they are skipping over an issue that I think is more important, which is whether you should replace the services.”

“I think that the truth is people don’t like the idea of climate change being the cause, because then they feel helpless,” Miller said, pointing to declines in chinook salmon along the Pacific coast of the U.S. and Canada, which scientists attribute partly to changing ocean conditions.

Joseph Bogaard, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon, a coalition of fishing associations and conservation groups, said he was encouraged by Inslee and Murray’s announcement and hoped for progress toward dam breaching next year.

“We have a certain political window of opportunity in 2022,” he said. “And that sort of doubles the sense of urgency.”

Bogaard added that he credits Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, for jump-starting the process when he endorsed dam breaching as part of a comprehensive proposal he released in February, after years of private meetings with stakeholders in the region.

Simpson did not respond to a request for comment on Murray’s and Inslee’s approach, which appears to mirror his in many ways, although Simpson’s proposal failed to garner the support from either Democrats or Republicans he needed to secure funding through bipartisan infrastructure legislation that passed the Senate in August.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, a key panel with jurisdiction over parts of the federal hydropower system, also welcomed the announcement from her fellow Washington Democrats.

“Salmon are an integral part of the Northwest economy and environment,” Cantwell said in a statement. “I look forward to stakeholders getting out of the courtroom and collaborating around science-based solutions. I look forward to hearing from all Washingtonians, including Tribes, farmers, fishermen, and river users, and working with my colleagues on this issue.”

Murray and Inslee will soon announce a way for the public to submit written comments as part of their process, they said in the statement.

By Eli Francovich
Oct. 21, 2021

The 11 conservation, fishing and tribal groups involved in the ongoing lawsuit alleging that federal fishery and water managers have failed to adequately protect endangered wild salmon , requested a stay on Thursday to pause legal proceedings. The United States government, the State of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe also signed the request, which was filed in the United States District Court in Portland. The original case, National Wildlife Federation v. National Marine Fisheries Service, was first filed in 2001.

If the stay is granted, all court proceedings would be paused until July 31. The request includes an agreement on how eight dams in the Columbia River system will operate in 2022. Broadly the agreement will increase spill over the dams which can help juvenile fish survive.

The agreement received support from the highest levels of the departments of Interior and Energy, Thursday.

“The Columbia River System is an invaluable natural resource that is critical to many stakeholders in the Basin. Today’s filing represents an important opportunity to prioritize the resolution of more than 20 years of litigation and identify creative solutions that improve conditions for salmon for years to come,” said Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland in a statement. “While it is important to balance the region’s economy and power generation, it is also time to improve conditions for Tribes that have relied on these important species since time immemorial.”

“Hydroelectric power plays an incredible role in integrating renewable resources and providing carbon-free power, a great example of the affordable and clean energy sources that are available in all pockets of this country,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “By joining forces with our interagency partners and key stakeholders in the Northwest, DOE will ensure that the reduction of carbon emissions remains a priority, alongside supporting a strong economy and affordable power for families and businesses, as we partner in the Northwest to meet the full range of the region’s goals.”

Salmon – and the Snake River – have been in the news after Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson announced a plan to breach the four Lower Snake River dams in hopes of saving endangered salmon and steelhead populations earlier this year. That proposal was opposed by some environmental groups, farmers and advocates of clean power. Simpson’s proposal, which depended on being included in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, did not move forward.

The ongoing plight of salmon, combined with a national awareness of “tribal justice issues” led to Thursday’s agreement, said Justin Hayes, the executive director of the Idaho Conservation League which is one of the 11 plaintiffs.

“Quite frankly Congressman Simpson announcing his proposal in February really opened the region’s eyes up to what has to be done to save salmon but also what has to be done so the region can take that step forward and make other communities whole,” he said.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray will announce their own salmon and dam plan soon.

“Washington is pleased to see the parties talking about how to reach a durable solution,” said Inslee spokesperson Mike Faulk. “The work happening around the future of the dams in various forums can and should complement each other. It’s encouraging to see movement on this complex and historically contentious issue.”

Despite the issue’s long, contentious history, Joseph Bogaard, the executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon called the request to pause litigation “unprecedented.”

“The (Biden) administration, in being party to this motion, is committing itself to sit down outside of litigation and work with the parties … to craft a long-term solution,” he said.

The Nez Perce Tribe, which is one of the plaintiffs and has argued the loss of salmon is a violation of their constitutionally granted treaty rights, announced its support of the request in a news release Thursday.

“Salmon and steelhead are at a crisis. Short-term measures are not the answer. We all know that. But this temporary compromise, which provides incremental benefits for fish, will have been a critical turning point if it enables a comprehensive resolution that prevents the extinction of salmon and steelhead populations – which is clearly on the horizon,” said Nez Perce tribal Chairman, Samuel N. Penney in a news release. “Visionary action to save our salmon and honor our treaties is urgently needed. We need the United States Government to comprehend the situation and act. The science is clear: salmon and steelhead need a free-flowing, climate-resilient Lower Snake River, not a series of slow, easily-warmed reservoirs. The Nez Perce Tribe and its people intend to ensure that salmon do not go extinct on our watch.”

Although the first paperwork in the National Wildlife Federation v. National Marine Fisheries Service case was filed in 2001, its roots go to at least 1991 when Snake River sockeye salmon were listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

After the construction of four Lower Snake River dams between 1962 and 1975, chinook and steelhead numbers started declining. The protection and billions of dollars provided by the 1991 Endangered Species Act listing of sockeye salmon has failed to stem the hemorrhaging.

That is what much of the ongoing court case has centered around, whether federal managers abided by the stringent conservation rules and restrictions mandated by an ESA listing. Since the 1990s, federal managers have drafted and published six biological opinions, a federally mandated assessment of how proposed actions may or may not impact a listed species.

Three different federal judges have tossed out those biological opinions, arguing among other things, that the opinions failed to consider dam removal.

In 2020, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bonneville Power Administration, published a new biological opinion, after being ordered to do so by U.S. Judge Michael Simon in Portland. The 2020 Columbia River System Operations Environmental Impact Statement called for more water to be spilled over dams in the Columbia River Basin. However, the 2020 opinion rejected breaching the dams as an alternative.

At that time Earthjustice, and the 11 plaintiffs, challenged that opinion. That challenge will be paused if the stay is granted.

Northwest River Partners, an advocacy group for hydroelectric power based in Vancouver, Washington, praised the decision to pause litigation. However, executive director Kurt Miller defended the importance of hydropower and questioned whether the dams are the primary cause of declining salmon populations, noting that there has been a coastwide decline in Chinook salmon attributed to global warming and acidifying oceans.

“These resources provide the region with the lowest carbon footprint of any electric grid in the nation and the most affordable clean energy in the U.S.,” Miller said in the statement.

This story is developing

By Becky Kramer
Thursday, August 18, 2016

About 35 percent of this year’s Snake River sockeye salmon run hasn’t shown up at Lower Granite Dam, and the fish are probably dead, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

About 1,240 adult Snake River sockeye were counted at Bonneville Dam on the Lower Columbia earlier this summer. But only 788 of those fish have been detected at Lower Granite, the farthest upstream dam of the four Lower Snake River dams.

“They’re presumed to have perished,” Army Corps spokesman Bruce Henrickson said of the missing fish.

This year’s results are better than 2015, when 98 percent of the Snake River sockeye run died because of high temperatures in both the Columbia and the Snake, Henrickson said. Last year was the hottest on record.

Adult sockeye are particularly vulnerable to hot water, because their migration to spawning grounds coincides with the hottest part of summer. Water temperatures above 68 degrees are dangerous for salmon.

The Army Corps has been pumping cool water into the fish ladders at Lower Granite and Little Goose dams this summer to reduce the “thermal barrier” that stops salmon from migrating upstream. The pumping appears to be helping, officials said.

But salmon advocates say more must be done to protect fish from lethal temperatures in reservoirs behind the dams on both the Columbia and Snake. On Monday, they filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the agency’s failure to address high temperatures in the river system. Dams contribute to temperature problems by creating slack water reservoirs that heat up in the sun.

Snake River sockeye returned in record numbers in 2014, when more than 2,700 adult fish passed over Lower Granite Dam.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/aug/18/about-35-percent-of-snake-river-sockeye-presumed-d/

Nov 14, 2016
 
By Becky Kramer
      
Bryan Jones is a Whitman County wheat grower who ships his grain to Portland by barge.

He’s not against breaching the four Lower Snake River dams if cost-effective alternatives can be found for getting his crops to market. It’s an issue that Jones, an angler, feels so strongly about that he spoke at a pro-salmon rally Monday at Riverfront Park.

“I know there are solutions out there,” Jones told the crowd. “Free the Snake. Save the salmon, but keep the farmers whole.”

Jones was a moderate voice in an often polarized discussion over the dams that took place Monday in Spokane.

More than 200 people turned out at the Davenport Hotel for an open house on Columbia-Snake River dam operations. Federal agencies are gathering public comments as they prepare a new environmental review of the system’s impact on salmon and steelhead.

The review was ordered by a federal judge in May, who said federal agencies had “done their utmost” to avoid considering breaching the Lower Snake dams, and suggested that a proper review under federal law could require that analysis.

Pro-salmon groups say that removing the four Lower Snake dams is one of the most important actions needed to help wild salmon and steelhead runs. The dams impede access to thousands of miles of wilderness streams – habitat that will help salmon survive as the climate warms, they say.

The government is overdue for a true cost-benefit analysis of the dams, which produce about 5 percent of the Northwest’s electricity, said Harvey Morrison, a member of the Spokane Falls chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Economics was also on the mind of Alex McGregor, president of McGregor Co., an agricultural chemical and equipment company based in Colfax. About 60 percent of Washington’s wheat and barley is shipped by river. The dams’ reservoirs allow barge shipments on the Lower Snake, providing an alternative to rail shipments.

“I think we’ve made so much progress at finding ways to improve fish survival,” McGregor said.

Taking out the dams would create challenges for farm families, said Les Wigen, a retired Whitman County commissioner.

“The Snake River is our Interstate 5 corridor to Eastern Washington,” he said.

Stevens County Commissioner Wes McCart was also at Monday’s meeting. Changes in dam operations on the Snake River have the potential to affect the Upper Columbia River, where Stevens County has a long shoreline, he said.

“If they breach the four Lower Snake dams, what does that do to our power production?” McCart said.

Even modest fluctuations in the price of power will affect rural communities’ ability to recruit manufacturing businesses, he said.

Monday’s meeting has been one of the best attended of 15 meetings held around the region, said David Wilson, a Bonneville Power spokesman. About 40 people were lined up before the doors opened.

Another meeting takes place from 4-7 p.m. Wednesday at the Red Lion Inn in Lewiston.

To see photos, full article:  http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/nov/14/big-crowd-turns-out-in-spokane-to-talk-about-lower/

By Becky Kramer

April 26, 2018

Breaching the four Lower Snake River Dams would require an act of Congress under legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives today.

The bill, sponsored by Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, R- Wash., would block spilling of additional water over the dams, which was recently ordered by the court to help young salmon and steelhead migrate to the ocean. Any modifications to the dams’ operations would be halted for about five years, unless Congress specifically authorized changes to power production or Snake River navigation.

House Resolution 3144 recognizes the dams’ contribution to the Northwest economy and provides certainty to irrigators, barge operators and the region’s electric ratepayers, the sponsors said during a conference call.

Additional spills of water over the dams to aid fish costs about $40 million yearly in lost power production, which affects rates for families and businesses, Newhouse said.

“Salmon and dams can co-exist,” McMorris Rodgers said. “That’s a story we need to continue to tell.”

Environmental groups, outfitters and commercial and sport fishing interests criticized the bill, calling it an effort to thwart salmon recovery efforts by replacing science with a political process. The legislation would overturn multiple court rulings on salmon, they said.

Spilling water over dams during juvenile salmon and steelhead migration correlates to higher adult returns, said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon. There’s strong support among the region’s fish biologists for the additional spills ordered by the court, he said.

Bogaard said $40 million is a high estimate of forgone power production, but said the cost still works out to less than $1 per month for ratepayers. People don’t have to choose between salmon recovery and low power costs, he said.

Paul Fish, president of Mountain Gear in Spokane, was among 130 Northwest business owners who signed a letter to McMorris Rodgers opposing H.R. 3144.

“Salmon and steelhead are important to our community,” Fish said. “To legislate against good science and a court ruling seems like an end run around the way our system was made to work.”

In 2016, a federal judge in Portland tossed out the latest of five federal plans for restoring wild salmon and steelhead runs on the Columbia and Snake river systems. U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon ordered federal agencies to prepare a new plan.

In his ruling, Simon wrote that the federal agencies had “done their utmost” to avoid considering breaching the Lower Snake dams, and suggested that a proper review under federal law could require analyzing the effect of breaching or bypassing one or more of the dams.

McMorris Rodgers said her bill doesn’t hamper the ongoing National Environmental Policy Act review of the dams’ impact on salmon, or prevent federal agencies from conducting a cost-benefit analysis of removing the Lower Snake Dams. The legislation keeps the status quo until a new plan is issued, she said.

Environmental groups, however, say they’re concerned about a provision in the bill requiring congressional authority for actions or studies that would reduce power production at federal dams or limit Snake River navigation.

The legislation passed the House on a vote of 225 to 189. The bill will head to the Senate for consideration, Newhouse said.

By Eli Francovich
elif@spokesman.com

Mon., Feb. 17, 2020

The Spokane Canoe and Kayak Club’s February general meeting, featuring wild salmon advocate Sam Mace, will be Feb. 24 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Mountain Gear Headquarters, 6021 E. Mansfield Ave., in Spokane Valley.

The meeting is free and open to the public.

Sam Mace, the Inland Northwest director of Save Our Wild Salmon, will be the featured speaker at the Spokane Canoe and Kayak club’s February meeting.

Mace has spent much of her professional life fighting for a free-flowing Snake River.

While removing the four dams on the lower Snake River is a contentious and decades-long debate, Mace argues in recent years its gained critical momentum.

She and others argue that removing those dams would save staggering steelhead and salmon populations and have minimal impacts on power production or agricultural shipping.

Mace argues that a free-flowing Snake River mean more recreation – if fish populations recovered, more anglers would come to town. A restored Snake River basin would also attract recreationists of all types, she said.

Opponents of removal argue that the dams provide cheap and clean power and help farmers transport crops. Removal, they say, would have a deleterious effect on the local economy.

Below is a lightly edited Q&A with Mace in advance of her Feb. 24 talk.

Q: Why should Canoe and Kayak Club members (and outdoor enthusiasts more broadly) care about the Snake River dams?

A: If you love rivers, you know how important they are for recreation, fish, wildlife and local economies. Restoring the lower Snake River represents an unparalleled opportunity to increase river-based recreation in Eastern Washington.

Q: What would a free-flowing lower Snake River corridor mean for fish, wildlife, recreation and local communities?

A: We are engaging with local communities to envision a free-flowing, 144-mile river corridor and 14,000 acres no longer under water. These lands once supported important bird and wildlife habitat, beautiful swim beaches, river recreation, fishing, agriculture and includes places culturally important to tribes. Economic studies show that a restored river would bring hundreds of millions of dollars into our regional economy and rural towns. Let’s imagine Clarkston and Lewiston with a revitalized free-flowing waterfront. Let’s think big.

Q: This is a decades-long debate. What, if anything, has changed in the past several years?

A: So much! The discussion is completely different from 20 years ago. The Northwest has now experienced several successful dam removals that dramatically restored rivers and fisheries, including the Elwha dams on the Olympic Peninsula. People aren’t afraid anymore to ask, “Does this dam still make sense?” Many still do, but some do not.

On the lower Snake, the dramatic decline in the benefits these aging dams has really changed the conversation. More people are asking whether it is worth investing in the maintenance and repairs needed on these aging dams. There are alternatives.

Third, the continued Puget Sound orca deaths and struggling salmon and steelhead runs have made the need for real action ever more urgent. We now know our orcas feed on Columbia salmon and that our best shot at getting starving whales more food is restoring the Snake River. People across the region are calling for action to save these Northwest icons. Closer to home, the loss of fishing seasons has hit outfitters and rural towns hard. People in these communities are stepping up to defend their livelihoods.

One encouraging development is more elected leaders are stepping up to a discussion on salmon restoration that supports all options on the table, including dam removal. Governor Inslee is wrapping up a regional stakeholder process that brought people together for dialogue. Idaho Republican Congressman Mike Simpson has put all options on the table in his commitment to restore Idaho’s salmon. The conversation has changed.

Q: What about the hydroelectric power produced by the dams? And the barge traffic? How can those losses be offset?

A: Our changing Northwest energy portfolio has made the power replaceable with grid investments, renewable and other improvements. Barging has steeply declined as more shippers move to rail and truck. We want to work with shippers to secure transportation upgrades that provide a more modern transportation system. Done right, everyone can end up better off.

Q: What’s next in your effort to remove the four dams?

A: The federal agencies will release their draft plan for salmon and dams at the end of this month with a 45-day public comment period to follow. Public hearings are scheduled for March, including Spokane. We need people turning out to support a restored river and demanding real action from our elected leaders.

By Becky Kramer

MONDAY, AUG. 15, 2016

Hot water is killing salmon in the reservoirs behind Columbia and Snake river dams, and the federal government must take action to prevent future die-offs of the Northwest’s iconic fish, environmental groups say.

Last year, more than 250,000 adult sockeye salmon perished when temperatures in some reservoirs hit 72 degrees by mid-July. Nearly all of the 4,000 sockeye returning to spawn in Idaho’s Stanley Basin were killed.

“For the people of Idaho, this is a huge deal,” said Kevin Lewis, executive director of Idaho Rivers United. “Sockeye salmon are a special species to us, and they’re already imperiled. To have virtually the entire run killed from hot water is unacceptable.”

A coalition of salmon advocates on Monday filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the water temperature. If the agency doesn’t develop a plan for addressing high temperatures within two months, or reach a settlement, the groups will proceed to a lawsuit under the federal Clean Water Act.

“I think 2015 was an ugly glimpse into the future of what the Columbia and Snake rivers could look like under climate change,” said Miles Johnson, an attorney for the Columbia Riverkeeper. “We need a comprehensive plan to deal with dams’ impacts on water temperature, or we may be telling our kids stories about salmon instead of teaching them to fish.”

Dams heat up water temperatures by creating large, slackwater reservoirs that act like “solar panels” for absorbing radiant energy, Lewis said. Water temperatures above 68 degrees are dangerous for salmon.

Adult sockeye are particularly vulnerable because they migrate back to spawning grounds during the hottest part of summer. Spring and fall chinook migrations typically occur before and after the temperatures peak.

Last year was the warmest on record globally, with drought and early melting of snowpack affecting Northwest rivers. Even though 2016 has been a return to more typical weather patterns in the Northwest, some Columbia and Snake reservoirs still are recording temperatures of 70 degrees. It’s the third consecutive year of record-high water temperatures in the rivers, salmon advocates say.

“Salmon are used to living in much colder water; it would be like us being outside on a 110-degree day with a fur coat on,” Lewis said. “Every year, we’re flirting with disaster. It doesn’t take much to push us over the norm.”

The waters of the Columbia and Snake rivers are listed by Washington, Oregon and Idaho as too hot to protect returning adult salmon in the summer and fall. Back in 2000, both Washington and Oregon asked the EPA to develop a legally enforceable plan to address water warmth in the river system.

The EPA released a draft plan in 2003 identifying dams as the primary cause of higher river temperatures.

However, the plan “was never finalized. It got put on a shelf,” said Brett VandenHeuvel, the Columbia Riverkeeper’s executive director.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates many of the federal dams on the Columbia and Snake, “derailed the process,” Johnson said. The Army Corps wanted to address the warm water through an alternate plan, but “essentially, nothing has happened for the last 15 years,” he said.

An EPA spokesman declined to respond, saying the agency’s policy is not to comment on pending litigation. The Army Corps also declined to comment Monday.

Water temperatures in Lake Roosevelt, the 150-mile-long reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam, are up to 10 degrees warmer in late fall than pre-dam conditions, the draft EPA report said. In the Lower Snake River, water temperatures in four reservoirs are each 1 to 2 degrees warmer than they were before the dams were built, Johnson said.
The warming has a cumulative effect on the Lower Snake, he said. The water gets progressively warmer as it moves through each reservoir, which affects salmon migration, he said. The Snake also delivers the warm water to the Columbia, Johnson said.
Last year, many of the fish kills occurred in the Lower Columbia River, before the fish reached the John Day and McNary dams, he said.

“The main stem of the Columbia itself has pretty significant temperature problems, especially in warm years with low flow,” Johnson said. “EPA recognized that temperature is a problem for salmon and steelhead. We’re hopeful that EPA will restart the planning process” to address the water temperature.

Other groups involved in the litigation include the Snake River Waterkeeper, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the Institute for Fisheries Resources.

By Becky Kramer

MONDAY, AUG. 15, 2016

Hot water is killing salmon in the reservoirs behind Columbia and Snake river dams, and the federal government must take action to prevent future die-offs of the Northwest’s iconic fish, environmental groups say.

Last year, more than 250,000 adult sockeye salmon perished when temperatures in some reservoirs hit 72 degrees by mid-July. Nearly all of the 4,000 sockeye returning to spawn in Idaho’s Stanley Basin were killed.

“For the people of Idaho, this is a huge deal,” said Kevin Lewis, executive director of Idaho Rivers United. “Sockeye salmon are a special species to us, and they’re already imperiled. To have virtually the entire run killed from hot water is unacceptable.”

A coalition of salmon advocates on Monday filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the water temperature. If the agency doesn’t develop a plan for addressing high temperatures within two months, or reach a settlement, the groups will proceed to a lawsuit under the federal Clean Water Act.

“I think 2015 was an ugly glimpse into the future of what the Columbia and Snake rivers could look like under climate change,” said Miles Johnson, an attorney for the Columbia Riverkeeper. “We need a comprehensive plan to deal with dams’ impacts on water temperature, or we may be telling our kids stories about salmon instead of teaching them to fish.”

Dams heat up water temperatures by creating large, slackwater reservoirs that act like “solar panels” for absorbing radiant energy, Lewis said. Water temperatures above 68 degrees are dangerous for salmon.

Adult sockeye are particularly vulnerable because they migrate back to spawning grounds during the hottest part of summer. Spring and fall chinook migrations typically occur before and after the temperatures peak.

Last year was the warmest on record globally, with drought and early melting of snowpack affecting Northwest rivers. Even though 2016 has been a return to more typical weather patterns in the Northwest, some Columbia and Snake reservoirs still are recording temperatures of 70 degrees. It’s the third consecutive year of record-high water temperatures in the rivers, salmon advocates say.

“Salmon are used to living in much colder water; it would be like us being outside on a 110-degree day with a fur coat on,” Lewis said. “Every year, we’re flirting with disaster. It doesn’t take much to push us over the norm.”

The waters of the Columbia and Snake rivers are listed by Washington, Oregon and Idaho as too hot to protect returning adult salmon in the summer and fall. Back in 2000, both Washington and Oregon asked the EPA to develop a legally enforceable plan to address water warmth in the river system.

The EPA released a draft plan in 2003 identifying dams as the primary cause of higher river temperatures.

However, the plan “was never finalized. It got put on a shelf,” said Brett VandenHeuvel, the Columbia Riverkeeper’s executive director.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates many of the federal dams on the Columbia and Snake, “derailed the process,” Johnson said. The Army Corps wanted to address the warm water through an alternate plan, but “essentially, nothing has happened for the last 15 years,” he said.

An EPA spokesman declined to respond, saying the agency’s policy is not to comment on pending litigation. The Army Corps also declined to comment Monday.

Water temperatures in Lake Roosevelt, the 150-mile-long reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam, are up to 10 degrees warmer in late fall than pre-dam conditions, the draft EPA report said. In the Lower Snake River, water temperatures in four reservoirs are each 1 to 2 degrees warmer than they were before the dams were built, Johnson said.
The warming has a cumulative effect on the Lower Snake, he said. The water gets progressively warmer as it moves through each reservoir, which affects salmon migration, he said. The Snake also delivers the warm water to the Columbia, Johnson said.
Last year, many of the fish kills occurred in the Lower Columbia River, before the fish reached the John Day and McNary dams, he said.

“The main stem of the Columbia itself has pretty significant temperature problems, especially in warm years with low flow,” Johnson said. “EPA recognized that temperature is a problem for salmon and steelhead. We’re hopeful that EPA will restart the planning process” to address the water temperature.

Other groups involved in the litigation include the Snake River Waterkeeper, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the Institute for Fisheries Resources.

Sept. 9, 2018

By Eli Francovich

CLARKSTON – Navigating the slack water of the Snake River near Lewiston, Bill Chetwood remembers the days when the water was free-flowing.

The staunch conservative and former marine remembers watching salmon streaming below his boat. He remembers a riparian area that cut through the dry and high desert hills winding all the way to the Columbia River.

Chetwood, 88, is a lifelong resident of the Lewiston area. He is one of the few who can recall the Snake River before four dams slowed the river’s water.

He wants all that back.

On Saturday, Chetwood joined roughly 600 others in the annual Free the Snake Flotilla, a protest of the four lower Snake River Dams.
Participants brought a variety of craft, including kayaks, motorboats, sailboats and stand-up paddleboards.

They came from Idaho, Washington, Minnesota, California and elsewhere. Anglers, environmentalists and tribal members were represented, among others.

“This is the biggest flotilla yet,” said Sam Mace, the Inland Northwest Director for Save Our Wild Salmon and one of the organizers of the event.

Saturday morning, roughly 20 members of the Nez Perce, Colville, Kalispel, Coeur d’Alene and Spokane tribes launched traditionally made dugout canoes upstream of Lewiston on the Clearwater River.

The tribal members headed downstream, meeting up with the larger Free the Snake Flotilla.

One reason many attended this year’s Free the Snake was the plight of the southern resident killer whales. The orcas garnered international attention earlier this year when Tahlequah, a southern resident orca, pushed the corpse of her newborn baby for weeks.

Tahlequah is one of 75 orcas remaining in the Puget Sound, a 30-year-low. Salmon make up roughly 50 percent of the orcas’ diet.

Spring and summer chinook, fall chinook and steelhead were all listed as threatened in the 1990s.

“The orcas are going to die if we don’t breach the dams,” said Chiara Rose, a student at Western Washington University in Bellingham. “They are very dependent on this specific ecosystem.”

Like Chetwood, others attended the flotilla because they’d like to see large returns of wild salmon again in the Snake River system. And for members of the Nez Perce Tribe, the dams represent an historical injustice: When built, they flooded many traditional Nez Perce gathering
sites and burial grounds.

“We talk about the injustice, it’s ongoing,” said Julien Matthews, a Nez Perce tribal member. “Our relatives are buried there under that water.”

Matthews is also a board member of Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, an environmental organization that focuses on upholding tribal treaty
rights.

After the flotilla, environmentalist and activist Winona LaDuke addressed the gathering at a campground west of Lewiston. In a wide-ranging talk, she urged those present to keep fighting for the removal of the dams and “make it beautiful.”

Following LaDuke, Democratic candidate for Idaho governor Paulette Jordan took the stage and committed, if elected, to fight to decommission the four lower Snake River Dams.

The four dams in question are Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite.

On the same day, and just miles upriver from the Free the Snake Flotilla, a pro-dam event was held. For many in the Lewiston and Clarkston areas, a world without dams is inconceivable, those demonstrators said.

River Fest, as the counterprotest was called, was hosted by the Port of Clarkston in conjunction with the Port of Lewiston. The festival aims to
celebrate the Snake and Clearwater rivers in all their uses, said Wanda Keefer, the Clarkston port manager.

The festival was held in Granite Park, near the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

“This whole town is built on these dams,” said Jeff Sayre, the chairman of the Snake River Multi-use Advocates. “(Dams are) an easy target to point at, but there are not silver bullets to this issue.”

Sayre calls the dam issue the “most complicated” natural resources issue in the country.

“To me, a lot of the rhetoric out there has more to do with dam removal than salmon survival,” said David Doeringsfeld, the Lewiston port manager. “To a lot of people, dam removal is a religion.”

The dams ship grain grown in Idaho and Washington to Portland and beyond, supplement the electrical grid during peak power times and the pooled flatwater allows boats and fisherman to recreate on a lake-like surface, Doeringsfeld said.

However, barge traffic, which was one of the primary reasons for the construction of the dams in the first place, has declined in recent years.

And a study in April found that the energy produced by the four lower Snake River dams could be replaced by a mix of other clean energy
sources.

The study was commissioned by the NW Energy Coalition and conducted by Energy Strategies, a Utah-based company, using the Bonneville Power Administration’s data. However, some questioned the study, arguing that the amount of energy that could be created from solar and wind was unrealistic and that the increased cost to ratepayers was underreported, among other things.

The dams will stay in the public eye, even if outrage over the orca whales’ plight diminishes.

In 2016, a federal judge ruled the U.S. government hasn’t done enough to improve Northwest salmon runs and ordered an environmental review that’s due in 2021, urging officials to consider removing the four dams on the Snake River.

But for Chetwood, that might be too late.

“I’m a little afraid I’m not going to see a free-flowing river,” he said.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/sep/09/more-than-600-turn-out-for-snake-river-protest-sat

By Eli Francovich
March 2, 2021

An advocacy group angling for a free-flowing Snake River has released a detailed multimedia website envisioning what the removal of four dams could mean for the region.

“We’re hoping that interactive map is a tool to show people what was there,” said Sam Mace, the Inland Northwest Director of Save Our Wild Salmon.

“The recreation values it had. The fishing opportunity. And to start that community conversation of, ‘Well if the dams come out, what could we have there again? How could a restored river best benefit Eastern Washington’s communities and its economies?’ ”

Ice Harbor Dam opened in 1962, followed by Lower Monumental Dam in 1969 and Little Goose Dam in 1970. As the water pooled behind each successive structure, it flooded 14,400 acres, washed away ancient Native American gathering sites, burial grounds, fishing holes and more towns. The dams also generated cheap electric power, allowed barges to travel deep into Washington wheat country and provided some irrigation.

The website, developed by Save Our Wild Salmon, tries to visualize what the 144-mile river looked like before all that.

It incorporates historic photos, oral and written records from people who remember the Snake River before the dam and designs from Washington State University landscape architecture students imagining what Lewiston and Clarkston’s waterfront areas could look like.

It also includes memories from folks who saw the Snake before the dam.

“There was about a period of three or four years where we quit hunting down there and I went back and the dams had been built in that meantime, and suddenly everything changed and it was just a real shock to see everything change in such a short period of time,” said Harvey Morrison, the president of Spokane Falls Chapter of Trout Unlimited in a video. “It was a phenomenal habitat for game birds and deer. They have estimates of tens of thousands of birds that we lost because of the inundation of the reservoirs.”

While there is no ignoring the divisive nature of the issue, the website and associated materials aim to sidestep, at least temporarily, thornier questions of power production, CO2 emissions, spiraling salmon populations and transportation.

“We kind of wanted a tool that wasn’t about arguing over whether the dams should stay or go but asking that ‘what if’ question,” Mace said. “And that’s important regardless of whether someone (believes) the dams should be removed. It’s in all of our best interests to start exploring that question. It’s going to be a regional decision.”

In particular, the website highlights the recreational benefits of a free-flowing Snake.

First would be salmon and steelhead angling, but rafting, kayaking, jet boating and swimming opportunities would all increase. Nearly 50 rapids were flooded between the confluence of the Snake and the Columbia and the Washington/Idaho state line.

Richard Scully, 75, was born in the Lewiston area and has spent most of his life there. He remembers biking to the river before school and dropping lines for steelhead. Now, much of the river bank, particularly around towns and communities, is filled with human-placed rock – known as riprap – to prevent erosion.

Similarly, Bryan Jones, 66, a fourth-generation wheat farmer near Colfax, remembers picking peaches at Penawawa, Washington, a town that was flooded by the rising waters.

Of course, a free-flowing Snake would destroy or greatly reduce some current recreation uses like bass fishing and river cruises. That’s a fact Save Our Wild Salmon acknowledges, although it maintains that overall recreation would increase.

“I think there is a give-and-take there,” said Kurt Miller the executive director of Northwest River Partners, a hydropower advocacy group based in Vancouver, Washington. “There would be winners and losers on the recreation side.”

He questions some studies that have predicted huge economic benefits in the form of increased recreation.

“I think those questions need to be examined more closely,” he said. “Because right now I think those studies make some really bold assumptions.”

Although the visioning project started nearly a decade ago, Mace said, a plan to breach the dams proposed by an Idaho Republican congressman has given the project new urgency.

In February, Rep. Mike Simpson released a $33 billion plan to breach four dams on the lower Snake River, replace the lost hydroelectric energy with other sources and ensure irrigation and livestock protection for agriculture industries affected by the breaches. The fate of that effort is unsure, with resistance coming from farmers, hydropower operators and others.

Either way, the website provides a glimpse into the past, and some hope, the future.

“There are old-timers who remember hunting and fishing down there, but a lot of people in the region don’t have those memories,” Mace said.

By Orion Donovan-Smith
October 7, 2021

WASHINGTON – A new survey conducted on behalf of a coalition of environmental groups found a majority of Washington state voters are open to an effort to restore salmon runs by breaching the Lower Snake River dams while replacing the energy, transportation and irrigation they provide.

The questionnaire describes a plan similar to the proposal put forward in February by Rep. Mike Simpson, without naming the Idaho Republican, and comes as tribes and conservationists that favor dam breaching await news of an alternative approach announced by Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray in May.

Inslee and Murray, Washington Democrats, have said all options should be on the table, including removing earthen berms to restore the river’s natural flow between Lewiston and the Tri-Cities.

The survey, funded by the California-based Water Foundation, was released Thursday by the environmental advocacy group Washington Conservation Voters. The Mellman Group, a D.C.-based polling firm, interviewed 800 Washington voters by phone in late July.

While 56% of those surveyed had heard “not too much” or “nothing at all” about Simpson’s proposal, a 59% majority favored the plan after it was described to them, with 27% opposing. Another 14% of respondents said they were unsure.

“What we learned from this is that voters across Washington are adamant that they do not want salmon to go extinct,” said Alyssa Macy, CEO of Washington Conservation Voters.

Macy, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, said the poll results should give elected officials at all levels – from local public utility districts to Congress – a clearer idea of what voters think about a proposal that has been met with strong rebukes from Simpson’s fellow Northwest Republicans and relative silence from area Democrats.

“I think this will generate some conversation and perhaps some willingness to start to engage in this more, and to step forward and to be courageous in this space and to lead, because we need our leadership to do that,” Macy said.

The dam-breaching proposal draws the widest support from Democrats, 71%, and a narrower majority of independents, 55%. Support among Republicans is split, with 44% in favor of Simpson’s plan and 42% opposed. Support is stronger on the West Side, at 63%, than in Eastern Washington, at 47%.

Other findings are less favorable to those who support dam breaching. Voters who agreed with the statement “there are other effective ways to restore the salmon population while keeping the dams in place” outnumbered those who said dam breaching was necessary by a margin of 45% to 29%, with the rest saying they were not sure or had no opinion.

The survey asked voters how concerned they were about problems related to the environment, politics and society. When told “salmon are going extinct,” 62% of respondents said they worried at least “a great deal.”

A study released by the Nez Perce Tribe in May warned most spring and summer chinook runs in the Snake River Basin will be perilously close to extinction by 2025. Other salmon and steelhead runs in the Columbia Basin are faring better, largely because they have to traverse fewer dams.

The problem that generated the widest concern, however, was “Our elected officials are too busy fighting each other and can’t get anything done.”

Inslee and Murray have not revealed when they will divulge their plan, but in a joint statement in May theysaid, “We, too, want action and a resolution that restores salmon runs and works for all the stakeholders and communities in the Columbia River Basin.”

By Becky Kramer
      
AT A GLANCE:
The dams: Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite

The wild fish: Spring, summer and fall chinook; sockeye; steelhead

Electricity production: About 1,000 average megawatts, or enough to power Seattle

Barge traffic: Ships about 60 percent of Washington’s wheat crop

Irrigation: Ice Harbor Dam’s reservoir irrigates about 60,000 acres of cropland.

Scoping meetings: Tuesday in Coulee Dam; Wednesday in Priest River; Thursday in Bonners Ferry; Nov. 14 in Spokane.

Comments <http://www.crso.info/> Accepted through Jan. 17.
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Over his lunch hour, Steve Pettit used to tug on his waders, grab his fly-fishing rod and scramble down the hill from his Lewiston office to the Clearwater River.

A dozen casts later, he’d hook a steelhead.

“I’d fight it for 30 minutes. Then I’d release the fish, say goodbye and go back to work at 1 p.m.,” Pettit said.

But on a February day in 1975, the young Idaho Fish and Game biologist rode a jet boat down the Snake River instead of fishing on his lunch break. The pool behind the newly constructed Lower Granite Dam had begun to fill, creating a reservoir that stretched to Lewiston, the city at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

Most Lewiston residents celebrated the day their town became an inland seaport. Barges could leave the Port of Lewiston, passing through a series of locks and dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers to travel 360 miles to Portland.

The day was especially sweet for the Inland Northwest’s grain growers. They’d spent 40 years lobbying for a barge route that could transport their wheat to Portland, providing relief from high shipping costs charged by railroads.

But Pettit felt only grief as the rising water covered familiar landmarks. “It was the saddest day of my life,” he said.

A series of public meetings begin this week on the operation of the Northwest’s federal hydropower system. Pettit will attend at least one of the meetings, testifying that the Lower Snake River dams should come down.

Beginning in the 1950s, state and federal fish biologists warned repeatedly that damming the Lower Snake River could drive Idaho’s wild salmon and steelhead runs to extinction.

Lower Granite was the last of four dams built across the Lower Snake’s basalt canyons.

All of them were constructed with fish ladders, but passage over the dams was yet another impediment to young salmon and steelhead that spawned in central Idaho and migrated hundreds of miles to the ocean.
‘This is a really critical process’
The upcoming meetings are a result of a federal judge’s ruling in May saying the latest of five federal plans for restoring wild salmon and steelhead runs on the Columbia and Snake river systems was flawed.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon ordered federal agencies to prepare a new plan by early 2018. The meetings will allow Northwest residents to talk about issues they think should be part of an environmental review of federal hydropower operations.

The court ruling doesn’t order the agencies to investigate breaching the Lower Snake River dams to restore salmon, said Amy Gaskill, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is hosting the meetings with the Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration.

But in blunt language, Simon wrote that the federal agencies had “done their utmost” to avoid considering breaching the Lower Snake dams, and suggested that a proper review under federal law could require analyzing the effect of breaching or bypassing one or more of the dams.

Salmon advocates who were plaintiffs in the lawsuit have seized the moment. Several hundred supporters gathered last month for a “Free the Snake” flotilla in Lewiston.

“Removing the four Lower Snake dams is the single most important action we could take to restore salmon in the entire Columbia-Snake river basin,” said Sam Mace of Save Our Wild Salmon <http://www.wildsalmon.org/> .

Beyond the dams are thousands of miles of pristine rivers and streams. As the climate warms and snowpacks shrink, those high-elevation river basins will remain cold enough to support salmon and steelhead spawning and rearing, Mace said. They’re sometimes called “the ark” for preserving wild populations, she said.

Dam advocates also are preparing their testimony.

“This is a really critical process,” said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest River Partners <http://nwriverpartners.org/> , which represents agriculture and shipping interests and the public utilities that buy electricity from the federal hydropower system. “We think that dams are an important part of the Northwest economy.”

About 60 percent of Washington’s wheat and barley crop is shipped downriver by barge to Portland. And the reservoir behind Ice Harbor Dam on the Lower Snake irrigates about 60,000 acres of cropland.

A dam-breaching discussion also raises questions about how the carbon-free electricity would be replaced. About 5 percent of the Northwest’s electricity comes from the four Lower Snake Dams, which provide enough energy for a city the size of Seattle.

Breaching the four Lower Snake dams isn’t something that could be ordered by a court, said Gaskill, the corps spokeswoman. Since the dams are federal projects, removing them would require action by Congress and a federal appropriation, she said.

BPA, which sells the electricity from the Northwest’s federal hydropower system, estimates the cost of breaching the dams at $1.3 billion to $2.6 billion.
Plight of Idaho’s fish  ‘very bleak’
Pettit retired after 32 years with Idaho Fish and Game, spending a significant part of his career on fish passage at the dams.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent over the years, the dams and their reservoirs still kill too many young salmon and steelhead, Pettit said.

According to the Corps of Engineers, more than 90 percent of the young fish survive passage through each dam. But the cumulative toll from dams and reservoirs all along the Columbia and Snake rivers adds up to mortality rates of 50 percent or more for Idaho’s wild runs as they migrate to the ocean, Pettit said. The exception is fall chinook, which survive in higher numbers because of court-ordered water releases from reservoirs during their migration, he said.

With climate change presenting new risks to wild salmon and steelhead, bold action is needed, Pettit said.

“Unless something drastic happens, the plight of Idaho’s salmon and steelhead is very bleak,” he said. “I don’t think we can change the dams enough to recover the fish with climate change in place.”

Salmon and steelhead will face increasingly hostile ocean conditions as a result of climate change, Pettit said. Ocean acidification is affecting the North Pacific’s food chain, which means there’s less for them to eat.

In addition, some Northwest rivers will become too warm for the fish, he said. The Deschutes, John Day and Wenatchee rivers are at risk, Pettit said.

With their high mountains, central Idaho’s Clearwater and Salmon river drainages have the best cold-water habitat for spawning left in the Columbia Basin, he said.

“It’s wilderness, as pristine as you can get,” he said. “As climate change grabs ahold of us harder and harder, the high elevations are going to be the last bastion for salmon.”

Preserving wild runs is critical to salmon and steelhead long-term survival, Pettit said. Wild fish are genetically adapted to where they live, and they return from the ocean in higher percentages than hatchery fish, he said.
Barges ship most of the region’s wheat
The Lower Snake dams have strong advocates in Eastern Washington.

About 3,700 farmers grow wheat and barley in the region, according to the Washington Grain Growers. Most of their crops are shipped to Portland and exported overseas.

Besides the 60 percent of the grain that moves to Portland by barge, some of it is transported by rail and truck. Farmers benefit from multiple shipping options, which helps keep prices competitive, said Glen Squires, chief executive for the Washington Grain Commission.

Barges can move large amounts of grain quickly, and they’re an environmentally friendly form of transport, he said. A tug pushing a barge can haul a ton of wheat 576 miles on a single gallon of fuel.

Grain shipments make up the largest commodity movement on the Lower Snake River. Some other crops, fertilizers, wood chips and sawdust are also shipped on the Lower Snake. But in general, barge traffic on the Lower Snake has experienced a 20-year decline, including decreases in wheat shipments, according to the Corps of Engineers Navigation Data Center <http://www.navigationdatacenter.us/> .

Petroleum shipments to Lewiston dropped after a pipeline was built to Spokane, according to a 2015 study by Rocky Mountain Econometrics. And railroads have competed for grain shipments with lower prices, the study said.
Climate change ups the ante for salmon, carbon-free energy
Climate change has upped the ante not only for salmon survival, but for the carbon-free energy produced by the Lower Snake dams.

The four dams produce about 1,000 average megawatts of power, which is enough to supply 800,000 households. But the dams’ average output doesn’t fully explain their importance for meeting the region’s electric needs, according to BPA officials.

During an extended cold snap in 2014, when nighttime temperatures dipped to the teens and lower across the Northwest, BPA used extra generating capacity at the Lower Snake dams to meet higher demand for electricity, said Steve Kerns, BPA’s manager of generation scheduling.

Reservoirs behind the four dams store water in the fall and winter. Even though they’re not deep reservoirs, the pools can be drawn down or raised 5 feet to respond to changes in electrical demand or unexpected outages at other plants, Kerns said. The dams can produce 2,650 megawatts of electricity during times of peak demand.

The Lower Snake dams are among 10 federal dams in the Northwest with automatic controls that allow them to react instantly to changes in electric demand, which provides reliability for the system. The versatility in the hydro system helps the region’s electric grid integrate wind generation, which ramps up and down quickly, Kerns said.

The Lower Snake dams also are strategically located on one of the main transmission corridors that bring electricity from Montana and Idaho into Oregon and Washington. The dams’ power production helps stabilize the system.

Breaching the four Lower Snake dams would require the Northwest to build a plant fired by natural gas, BPA said in a study last year.

Even a highly efficient gas-fired plant would increase the region’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2 million to 2.6 million metric tons annually, which is like adding 421,000 passenger cars to the road, the study said.

But the analysis has been criticized by some environmental groups, which say a combination of conservation and other renewable energy could replace the power from the four dams.

BPA officials declined to talk about the study because the issue of energy replacement could become part of the federal environmental review.

Pettit, the retired Idaho biologist, still fishes for steelhead, though it’s been a poor year for both wild and hatchery returns, he said.

The region is overdue for a serious talk about the Lower Snake dams, he said.

“I consider the salmon and steelhead that return to the Snake River system to be a strong icon of what Northwest living is all about,” Pettit said. “If we’re going to keep them around, there will have to be tradeoffs made.”

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/oct/24/pressure-mounts-on-lower-snake-dams-as-fish-runs-s/

Analysis finds industry larger than oil, gas

By Eli Francovich

February 22, 2018

A federal government analysis of the outdoor recreation’s economic impact reaffirms what many conservation groups have said for decades. Outdoor recreation is a big business.

For the first time ever the U.S. Department of Commerce looked specifically at the economic impact of outdoor recreation. The analysis was published last week.

The analysis found that outdoor recreation was worth $373.7 billion and comprised 2 percent of the nation’s 2016 Gross Domestic Product. In fact, the outdoor recreation industry is larger than the oil, gas and mining industries, which made up 1.4 percent of the nation’s GDP in 2016.

And the industry is expanding. In 2016, it grew 3.8 percent, compared to the overall economy’s growth of 2.8 percent.

The report was released by U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis on Feb. 14.

“The public will no doubt be surprised at the economic importance of this industry as we release prototype statistics measuring the impact of activities like boating, fishing, RVing, hunting, camping, hiking, and more,” said U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in a news release.

Unlike other reports analyzing the outdoor recreation industry’s economic footprint, this is the first one not conducted by a private industry association such as the Outdoor Industry Association.

According to the Department ofCommerce report, motorized vehicles accounted for $59.4 billion of gross output. Of that, recreational vehicles accounted for $30 billion.

Boating and fishing activities were second at $38.2 billion followed by hunting, shooting and trapping at $15.4 billion. Of that, hunting accounted for 60 percent of the output, according to the analysis. The equestrian industry accounted for roughly $12 billion.

Finally, backpacking, climbing and other outdoor activities accounted for $10 billion.

While the BEA study is unique nationally, the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office commissioned and published its own economic study in 2016.

That analysis found that outdoor recreation resulted in $21.6 billion dollars in annual expenditures in Washington and created roughly 200,000 jobs. The Washington study was the first of its kind in the state.

“Now we know it’s a huge driver to our economy as well,” said Kaleen Cottingham, the director of the Recreation and Conservation Office.

“We have known that intuitively. But we didn’t have the data to back that up.”

That information can be useful when advocating for conservation or trying to change policy, Cottingham said.

Although the Department of Commerce analysis was more narrowly focused, Cottingham said the federal findings aligned with the state report.

The Recreation and Conservation Office is in charge of distributing and making grants. Having economic data “helps to justify our investments as part of the bigger economic engine,” Cottingham said.

Similarly, Sam Mace, the Inland Northwest Director for Save Our Wild Salmon, said the potential economic benefit of conservation has long been a key plank in Save Our Wild Salmon’s platform and something they’ve considered and highlighted on the Lower Snake River.

“Often that is the bottom line way you can protect these resources, by showing the economic driver that they are,” she said.

The federal report will be a useful advocacy tool, said Katherine Hollis the conservation and advocacy director for the Mountaineers.

“It’s definitely inline with how we approach conservation work,” she said. “There is intrinsic value in these places. But also the outdoor recreation industry is growing. Period. Across the board.”

The Mountaineers are based in Seattle and have 13,000 members, most of whom are in Washington. The yearly basic alpine course has a wait list of more than 200 people, she said.

“They put the recreation economy at 2 percent of the GDP,” she said. “That’s a lot. That says something about the importance of these landscapes and how we engage these landscapes.”

The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation found that Idaho’s state parks contributed $184 million to the state’s economy in 2016, according to a study published earlier this month.

The Department of Commerce study didn’t look at outdoor recreation retail manufacturing revenue occurring outside of the U.S. Additionally, the BEA report didn’t include money spent on recreation trips less than 50 miles from a person’s home.

March 11, 2017
      
Soft white winter wheat is shown turning from the green color of groFarmers are facing a belt-tightening year as wheat prices slip below the break-even mark, signaling the third consecutive year of financial hardship.

“It’s kind of tough right now,” said Gary Bailey, a Whitman County farmer and a member of the Washington Wheat Commission.

Bailey said he hasn’t heard of anybody going out of business because of economic stress on the farm, “but I think everybody’s just watching their pennies as far as getting along and trying to come up with some other avenues of income. People are looking at alternative crops.”

Soft white wheat and club wheat – two varieties commonly grown in this area – were selling for $4.67 to $4.90 a bushel this week, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Portland daily grain report. That doesn’t take into account the $1 per bushel it costs farmers to ship their product to the coast, where it is loaded onto barges and sent to customers around the world.

A year ago, wheat prices averaged about $4.50 a bushel, down more than a dollar from 2015, according to the USDA.

Sam White of the Pacific Northwest Farmers Cooperative in Genesee said the depressed prices have to do with supply and demand.

“We trade in a world market, and in the past three years no one has had a crop failure in wheat,” White said. “So we’re a world awash in wheat right now.”

Russia, Ukraine and Argentina harvested good crops in 2016, White said – and Australia is reported to have a record harvest this year.

Until that turns around, he added, low wheat prices can be expected to be the norm.

In response, farmers throughout the country are looking at planting other crops besides wheat.

“But we don’t have that ability here on the Palouse,” White said. “Winter wheat is the thing you can plant in the fall. Some places, they have options.”

Bailey said he has heard some farmers in the Pullman area are putting more acres into garbanzo beans, a crop that currently fetches a higher price than wheat.

Glen Squires, director of the Washington Grain Commission, said weather also has been a factor in wheat problems this year.

“The railroads have had a hard time getting trains through avalanches and tunnels,” Squires said. “At the export point ships are just backing up.”

“There’s a lot of corn, soybeans and wheat being loaded, but they can’t load when it’s raining and there’s snow and ice… They bring a boat in, but the trains can’t get through so the boat sits there. It’s just a nightmare.”

Squires said one bright spot in the picture, however, is that Pacific Northwest grain remains a high-quality product. Some customers, especially from Asia, will buy it no matter what the price is. Hard red wheat also is selling at a premium these days, and Squires predicted some farmers may put in more acres of that variety to satisfy the demand of domestic millers.

According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, winter wheat in the U.S. for 2017 was expected to total 32.4 million acres, down 10 percent from 2016 and 18 percent less than in 2015. That would be the second-lowest U.S. wheat acreage on record, the service reported.

In Idaho 730,000 acres were planted with winter wheat last fall, down from 760,000 acres the previous year. Washington’s winter wheat plantings stayed the same at 1,700,000 acres in 2016 and 2017.

Spring wheat has not yet been planted, but it also is expected to be down from a year ago.

Jonathan Rosenau, an Idaho County farmer who has been working the family farm for about five years, said wheat at today’s prices, adjusted for inflation and compared to wheat prices in the 1970s, would be selling for about 85 cents a bushel.

“A lot of people right now are trying to budget and trying to figure out something else besides wheat to raise,” Rosenau said. “Everyone’s just trying to find some kind of a niche right now to carry them through.”

The low prices this year follow last year’s disaster of falling numbers, when an early-season frost caused the protein levels in wheat to drop below market measures. Rosenau predicted at the time the falling numbers situation might force some farmers out of business.

While that has not appeared to happen so far, he said, the situation is grim.

“I’m one year away,” he said. “If we have another bad year, I don’t know if I’ll be hard-pressed to keep going.”

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/mar/11/worries-growing-for-wheat-farmers/

August 14, 2015

Were they not choking on the smoke from the region’s wildfires, our neighbors in British Columbia might be enjoying a measure of satisfaction from the challenges extreme drought have presented to those of us who live south of the 49th parallel.

As Becky Kramer reported in the Aug. 9 Spokesman-Review, many living in the province’s interior have not forgotten what was taken from them when President Dwight Eisenhower and Canada Premier John Diefenbaker signed the Columbia River Treaty in 1961. The ensuing construction of three dams on the Canada side of the border, and the waters backed up into British Columbia from the Libby Dam in northwest Montana, inundated many homes and farms, displacing about 2,300 residents in the process.

The dams added tremendously to potential hydroelectricity production in the U.S., and substantially reduced the risk of catastrophic flooding. The U.S. helped pay for the dams, and has returned about 40 percent of the increased electricity production to British Columbia at discount prices.

The families whose property was sacrificed got little. Their resentment would be familiar to any of the thousands of Native Americans, farmers and others who lived on the shores of the Columbia south of the border until they too were flooded out by Grand Coulee and other dams.

But the Canadians live with the blight of mudflats and stranded docks created by water level fluctuations up to 70 vertical feet; about the height of The Spokesman-Review tower. Not only do yo-yo shorelines reduce the reservoirs’ use as recreation assets, dried mud becomes dust irritating to sinus and memory.

Conditions this year, as U.S. and Canadian representatives begin to renegotiate the treaty, which expires in 2024, probably make as strong a case as the Canadians might hope for a deal that keeps electricity flowing north as water comes south.

Salmon are dying by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. What water there is in the Columbia and many tributaries is intolerably warm. Because snow blanketed British Columbia’s mountains while the Northwest’s were merely dusted, the Canadians have been releasing colder water to provide what help they can.

The expiring fish cost Northwest utility ratepayers billions of dollars: to restore habitat, build hatcheries and move fish around the dams. The mortality rates will not be known for some time as new runs head upriver, but rebuilding damaged sockeye stocks, just for one, will likely take years and many millions more.

Meanwhile, irrigators are building a new canal that will take from the Columbia water that was set aside for them years ago. With it, they will no longer have to pump from sinking aquifers.

The principles that will guide U.S. negotiators added ecological considerations to what is now a document focused mainly on power and flood control. If ever there was a year that could underscore just how important the Canadian dams might be to sustaining our fish and electricity production, this it.

Our friends to the north will have an ace in their hand when they come to the negotiating table.

# # #

June 21, 2015

By Bishop William S. Skylstad

To understand why Pope Francis wrote a letter to the world about the environment, people in our corner of the United States and Canada need look no farther than the Columbia River. This waterway, 1,200 miles in length, is the lifeblood of a watershed stretching over 259,000 square miles across international, provincial and state borders.

No nation, state or industry can lay sole claim to this great river’s bounty because it transcends geopolitical boundaries and authority. Millions of people depend upon and derive their livelihood from farms, fishing, ports, industries and communities that would not exist except for the gift of God’s creation we call the Columbia.

Immense as it is, our watershed home is just a tiny part of the integrated natural environment of the Earth, which has been entrusted to us and unites us in concern and responsibility for its competitive and complementary uses. It is in this context, as a global pastor and teacher, that Pope Francis writes “Laudato Si” (Praise Be), his letter “on the care of our common home.”

Rooted in Catholic teachings, the pope offers moral guidance for the care of God’s creation because of its immediate and long-term importance to people. This distinctive Catholic perspective forms the basis for Pope Francis’ letter. In his view, to understand the challenge of caring for creation we need to understand our obligation to care for one another.

Consistent with the Bible, recent popes and the U.S. bishops, the pope’s letter speaks of an “integral ecology,” the fundamental interrelationship that exists for each person with God, with one’s self, with other human beings and with creation. He points to these relationships again and again in hopes that we will learn the human meaning of ecology, especially in relationship to the poor.

“Laudato Si” is a teaching document, but Pope Francis does not shy away from the controversial issue of climate change or recommendations to spur fresh political and economic thinking. In our polarized world, where strong disagreements exist on these topics, it’s important to remember that the pope’s letter is intended to provide the moral foundation for action, not a set of political prescriptions.

The pope contends, however, that policymakers must consider what it means to live in right relationship with the natural world and each other. He speaks concretely about the need to develop sources of renewable energy as substitutes for fossil fuels and insists that politics and economics are meant to be at the service of human life, not the other way around.

Pope Francis rejects the proposition that economic prosperity and protection of the created world are mutually exclusive. In fact, he makes clear his conviction that we will not have one without the other, and he reminds us that the poor suffer disproportionately when we fail to care for God’s creation.

Many of the actions the pope suggests are “simple daily gestures” each of us can make at home and in our communities. He challenges the “throwaway culture” and the modern tendency toward consumerism. The expression of a pastor’s concern is particularly evident in his heartfelt desire that everyone live simpler, fuller lives, growing closer to God and each other.

The Catholic bishops in the Columbia watershed wrote a pastoral letter in 2001 to assist all people of goodwill to develop “an integrated spiritual, social and ecological vision” to promote “justice for people and stewardship of creation.”

As the pastor of a global church, Pope Francis similarly offers his encyclical letter as a call for a worldwide change of hearts – what St. John Paul II called a “global ecological conversion” – because an integral ecology recognizes that individual decisions have social consequences.

Pope Francis’ letter offers an “urgent challenge to protect our common home,” but it also expresses hope that “things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us.”

The Most Rev. William Skylstad is bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Spokane and former bishop of Yakima. He chaired the steering committee that wrote the international pastoral letter “The Columbia River Watershed: Caring for Creation and the Common Good.”

October 27, 2013

By John Osborn And Suzanne Skinner

These falls are that place where ghosts of salmon jump, where ghosts of women mourn their children who will never find their way back home.

From “The Place where the Ghosts of Salmon Jump,” by Sherman Alexie (inscribed at the Spokane Falls overlook).

Canada and the United States are preparing to renegotiate the Columbia River Treaty. The treaty, first signed in 1961, governs management of the Columbia, once the richest salmon river on Earth, but now converted by dams into the world’s largest integrated hydropower system.

Reconsideration of the treaty will profoundly impact the future economies, environment and quality of life of people on both sides of the border. That’s why last August, thousands of Pacific Northwest citizens wrote to urge the federal government to include ecosystem restoration as a core component of a renegotiated treaty. They also called for opening the Upper Columbia Basin to the salmon that once thrived above Grand Coulee Dam, including in the Spokane River.

The federal government listened.

The current U.S. position recommends the U.S. State Department make managing the health and environment of the Columbia watershed a central purpose of a modernized treaty – as important as power generation and flood control. This is a wise and farsighted recommendation that will not only enhance the lives and economies of future generations in the Columbia basin, but also provide some recompense to the Columbia River tribes whose economies, culture and spirituality remains intertwined with salmon despite terrible damage wrought by dams.

Managing the Columbia for its environmental health must mean more than current efforts to comply with the Endangered Species Act. Current recovery efforts fail to meet the life-cycle needs of the Northwest’s most iconic species. Most wild populations are maintaining or declining, despite coming under the protection of the act between 14 and 22 years ago. Present management of Columbia dams remains unsustainable for salmon and other native species.

Climate change is also aggravating existing river-management challenges. This summer, temperatures from McNary Dam to Bonneville Dam on the Columbia were 70 degrees or above for 41 straight days, and for 56 straight days in the middle and longest part of that reach. This previews coming years, when this year’s highest temperature, 73.2 degrees at John Day Dam on Sept. 11, will be a new norm that portends an unhealthy river pushing salmon to extinction.

Washington will suffer impacts of climate change more acutely than British Columbia. In the decades ahead, as much as 60 percent of summer flows in the Columbia will come from our neighbor to the north. We must renegotiate the treaty to include ecosystem restoration so that our two nations have a framework to respond effectively to climate changes already unfolding in the basin.

Northwest utilities currently oppose adding “ecosystem” and “environment” to the treaty, even seeking to terminate the treaty if they don’t get their way. We believe this position overlooks that, for today’s Northwest, ecosystem function is economic function. Both Northwest power production and flood risk management will improve with ecosystem function as the treaty’s third purpose. So will other river-based economic sectors, including salmon. All economic activities in the Columbia River Basin will be damaged by the hotter, unhealthier waters that climate change is creating. All will benefit by urgent, creative bilateral responses.

Indeed, a much-needed creative response that would benefit both the U.S. and Canada is to jointly plan how to open up miles of habitat now closed to salmon in British Columbia and the U.S., including the Spokane River.

We do not have to settle for ghost fish. Restoring the ecosystem of the Columbia holds the promise of healthy salmon returning to the headwaters and someday jumping once again at Spokane Falls.

Decisions made now will have an enormous impact on our region’s economy, environment, and quality of life for the next 50 years.

Help restore the Columbia to health.

Help bring the salmon home.

Help make restoring the Columbia’s ecosystem a core purpose of a modernized Columbia River Treaty.

John Osborn, M.D., Columbia River Future Project, Sierra Club

Suzanne Skinner, Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy

For more information: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/oct/27/opinion-include-salmon-climate-provisions-in/

Toxic algal bloom at Central Ferry on the Snake River. (Courtesy Whitman County Public Health)

Oct. 16, 2023
By Ellen Dennis

A frothy, green layer of muck recently coated a mileslong stretch of water on the Lower Snake River in southeast Washington, and scientists have warned people and their pets to stay away.

The Whitman County Health Department issued an alert Oct. 6 that a blue-green algal bloom released toxins into the water between Wawawai Landing and Central Ferry State Park, making a roughly 30-mile stretch of the river temporarily hazardous for humans, pets and livestock.

Satellite images show the west-flowing river changed color from blue to a deep green over a short span of days. County workers posted signs along the contaminated stretch of river alerting the public to stay away from popular recreation spots for swimming, fishing and boating. The safety alert remained in effect as of Tuesday night.

Algal blooms typically last days to weeks before dying off naturally and disappearing.

The bloom on the Lower Snake appears to have started dying off, Whitman County Public Health Director Chris Skidmore said. But until the water tests safe for two consecutive weeks in a row, it is considered dangerous under state health guidelines.

“When I saw it near Wawawai, it literally was the consistency of a very thick milkshake,” Skidmore said. “Really big buildup. It’s pretty gross.”

The county health department has been monitoring the algal bloom since Oct. 2, when a water sample tested above the state health guidelines for microcystin. Microcystin is a liver toxin and can be harmful to touch and ingest for humans, pets and livestock. Fish and bird mortalities have also been reported in lakes and rivers with persistent cyanobacteria blooms.

Algal blooms are becoming increasingly common in bodies of water. There are many types of blooms, and they’re not always toxic. Sunny days combined with high nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels in the water are the recipe for a bloom.

An algal bloom showed up on the Lower Snake last year, but the county health district did not put up warning signs or send out an alert because the bloom reportedly did not emit toxins.

Maddy Lucas is a chemist who collects water samples for the county health department once a week. The most recent test samples – collected Friday – indicated the Wawawai and Central Ferry locations still contained harmful toxins.

Algal blooms are becoming more frequent across the state, Lucas said. Scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have reportedly been doing algal bloom research on the Columbia River this year.

The algal bloom on the Lower Snake is the most extreme bloom Lucas has seen in that body of water.

“This is a pretty sizable bloom to see on a river,” Lucas said. “And it is thick. At some points, it stretched across the entire river, shore to shore.”

The state water safety threshold is eight parts per million for blue-green algae. If a health department collects a sample that tests above this value, it issues a warning for the body of water. Water collected Friday from Wawawai Landing tested 17 times more potent than the state’s safety threshold for cyanobacteria at 139 parts per million.

Regular testing is crucial, Lucas said, because it’s impossible to tell if an algal bloom is toxic just by looking at it.

It’s hard for scientists to predict when a bloom will happen, said Colleen Keltz, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Ecology. But years where there are warm, dry springs can be a setup for algal blooms.

Blooms are more common in stagnant bodies of water, such as lakes. In rivers, blooms happen more near dams or natural blockades that disrupt the current.

Alex Fremier, an environmental science professor at Washington State University, said the bloom on the Lower Snake is “unusually large” for a river.

“The Snake River at that section has a bunch of dams on it,” Fremier said. “At this time of year, it functions more as a reservoir than a river.”

Algal blooms can harm water ecosystems when they die, because decomposing blooms absorb oxygen from the water. Low dissolved oxygen levels in water can kill fish and other river-dwelling animals and plants.

Whether a bloom will harm wildlife depends on a lot of factors. Cooling temperatures and rain brought by fall will decrease chances that the Lower Snake bloom will damage the ecosystem there, Fremier said.

Conditions for algal blooms are primed by certain human land use practices, as well as climate change. Fremier said nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers that run off into rivers and dams that block the current are big contributors. Globally, algal blooms are increasing in a warming climate, he said. Warming temperatures and dryer conditions are a recipe for algal blooms, he said, and seeing blooms in rivers more often could be part of the “new normal” in a warming climate.

“Blooms are going to happen, and they’re going to happen with increased frequency,” Fremier said. “That’s the bigger concern. We have to have the systems in place to protect ourselves and protect the public.”

Dammed waters and blooms are “certainly” connected, Fremier said.

Until the health department determines the water is safe again, people are urged to take the following precautions near the Snake River between Wawawai Landing and Central Ferry State Park:

• Do not drink, swim, wade, use personal watercraft, water ski, fish or boat in the water.
• Wash skin and clothing with soap and water if you have contact with the river’s water.
• Keep pets away from the area. Pets and livestock should have a different source of water while the safety warning is in place.
• Do not cook or clean dishes with water in the river. Boiling the water will not eliminate the toxins. 

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/oct/16/unusually-large-toxic-algal-bloom-covers-30-mile-s/

June 26, 2023
By Ellen Dennis

RICHLAND – Ninety years ago, it took a juvenile Chinook salmon less than five days to swim the winding, 325-mile stretch of rivers from the Idaho Panhandle to the Pacific Ocean. Today it can take as long as one month, scientists say.

Chinook and steelhead populations must now traverse hundreds of barriers as they navigate the waterways of the Columbia Basin, including four dams on the Lower Snake River east of its confluence with the Columbia River in southwest Washington.

Those four Lower Snake River dams have been at the hull of a decadeslong push by local Indigenous and environmental leaders, calling for the federal government to breach the dams and restore the rivers’ habitats. Some local scientists now hope the controversial Snake River dams will be breached and see a fate similar to that of the Klamath River.

For more than 16,000 years, Chinook salmon have played a vital spiritual, cultural and economic role for the Nez Perce Tribe, whose ancestral lands spanned parts of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana.

On Monday, U.S. House Republicans – Cliff Bentz (R-OR), Mike Collins (R-GA), Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) – stood in a gravel lot beside the Snake River, miles before its confluence with the Columbia. A sign with the words “NORTHWEST AT RISK” hung on the front of a wooden podium as the four politicians spoke at a press conference to defend the Lower Snake dams. The 2,822-foot-long Ice Harbor Dam towered over the quartet as they argued salmon and dams can “coexist.”

Newhouse referred to claims that dams hurt salmon populations as “baseless.”

“The truth is that the returns of the salmon have been improving – they’ve been increasing with these dams in place,” the state representative said.

McMorris Rodgers said dam-breaching advocates “are not being honest,” arguing technology such as fish ladders and slides have led to “improving” salmon runs.

“This is the inconvenient truth of the dam-breaching crowd,” McMorris Rodgers said. “So that’s why it’s important that we are here today to show the rest of the world what is possible when we unleash the potential of these dams. To use the facts, not rhetoric. To lead with science. To hear from the experts.”

Yet Indigenous leaders and scientists for nearly a century have studied dwindling fish populations in the rivers and say dams are to blame.

Jay Hesse, director of biological services at the Nez Perce Tribes’ Department of Fisheries, said the scientific community has identified hydropower systems in the Columbia Basin as the single-largest source of mortality and reduction of productivity of fish populations.

“Very clearly, the numbers of natural-origin fish and hatchery returns are dismally below our expectations,” Hesse said. “So much to the point that we don’t measure how close we are to being successful – we’re actually looking at how low those numbers are until they go away: extinction.”

Even though some dams have fish ladders and passages, the way their construction broke up river flow has altered ecosystems. Diminished currents mean fish must work harder to travel down the river, exposing them to elements and predators for longer and depleting their energy by the time they reach the Pacific.

Dams aren’t the only challenge salmon and steelhead populations face. A warming climate and increasingly polluted ocean habitats are harmful. But removal of the Lower Snake dams is crucial for habitat restoration, Hesse said.

“Compared to 2021, there were twice as many natural-origin spring-summer Chinook that came back in 2022,” Hesse said. “That sounds great. But when you go from 8,000 to 16,000 and your goal is 235,000, that’s just annual variation.”

Hesse said opponents of dam breaching often bring up small sets of data to make a point when fish populations have been steadily declining for decades.

College of Idaho fisheries biologist Rick Williams said he has been studying salmon and steelhead populations in the Columbia Basin for the past 35 years.

Of 100 salmon smolts that go out into the river, there need to be 2%, or at least two smolts, that survive just to replace the two adult parents. But biologists aim to see smolt survival rates in the 4% to 6% range to rebuild Chinook populations.

Right now, spring and summer chinook and summer steelhead in the Snake River are at less than a 1% smolt-to-adult ratio.

In river systems with fewer dam passages, such as the Deschutes and Yakima rivers, smolt-to-adult numbers are as high as 3.5%, Williams said.

Later on Monday, the four politicians traveled about 30 miles west, across the Snake River, to Richland High School. There, they held a “field hearing” titled, “The Northwest at Risk: The Environmentalist’s Effort to Destroy Navigation, Transportation, and Access to Reliable Power.”

The politicians were joined onstage by nine panelists, including David Welch of Kintama Research Services in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Jennifer Quan of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Scott Corbitt, general manager of the Port of Lewiston.

In five-minute speeches, each of the nine panelists hearkened the sentiments spoken earlier by the politicians who defended the Lower Snake dams as a source of power and barge transportation.

Quan said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has listed 13 stocks of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin under the Endangered Species Act.

In 2020, NOAA fisheries issued its latest Endangered Species Act opinion, Quan said. The report “assessed and concluded that the operations and maintenance of the Columbia River system’s 14 dams was not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of listed salmon and steelhead or result in the destruction or adverse modification of their critical habitat.”

Two years later in 2022, NOAA released a report that listed actions to boost salmon such as breaching the Lower Snake River dams, habitat restoration and protection, fish passage in blocked areas and other management efforts in the ocean. Quan noted the report did not assess the social and economic impacts of implementing any rebuilding measures, nor did it suggest funding sources required for implementation.

“NOAA Fisheries recognizes that the important services the Lower Snake River Dams provide would need to be replaced or otherwise offset before breaching could occur,” Quan said.

Monday’s hearing came the year following a report commissioned by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Gov. Jay Inslee found the Lower Snake’s energy, transportation and irrigation benefits could be replaced for $10.3 billion to $27.2 billion.

Another speaker at the hearing was Michelle Hennings, executive director of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers.

Hennings said farmers across the country rely on the Columbia River system for transportation benefits. Disruption to the system could hurt farmers’ trade relationships with customers around the world.

“More than 60% of all U.S. wheat exports move through the Columbia and Snake river systems,” Hennings said. “Specifically, 10% of wheat that is exported from the United States passes through the four locks and dams along the Lower Snake River.

None of the panelists were representatives of the Nez Perce Tribes or other local Indigenous communities.

The Nez Perce spend around $22 million each year trying to preserve ocean-going species like salmon and steelhead.

Last week, members of the Nez Perce Tribe traveled to Washington, D.C. for a screening of a documentary about the 1855 treaty with the U.S. government that guaranteed their right to harvest salmon throughout their territory. That right can only be preserved, the tribe says, by breaching the dams that have turned a once fast-flowing river into a series of pools that slow juvenile fish on their journey to the ocean.

On Monday up in the northwest corner of Washington, Joel Kawahara drove to his commercial fishing boat on Neah Bay. He was headed to fish for Chinook salmon.

Kawahara, who is president of the Coastal Trollers Association, said dam removal is a form of ecosystem restoration.

“I look forward to the idea of dam removal being inclusive of everyone’s interest,” Kawahara said. “Including people that harvest the fish. Including people that use the river for other industrial means. … I think the energy issues have been overblown. There’s very little generation out of the four Lower Snake River dams this year.”

The dams were built with transportation in mind, not power. Altogether, the four dams produce on average 933 megawatts of power, according to a 2019 Bonneville Power Administration analysis. One megawatt is enough to power about 800 typical northwest homes for a year.

Within the larger context of the Pacific Northwest’s power grid, 933 megawatts is a small piece of the energy pie. Grand Coulee dam, for instance, produces an average of 2,400 megawatts. In total, the dams throughout Columbia River basin produce 14,000 megawatts.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/jun/26/environmentalists-politicians-clash-over-republica/

Aug. 31, 2023
By Orion Donovan Smith

After nearly two years of negotiating, the Biden administration and a coalition of Northwest tribes, environmental groups and other parties agreed Thursday to continue talks that could lead to breaching the Lower Snake River dams in an effort to help endangered salmon recover.

The two sides asked a federal court in Oregon for a 60-day extension of a stay in litigation that was set to expire at the end of the day. The relatively short extension suggests the two sides may be nearing a breakthrough after more than two decades of legal battles over the operations of federally managed dams in the Columbia Basin and their impact on salmon and steelhead runs.

“Salmon are in crisis, and we owe it to them to focus on durable solutions – including restoring the Lower Snake River – that work for the fish, honor our Treaty, and build a stronger, more resilient Northwest,” Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe, said in a statement.

The latest chapter in the legal saga began when the Nez Perce Tribe, along with the state of Oregon and a coalition of conservation groups led by Earthjustice, sued the Trump administration over a 2020 plan released by federal agencies for managing dams and protecting salmon.

The Spokane and Coeur d’Alene tribes are also among the litigants that agreed to continue negotiating. The federal agencies sued by the fish advocates are the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Bonneville Power Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

After President Joe Biden took office, a federal judge in Portland granted a joint request by the two sides in October 2021 to pause litigation and let them try to reach a settlement in the long-running dispute. In August 2022, the parties agreed to extend the stay for a year.

In a statement Thursday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality said the government had agreed to continue talks “to develop a long-term, durable path forward that restores healthy and abundant salmon and other native fish to the Columbia River Basin, honors long-standing commitments to Tribal Nations, delivers affordable and reliable clean energy, and meets the many resilience needs of the region.”

The salmon and steelhead that migrate from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the Columbia Basin have declined in numbers in the decades since the federal government built dams to harness the rivers’ power, but the dams’ defenders argue that technological advances let enough fish pass the dams that breaching them is unnecessary. The dams also provide benefits by generating electricity, irrigating Eastern Washington farmland and letting barges travel between the Pacific and Lewiston, Idaho.

Advocates of dam breaching, meanwhile, argue the dams have such a dramatic impact on fish – including long-term effects on salmon that manage to get past the dams – that restoring the Snake River’s natural flow is necessary to ensure their survival.

Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, wrote in a brief news release, “Salmon of the Columbia River Basin – and the people, wildlife, and ecosystems that rely upon them – require urgent action to prevent extinction.”

Over the past two decades, federal judges have ordered changes to how the federal government operates the dams, including by spilling more water over the dams to let fish pass more easily at the expense of generating electricity.

Amanda Goodin, the lead attorney on the case at Earthjustice, said a settlement with the federal government may offer broader changes.

“You can achieve some things in court, but a comprehensive solution that addresses a wide range of needs in the basin is not really one of them,” Goodin said.

The stay in litigation doesn’t mean there can’t be other lawsuits over the dams’ impact on salmon. On July 21, a coalition of conservation and fishing groups filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Army Corps of Engineers – which operates the four Lower Snake River dams – “for causing hot water conditions that kill and injure Snake River sockeye salmon in violation of the Endangered Species Act.”

The groups behind that forthcoming lawsuit – Columbia Riverkeeper, the Idaho Conservation League, the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association and Idaho Rivers United – say they intend to ask a judge to order the breaching of the dams. Miles Johnson, legal director at Columbia Riverkeeper, said Thursday that it was too early to say whether an extension to the litigation pause would affect their plans.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Spokane Republican and staunch defender of the dams, responded to the notice of intent to sue by pointing to a statement by the Biden administration that dam breaching would require an act of Congress.

“Dam-breaching advocates don’t care about the facts,” McMorris Rodgers said. “If they did, they would see how fundamentally flawed their new lawsuit is. Only Congress has the authority to change the way these federally-managed dams operate.”

The extended pause in litigation, which a judge is likely to approve, could result in a settlement that would also be subject to legal challenges.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/aug/31/federal-government-salmon-advocates-agree-to-conti/

Friday, Sept. 30, 2016 By Becky Kramer A federal judge is forcing discussion of a radical step to save endangered salmon: taking out four dams on the Lower Snake River.

The public will get a chance to weigh in at meetings throughout the Northwest starting next month.
“Scientists tell us that removing the four Lower Snake dams is the single most important action we could take to restore salmon in the entire Columbia-Snake river basin,” said Sam Mace of Save Our Wild Salmon.

The four dams produce about 5 percent of the Northwest’s hydroelectric power. They allow barges to ship goods between Lewiston and Portland. But they also hamper salmon migration to some of the best remaining fish habitat.

Commercial interests have long opposed removing the Lower Snake Dams.

“We think those dams need to stay in place because of the multiple benefits they provide,” said Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest River Partners, which represents public utilities, port districts and farm groups.

“They provide clean, carbon-free energy … We think they’re an important part of the Northwest economy and the environment,” she said.

Three federal agencies will hold public hearings across the region this fall to discuss the creation of a new salmon plan.

Back in May, U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon sided with fishing groups, environmentalists, the state of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe, finding that the latest of five federal plans for protecting the fish wasn’t adequate. He ordered the agencies to prepare a new one by early 2018.

Simon said federal agencies had “done their utmost” to avoid considering breaching the Snake River dams, ignoring strong suggestions to do so by a previous federal judge.

While Simon said he wouldn’t dictate what options agencies should consider, he said a proper analysis under federal law “may well require” considering breaching, bypassing or removing one or more of the four Lower Snake River dams.

Salmon advocates said the ruling is the closest the region has come to dam breaching since 2000, when the Army Corps of Engineers did a study of taking out the Lower Snake dams.

The four dams produce about 1,000 megawatts of electricity on average, which is enough meet the needs of about 800,000 households each year. But despite millions of dollars spent on fish passage improvements, adult salmon still die in the reservoirs behind the dams.

“The four dams on the Lower Snake River have had a devastating impact on salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey, and in turn on the Nez Perce people,” said McCoy Oatman, vice chairman of the tribe, which is also advocating dam removal.

The Snake River is the gateway to million of acres of pristine, high-elevation habitat in central Idaho, southwest Washington and northeast Oregon, which could help salmon survive in a warming climate.
“We have the healthy rivers, but the salmon aren’t making it back,” Mace said.

On a typical year, only about 40 percent of the Idaho sockeye counted on the Lower Columbia River make it back to their Idaho spawning grounds. During last year’s drought, mortality was in the 99 percent range. Warm water in the four Lower Snake reservoirs is a contributor.

The economic argument for the dams isn’t as strong as it once was, Mace said.

The Lower Snake dams were built from the 1950s to the 1970s, with navigation as a primary goal. But that barge traffic has dropped in recent years as the region has invested in rail capacity, Mace said.

“These dams weren’t built for flood control. They’re not big water storage dams … and their power benefits are replaceable,” she said. “It’s time to call the question on them.”

Salmon advocates “downplay the value of the dams,” said Flores, of Northwest River Partners.

Dams provide more operating flexibility than other renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, Flores said. Electricity generated from wind turbines and solar panels can’t be stored easily. But dams can store water, releasing it during periods of high demand for electricity.

Breaching the four Lower Snake dams would require the Northwest to build a natural-gas-fired plant, the Bonneville Power Adminstration said this spring.

Even a highly efficient gas-fired plant would increase the region’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2 million to 2.6 millon metric tons annually, which is like adding 421,000 passenger cars to the road, according to the BPA.

The agency sells the electricity produced by 31 federal dams.

Replacing the Lower Snake dams’ electric production with natural gas would cost between $274 million and $372 million each year, the agency said. The estimates include the capacity to keep the Northwest power grid running smoothly.

Another study found that dam removal would have a minor impact on electricity costs. A 2015 study done by the Northwest Energy Coalition said residential customers of public power companies would pay about $1 more per month.

John Harrison, a spokesman for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, said he’s not aware of an “objective, independent, bipartisan” analysis of the economic impact of dam removal.

The information available at this time either comes from agencies or interest groups, he said.
This story contains information from the Associated Press.

To view full article with graphics go here.

By Orion Donovan-Smith
Oct. 3, 2021

As progressive and centrist Democrats edged closer to a deal this week on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill, Congress is poised to pass a bill with big implications for the Northwest, letting the cash-strapped Bonneville Power Administration borrow an extra $10 billion to shore up an agency that provides more than a quarter of the region’s electricity.

The provision authored by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is part of the infrastructure package that passed the Senate with bipartisan support in August. Proponents say the move is necessary to let BPA modernize its aging infrastructure – including 31 hydroelectric dams and 15,000 miles of transmission lines across the region – but critics say the money will prop up an unsustainable status quo for the agency that is also charged with leading fish recovery efforts.

That effort to restore the salmon and steelhead runs that thrived before the dams arrived has cost BPA more than $17 billion over four decades, the most expensive ecological recovery project in the nation’s history. Along with rising maintenance costs and falling prices of competing energy sources like wind and solar power, those expenses have left the federal energy giant deep in debt.

BPA spokesman Doug Johnson said the funds would give the agency “flexibility and future funding certainty to meet our near-term and future capital funding levels,” but added that “it doesn’t change our focus on our long-term financial goals.”

Language Cantwell added to the bill through an amendment more than doubles BPA’s credit limit from its current $7.7 billion to $17.7 billion, while requiring the agency to submit a financial plan by the end of September 2022 that maps out how it intends to dig itself out of debt. In addition to maxing out its current federal borrowing limit, other loans bring BPA’s current total debt to $14.5 billion, Johnson said.

Scott Simms, executive director of the Public Power Council, a Portland-based trade association that represents about 100 public utilities that buy electricity from BPA, said the funds will let the agency make important improvements without costing taxpayers, since BPA is required to pay back the loan with interest.

“We in Northwest public power are extremely grateful for Senator Cantwell’s leadership and understanding of the need for BPA’s enhanced borrowing authority to meet the region’s energy demands of the future,” said Simms, whose organization represents Inland Power and Light, Kootenai Electric and several other utilities in the Inland Northwest.

When she introduced her amendment July 14, Cantwell told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that while BPA is essential to the Northwest, its lack of transmission capacity has caused problems like the rolling blackouts that hit Spokane in June.

“This provision will greatly boost the reliability and resiliency of the Northwest grid and help us meet the net-zero goals moving forward without making taxpayers pay,” she told the panel. “So I think it’s a pretty good deal.”

While Cantwell framed the credit boost as a no-brainer and the committee approved it by a voice vote, indicating no real opposition, environmental groups say the move will perpetuate a system that has left salmon and steelhead runs dangerously close to extinction, especially on the Snake River and its tributaries.

“I think it shows that lawmakers are trapped in the past, just like the Bonneville Power Administration is,” Justin Hayes, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League, said of the credit limit increase.

BPA says it intends to use the funds to do just the opposite – updating infrastructure built as early as the 1930s – but Hayes said Congress should have attached conditions to the legislation beyond the requirement to submit a new financial road map.

“If that were true, why are they giving them a blank check instead of explicit marching orders?” Hayes said. “It keeps the BPA and the hydro system operating in a way that harms fish, violates treaties and … blocks the development of diversified renewables distributed across the Northwest by other entities.”

Chris Wood, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trout Unlimited, said that while BPA biologists have done important work to restore fish habitat, those efforts alone are not sufficient to save Snake River salmon from extinction.

“The BPA fish and wildlife program has done a tremendous amount of good, in terms of coming up with creative ways of managing water, of doing fish habitat restoration,” he said. “But I don’t know anyone who could claim that their record on salmon recovery has been a success.”

Like Hayes, Wood said he favors a more comprehensive plan – along the lines of the framework Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, released in February – that involves breaching the four Lower Snake River dams to restore the river’s natural flow between Lewiston and the Tri-Cities. Simpson’s proposal called for increasing BPA’s borrowing authority from $7.7 billion to $15 billion as part of a broader plan to replace the benefits of those dams for irrigation, transportation and hydropower.

Breaching the Lower Snake dams, Wood said, is a “golden key” that would unlock the full benefits of all the habitat restoration BPA has done.

“The genius of what Congressman Simpson is trying to do is that it’s sort of forcing everybody to the table by addressing the issue comprehensively,” he said. “When you try to piecemeal this, eventually you’re going to … take away the incentive for people to come to the table.”

Bill Arthur, who leads the Sierra Club’s Snake River Salmon Campaign and spoke with Cantwell’s staff while they were crafting the BPA amendment, said his organization is “not opposed to an increase in borrowing authority per se,” because the extra money can be used for investments they support like transmission upgrades and grid modernization.

But the Sierra Club opposed the legislation, Arthur said, because of what it saw as a rushed process that left out language to make BPA more accountable to tribes and conservation groups. The legislation requires the agency to “engage … with customers with respect to a draft of the updated financial plan” without mentioning tribes or other stakeholders.

“From our point of view, the language is premature and badly skewed to just one set of interests – BPA utility customers – at the expense of other stakeholders: the tribes and fish and wildlife,” Arthur said.

Tribal leaders shared that concern. After Cantwell’s successful amendment to raise BPA’s borrowing authority, Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chairman Delano Saluskin sent a letter to all four Washington and Oregon senators on July 29 proposing revisions requiring BPA to consult with tribes when spending the new funds and drafting the financial plan.

While current law already requires BPA to consult with tribes, Cantwell filed another amendment when the infrastructure bill reached the full Senate floor that would have more explicitly directed the agency to engage with tribes and other stakeholders. That amendment also would have required BPA to ensure any modernization work wouldn’t impact fish, water quality or compensation payments owed to the Spokane and Colville Tribes.

Several other Northwest tribes threw their support behind the amendment in an Aug. 7 letter led by the Yakama Nation, including the Spokane Tribe, Colville Confederated Tribes, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Kootenai Tribe in Idaho, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana and Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation.

While that amendment also had the support of the Public Power Council and environmental groups, Republican objections ground the amendment process to a halt before the Senate could consider it.

Despite those objections, House Democrats from the Northwest have been silent on the BPA provision ahead of a vote on the infrastructure bill. The Spokesman-Review asked every House lawmaker from Washington and Idaho, plus three Oregon representatives whose districts border the Columbia River, whether they supported the provision increasing BPA’s borrowing authority.

Of the Democrats, only Rep. Rick Larsen of Everett confirmed through a spokesman that he supported the measure, along with a general statement explaining his support for the infrastructure bill as a whole “because it puts Washingtonians back to work, ensures critical local projects stay on track and builds a greener national transportation network.”

Despite the fact that BPA’s territory covers all of Washington, Idaho and Oregon – plus parts of five other states – most of the House lawmakers didn’t respond to questions about the borrowing authority boost, including Washington Reps. Suzan DelBene, D-Medina, Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, Kim Schrier, D-Sammamish, Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, and Marilyn Strickland, D-Tacoma; Simpson and fellow Idaho GOP Rep. Russ Fulcher; Oregon Democratic Reps. Suzanne Bonamici and Earl Blumenauer, and Oregon GOP Rep. Cliff Bentz.

Two Republicans, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Battle Ground, said they support the increase to BPA’s credit limit while opposing the infrastructure bill as a whole.

“One thing is clear, ratepayers in the Pacific Northwest are overpaying,” McMorris Rodgers spokesman Kyle VonEnde said in a statement. “While Cathy supports measures that will correct the long-standing imbalance, such as increasing BPA’s borrowing authority, she believes the approach must be holistic and advance the goal of achieving a fair treaty.”

Both McMorris Rodgers and Herrera Beutler blamed rising BPA energy prices on the Columbia River Treaty, which requires BPA to pay Canada for the water it uses to generate power, and the billions the agency has been required to spend on fish recovery efforts.

“I support giving BPA the tools that allow it to continue operating the carbon-free hydropower system that is the beating heart of our region’s employers and residences, while also moving us toward a more fair Columbia River Treaty that could remedy the pressures that have led to imbalanced finances,” Herrera Beutler said in a statement, explaining that she would have supported the infrastructure bill if Democrats hadn’t linked it to a separate spending bill they plan to pass without Republican votes.

Ultimately, Arthur said, the ability to take on additional debt could make BPA even more central to ongoing efforts to restore salmon runs.

“The silver lining is the BPA can no longer plead poverty,” he said. “They now have money that could actually be used to help defray the costs” of eventually removing the Lower Snake dams.

Congress previously increased the cap on what BPA could borrow from the federal government to $4.45 billion in 2003 and to the current $7.7 billion limit in 2009. A provision in the infrastructure bill prevents BPA from borrowing more than $6 billion by fiscal year 2028, a crucial year for the agency when many of its current contracts with utilities are set to expire.

Orion Donovan-Smith's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper’s managing editor.

December 14, 2018

Jim Camden

Olympia - A small part of Gov. Jay Inslee’s $54.3 billion budget is a study of whether removing federal dams along the Snake River would help the region’s efforts to save salmon, and with them, orcas.

But the $750,000 proposed for a task force to review breaching and other options for the four dams may generate controversy way out of proportion to its share of the overall budget.

Less than two hours after Inslee mentioned the task force as part of his public presentation of the budget, Eastern Washington’s two Republican members of the U.S. House of

Representatives were criticizing the proposed review as a waste of tax money, noting that the question of breaching was beyond Inslee’s authority.

“We commit to do everything in our power to save our dams,” Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse said in a news release.

The prospect of dam removal is the source of long-standing arguments between environmentalists and farmers, Democrats and Republicans, urban and rural residents. It could also be at odds with one of Inslee’s other key goals for his upcoming budget.

Inslee wants to minimize the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity, having the state rely more on renewable sources that don’t create carbon pollution that contributes to climate change. Hydropower is one of the key carbon-free sources of electricity in the Northwest.

Inslee acknowledged the dichotomy between the two goals in a news conference. He said he wasn’t calling for dam removal but rather assigning a task force to lead a process of discussing options that would help formulate the state’s response in an environmental impact statement ordered by a federal judge.

The task force would look at the costs as well as the benefits of different alternatives, not just dam removal. But it would consider how the power generated by those dams might be replaced with other sources like wind and solar, as well as other options to the navigable transportation the dams provide for barges carrying cargo from Lewiston to port cities closer to the Pacific Ocean.

The task force will hold public “community conversations” around the state, starting in July, with a goal of having information to Inslee by next November, said J.T. Austin, his senior policy adviser on natural resources.

The question of dam removal has been studied multiple times, but this will be a chance to hear from the communities, Austin said. The decision to remove them would be up to Congress, not the governor, she added.

“There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and a lot of consensus to be built,” Inslee said.

Aug. 25, 2022

By Orion Donovan-Smith

WASHINGTON – Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray have concluded that the Lower Snake River dams should not be breached before the financial and environmental benefits they provide are replaced, work that would cost an estimated $10 billion to $31 billion, according to a report commissioned by the two Washington Democrats.

The joint statement coincided with the release Thursday of a final version of the report, which weighed the costs and benefits of removing the earthen portions of the four dams between the Tri-Cities and Lewiston in an effort to restore declining salmon runs, for which the federal government has guaranteed fishing rights to Northwest tribes.

Calling the possibility of salmon extinction unacceptable, Murray and Inslee pledged to continue fish recovery efforts while calling for the “enormous” investment in energy and transportation that could make breaching feasible in the future.

In a separate statement, Murray said she and Inslee looked carefully at research “on all sides of this issue,” consulted with tribes, farmers, environmentalists and other stakeholders, and considered every option to restore dwindling populations of salmon, steelhead and other anadromous fish that migrate upstream from the ocean to spawn.

“However, it’s clear that breach is not an option right now,” she said, because “while many mitigation measures exist, many require further analysis or are not possible to implement in the near-term.”

Murray emphasized that breaching the dams would require bipartisan support in Congress, where there is staunch opposition to such a move from Northwest Republicans. After a draft of the report was released for public comment in June, GOP Reps. Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane introduced a bill that would prevent the dams from being breached.

In a statement Thursday, Newhouse criticized Murray and Inslee for the “duplicative, unnecessary” report.

“This report outlines what central Washington has known all along: there is no reasonable replacement for the Lower Snake River Dams,” the statement reads. “The fact of the matter is, even if they were able to replace the 66% of the state’s energy which is currently provided by the clean, renewable, and affordable hydroelectric dams, the loss of the dams would still devastate our communities: prices would rise, crops would perish, jobs would be eliminated, and the environment would be threatened.”

McMorris Rodgers, meanwhile, said the Democrats’ conclusion was “a welcome step back towards reality,” but also slammed the process that got them there.

“For months, they led a sham process paid for by Washington taxpayers and pandered to radical environmental groups who ignored the facts in pursuit of what is still their end goal – breaching the Lower Snake River dams,” she said in the statement.

Advocates of dam breaching expressed measured optimism in response to Murray and Inslee’s recommendations. Samuel Penney, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe, called the Democrats’ proposal “the next step in the right direction to save these sacred species.”

“The Nez Perce Tribe appreciates Senator Murray and Governor Inslee’s courage and leadership at this moment of crisis for Columbia Basin salmon,” Penney said in a statement. “We appreciate Senator Murray and Governor Inslee’s recognition that salmon extinction is unacceptable, and that restoring the lower Snake River can be done in a way that not only addresses affected sectors but also ensures a better future for the Northwest.”

Kyle Smith, Snake River director at the nonprofit American Rivers, called the report “an important step toward gathering necessary information and crafting a collaborative, pragmatic solution.”

“This report is a call to our entire region to roll up our sleeves, have the tough conversations, and get to work on specific solutions with a timetable that works for everyone,” Smith said in a statement. “Communities are hurting and we need answers and action now.”

Inslee and Murray waded into the region’s intensely controversial salmon-and-dams debate in May 2021 when they spurned a proposal by Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, to spend $33 billion to replace the benefits the dams provide – including irrigation, barge transportation between Lewiston and the Tri-Cities, and enough energy production to power a city the size of Seattle.

Simpson shook up the long-running debate when he released his proposal in February 2021, drawing praise from tribal leaders and environmentalists, and scorn from his fellow Republicans in Congress. The region’s Democratic leaders largely kept quiet – reflecting the difficult balance they have tried to strike between Indigenous people’s rights and the low-carbon energy the dams provide – until Murray and Inslee announced in October 2021 they would conduct their own process to consider dam breaching.

In his own statement, Inslee said breaching the dams would give salmon the best chance to return to abundance in the Snake and the lower Columbia River into which it flows, but he added that doing so before replacing the benefits of the dams “would be disastrous.”

“The question of whether to breach the Lower Snake River Dams is deeply personal to the many communities and Tribes engaged in this debate,” the governor said. “The stakes are high, and the debate often devolves into a binary choice to breach now to save the salmon or not breach and maintain the status quo. Neither of those options are responsible or feasible.”

Advocates of dam breaching were encouraged in July when the Biden administration weighed in with a pair of reports that supported taking sweeping actions to restore salmon runs, including potentially breaching the dams.

When Murray got involved in the dam-breaching debate in May 2021, she signaled Congress could use the Water Resources Development Act – a bill lawmakers pass every two years to authorize federal water projects – as a vehicle toward eventually breaching the dams. But when the Senate passed the bill in a near-unanimous vote July 28, after the House passed its own version in a similarly bipartisan vote in June, it didn’t include provisions related to the dams, hinting that Congress was not about to take action on the issue.

The report, prepared by a consulting team composed of Seattle-based firm Ross Strategic and D.C.-based Kramer Consulting, assesses the potential costs and benefits of dam breaching but doesn’t make recommendations.

“With the damming of the Snake River, the wealth of the Snake River has been transferred through energy production, transportation, and irrigation to the detriment of salmon and the communities that rely on salmon,” the report concludes.

Maintaining the dams costs an estimated $150 million to $278 million per year, the report finds, but breaching them and replacing the benefits they provide would cost between $10.3 billion and $31.3 billion, in addition to other unforeseen costs.

During a public comment period from June 9 to July 11, the consultants wrote, they received “approximately 1,769 online form submissions, 22 comments via paper mail, and approximately 65,000 emails and attachments.”

Murray and Inslee note in their recommendations that, if the dams were breached, “some communities on the lower Snake River would experience fundamental changes, and that some industries relying on the Dams would no longer be viable.”

“We take these impacts extremely seriously,” they continue, “and any approach involving breaching of the Lower Snake River Dams must provide opportunity for all the communities that would bear these impacts.”

While acknowledging the intense disagreement in the debate over the dams that has raged for decades in the Northwest, Murray and Inslee urged the stakeholders to work toward a solution based on a shared desire to see salmon and low-carbon energy production coexist.

“While we have heard disagreement and intensity of feeling, we have also seen clear areas of common agreement,” they said. “The present moment affords us a vital opportunity to build on these areas of agreement, and we firmly believe that the region cannot afford another fifty years of confrontation, litigation, and acrimony over the Lower Snake River Dams.”

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/aug/25/murray-and-inslee-conclude-breaching-snake-river-d/

Nov. 30, 2022
By Orion Donovan-Smith

WASHINGTON – Leaders of Northwest tribes on Wednesday welcomed new commitments from President Joe Biden and members of his administration at the first in-person Tribal Nations Summit held by the White House in six years.

In a series of speeches and panel discussions with tribal leaders, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and several other top administration officials pledged to give tribes more say in federal decision-making, to set uniform standards guiding how agencies consult with tribes and to abide by treaties between tribes and the federal government.

“Everyone is entitled to be treated with respect and dignity,” Biden told a crowd of more than 300 tribal leaders and representatives. “This is especially true for tribal nations to whom the United States owes a solemn trust and treaty obligations that we haven’t always lived up to.”

In conjunction with the summit, which fell at the end of Native American Heritage Month, the White House announced a 10-year plan to revitalize Native languages, along with a slew of other efforts aimed at improving the lives of Indigenous people living on and off reservations.

A Small Business Administration program will increase access to capital in Indian Country. A Department of Energy program will help federal agencies buy more low-carbon energy from tribes. Another program will help build electric vehicle infrastructure on tribal lands, while the Federal Highway Administration announced agreements to reestablish regional centers to help tribes access $3 billion to improve roads.

“I was really impressed with President Biden’s speech today,” said Leonard Forsman, chairman of the Suquamish Tribal Council, crediting the administration for “fulfilling the promises the United States made with our tribes in the mid-1800s when the treaties were signed.”

Forsman, who also serves as president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, a group that represents 57 tribes in the region, hailed the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change and investments in infrastructure that help preserve salmon runs, which he called “so extremely valuable to our culture and to our heritage, and something we all have in common with each other.”

The administration announced $135 million in funding to help 11 tribes relocate in response to climate change, including a $25 million grant to the Quinault Indian Nation on the Olympic Peninsula, where the coastal town of Taholah faces a growing risk of flooding as sea levels rise.

Gary Aitken Jr., vice-chairman of the Kootenai Tribal Council, said that while he was frustrated by the summit’s format – heavy on panel discussions with little time for tribal leaders to ask questions or voice concerns – he appreciates that Biden and his administration “actually try to understand our needs and who we are and honor us, and also the commitments the U.S. has made in the past.”

Aitken also applauded the work of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo member and the first Native American to lead the agency, as well as Biden appointing other Indigenous people to key roles in his administration.

“Just putting Natives in places of power, of trust – people who understand the plight of the people they’re dealing with – I think that’s been really important,” he said. “Secretary Haaland, she’s done a tremendous job. She deserves to be there and I’m glad and proud she is there.”

Before she introduced Biden on Wednesday, Haaland acknowledged the significance of her role.

“You and I know first-hand, Native people have not always had friends in the White House,” Haaland said. “I am so proud to lead this work here at Interior. This agency once charged with assimilating our people through family separation is now leading the work to heal those broken promises and to strengthen Indian Country.”

A presidential memorandum signed by Biden will standardize the way federal agencies consult with tribes before making decisions that affect them, while requiring annual training on the tribal consultation process for all federal employees who work with tribes or on policies that impact tribes.

Jeremy Takala, a member of the Yakama Nation Tribal Council, called Biden’s announcements “very promising,” and said meaningful involvement for tribes is especially important for salmon recovery efforts and the development of energy projects. He said he hopes that will help avoid a repeat of the federal hydropower projects in the Columbia Basin that largely excluded the Yakama Nation and other tribes in the 20th century.

Along with the Yakama Nation, the Nez Perce Tribe has been at the forefront of efforts to restore salmon runs in the Columbia and Snake rivers, even if that means breaching the four lower Snake River dams.

Nez Perce Chairman Samuel Penney said he had a brief face-to-face meeting with Biden and told the president his tribe needs the administration’s help to preserve their ability to fish in their “usual and accustomed places,” as guaranteed by the 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla.

“My main message was that Pacific Northwest salmon is at the point of extinction,” Penney said. “We don’t have time to do more and more studies. We need action now. So we’re hoping that the administration will hold true to that and make sure that those treaty-reserved resources are protected, for not only today but for future generations.”

Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Jay Inslee, both Washington Democrats, announced in August they couldn’t support breaching the Snake River dams until the benefits they provide to the region could be replaced by new infrastructure. Penney said he hopes the Biden administration’s legislative agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure law Congress passed in November 2021, could make such a transition possible sooner rather than later.

Carol Evans, chairwoman of the Spokane Tribal Council, didn’t attend the summit, but said in a phone call Monday she was happy to see the return of the in-person event because it’s important for federal leaders to meet directly with their tribal counterparts.

“A lot of times, we are the ones with the solutions on important matters,” Evans said. “But it is important, from the president down, that they acknowledge their trust responsibility.”

President Barack Obama began holding the yearly summits in 2009 with the aim of improving engagement between the U.S. government and the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes. The Trump administration didn’t continue the tradition, and last year’s event – the first under Biden – was held virtually due to COVID-19.

Jarred-Michael Erickson, chairman of the Colville Business Council, was attending the summit for the first time and said having so many tribal leaders in one place again was an important step. He was especially happy about Biden asking Congress to fund the Indian Health Service on a permanent basis, as well as the administration’s efforts to streamline the process for converting individually owned parcels of land from “fee” status to “trust” status, a major priority of the Colville Tribes.

“It’s huge to have this many tribal leaders and nations here in one area to voice our concerns,” Erickson said. “It makes my heart happy to see us all here in one big group.”

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/nov/30/northwest-tribal-leaders-welcome-bidens-new-commit/

Sun., Feb. 5, 2023
By Eric Barker The Lewiston Tribune

LEWISTON – Spring chinook bound for the Snake River and other Columbia River tributaries upstream of Bonneville Dam will make another decent showing this year.

But that is relative. Fisheries managers are forecasting nearly 200,000 springers will enter the mouth of the Columbia River, including 85,900 bound for the Snake River.

The overall prediction exceeds last year’s forecast of about 123,000 as well as the actual return of about 185,000.

But the Snake River forecast calls for less than the 103,000 adult chinook that returned last year. This year’s forecast includes a poor prediction for Snake River wild spring chinook – just 13,200 compared to 23,000 that returned in 2022.

The number of wild fish is so low that it will serve as a constraint on the fishery for hatchery spring chinook in the Columbia River, said Ryan Lothrop, Columbia River Fishery Manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“We do have our concerns on the Snake River wild (forecast return). That is why we have an agreement that reduces our impact to that stock when it doesn’t hit the abundance trigger we would expect with the total run size.”

Anglers can keep hatchery-reared chinook but must release wild spring chinook, which can be identified by intact adipose fins.

While the overall run is forecast to be large enough to provide fisheries on the Columbia and Snake rivers, as well as some of their tributaries, it is not as large as managers would like. But it is significantly stronger than runs from 2017 to 2021 and a vast improvement over dismally low returns in 2019 and 2020.

Lothrop said the expected low return of wild chinook to the Snake River Basin this year can be traced to low numbers of adult wild fish returning during the down years.

Washington and Oregon will hold a joint meeting at 10 a.m. Feb. 22 at Ridgefield, Washington, as part of the states’ process to set fishing seasons on the Columbia River. A call-in option for remote participation will be available. Those interested can sign up for meeting notifications, including call-in information at bit.ly/3XZqaV3.

Idaho will hold a series of meetings next month as part of its process for setting a spring chinook season. Joe DuPont, regional fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Lewiston, expects the number of hatchery spring chinook available for harvest on the Clearwater River and its tributaries will be down compared to last year. He’s projecting a harvest share of about 3,200 adult chinook. Last year, 5,700 adult spring chinook were available for harvest.

Anglers on the lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers are projected to have about 3,200 adult chinook available for harvest, which is similar to last year’s harvest share of about 3,600.

He noted last year’s return of fish to the Clearwater River far exceeded preseason forecasts. He is hoping for a repeat, even if he’s not predicting one.

“I’m still somewhat optimistic we will slightly underestimate the return,” he said.

DuPont said the meetings will feature reports on the agency’s efforts to balance harvest on different stretches of the Clearwater River and between the lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers and a review of last year’s four-day-a-week season on the North Fork of the Clearwater River that was designed to increase harvest opportunities for Nez Perce Tribal fishers.

In addition to spring chinook seasons, the meetings will feature other topics, including a report on last year’s change to steelhead seasons on the Clearwater River, and how the department manages fishing on trout streams during heat waves and elevated water temperatures.

The meetings will all start at 5:30 p.m. and last about two hours. The schedule is: the Riggins Community Center on Feb. 13; Clearwater Hatchery at Ahsahka near Orofino on Feb. 15; the Fish and Game Office at Lewiston on Feb. 16; the Cascade Senior Center on Feb. 16; and the Fish and Game office in Coeur d’Alene on Feb. 22.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/feb/05/overall-run-forecast-calls-for-more-fish-than-last/

March 31, 2018

By Eli Francovich elif@spokesman.com - (509) 459-5508

The majority of Washington voters would rather see increased wild salmon runs than preserve four lower Snake River dams, according to a poll released last week.

According to conservation groups, those results represent a marked shift in public opinion about a controversial proposition: removing dams.

“Yeah, I was encouraged,” said Sam Mace, the Inland Northwest Director for Save Our Wild Salmon. “The numbers gave me hope. People do care about salmon in a time where people are concerned about lots of things.”

The survey, conducted by a California-based company, completed 400 telephone interviews with Washington voters. A coalition of seven conservation groups paid for the survey.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, refuted the findings.

“That’s not what we’re hearing,” said Jared Powell.

Last week, the congresswoman traveled in Eastern Washington meeting with constituents.

McMorris Rodgers has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would protect the dams from removal. The bill, HB 3144, will likely receive a floor vote in the House of Representatives within the next two months after receiving a commitment from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Powell said.

“I don’t think that she’s listening to the range of her constituents and what they care about,” Mace said of McMorris Rodgers. “Our poll numbers show something different.”

According to the survey, 62 percent of voters statewide oppose the bill while 54 percent in the 5th District opposed the bill.

In an interview with The Spokesman-Review in February McMorris Rodgers defended the dams, citing cultural and economic reasons.

“The people of eastern Washington are strong supporters of the dams and I think they recognize the role they play and especially those that lived in Eastern Washington before the dams were put in,” she said. “They saw the transformation and the improved way of life and the improved economic opportunities.”

Mace and others say opinions and facts have changed. Successful dam removals elsewhere in Washington, like on the Elwha River, have convinced Washingtonians that it can be done, Mace said.

The economic benefits of the dams have lessened in recent years, she said. Changes in the electrical grid have given the Northwest a power surplus and shipping, long used by farmers to ferry wheat and other staples to Portland, has declined.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t opposition, or that some farmers won’t be negatively impacted, Mace said. Helping those who would be negatively impacted is a key concern for the coalition that paid for the study.

“Our coalition is very committed to putting forth a solution that makes sure those questions are answered and that farmers are taken care of,” she said.

McMorris Rodgers maintains that salmon and dams can coexist together. She points to improved technology helping salmon swim upstream. While other power sources – like wind – have become more relevant, she said hydro power is still vital.

“Yes, we’ve seen an increase in wind,” she said. “You need to have, in many ways, wind and hydro. It is a great marriage because when it’s not blowing, then the hydro power you can turn it on and you can produce electricity.”

If the dams were removed, rates would likely go up, although by how much is not clear.

According to the survey of Washington voters, 75 percent of voters would be willing to pay $1 more per month in electrical bills, 69 percent were willing to pay $3 more per month, 66 percent were willing to pay $5 more per month and 63 percent were willing to pay $7 more per month.

Spokesman-Review correspondent Joey Mendolia contributed to this report.

August 25, 2022

By Eric Barker Lewiston Tribune 

LEWISTON – Federal fisheries managers found that wild salmon and steelhead from the Snake and Columbia rivers are threatened by climate change like never before and that urgent action is required to save the fish.

But officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration opted to leave their status under the Endangered Species Act unchanged, surprising some who thought Snake River spring chinook might be reclassified from threatened to endangered. They also did not list breaching the lower Snake River dams as one of the recommended actions to help the fish. That is a departure from a draft report the agency released in July saying the dams need to come out.

The difference relates to the goal of the two disparate documents. In July, the agency released a draft report saying the dams should be breached, along with other aggressive actions, if the region wants to restore wild fish to healthy and harvestable levels.

The status reviews of four species that return to the Snake River and three to the mid- and upper Columbia River released Thursday look at less lofty goals – keeping the fish from going extinct and restoring them to the point ESA protection is not needed. For example, the delisting criteria calls for a return of about 33,500 wild spring and summer chinook to their spawning grounds. The healthy and harvestable level, set by the NOAA convened Columbia River Partnership Task Force, is about 98,000 wild spring and summer chinook returning to the Snake River.

Biologists believe about 12,000 to 15,000 wild spring and summer chinook returned to the Snake River basin this year – that is up from previous years but still well shy of the number needed for delisting and miles from the higher goal for harvestable numbers.

“We’re not anywhere close to that. We’re kind of worried about moving in the other direction,” said Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries. “It’s such an ambitious goal, much beyond what the Endangered Species Act requires. But that’s what people have told us we should be shooting for.”

Checking in
Every five years or so, the agency is required to review the status of fish and marine mammals protected by the ESA. The idea is to assess if recovery efforts are on pace and if changes need to be made.“

It is a snapshot of how the species have done in the last five years and how they are faring overall at a critical time,” Michael Tehan, Assistant Regional Administrator for the Interior Columbia Basin for the agency, said in a news release “We are seeing the impacts of climate change play out, which demonstrates the urgency of moving the most critical recovery actions ahead now. The takeaway message is that we cannot wait.”

The previous half-decade has been a rough one for salmon and steelhead from the Columbia basin and beyond. Poor ocean conditions and often hostile summer temperatures in freshwater have hit the fish hard. According to the review, 27 populations of wild Snake River spring chinook declined by an average of 55% and face a moderate-to-high risk of extinction. Steelhead declined by about 50% and face a moderate extinction risk. Sockeye continue to be critically imperiled. Fall chinook are doing much better and it’s conceivable the fish could be removed from federal protection if that pattern continues.

“Fall-run chinook salmon are a bright spot that reflect the hard work that tribes and states have put into their recovery,” Tehan said. “We know what the species needs and we have been able to apply that.”

Nancy Munn, a NOAA scientist who led many of the reviews, said the agency seriously considered moving Snake River spring chinook from threatened to endangered. Instead of taking that step, they plan to closely watch fish numbers and expect a rebound if ocean conditions continue to improve as they did last year.

“If that doesn’t happen, if we see continued declines when ocean conditions are good, then we’re going to take a closer look,” she said.

To address climate change and other threats, the agency is stressing the need to make inland spawning habitat more resilient to higher summer temperatures and lower flows through large-scale habitat restoration projects. They also call for reductions in predation by sea lions and other marine mammals that feast on returning adults in the lower Columbia River.

Wild salmon and steelhead have been under federal protection for about three decades. They face a number of threats including dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers, degraded habitat, competition from hatchery fish, predation and, in some cases, harvest.

More information on the status reviews is available at bit.ly/3PyKSqb.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/aug/25/snake-river-spring-chinook-struggling-like-never-b/

Sun., April 23, 2023
By Eric Barker

LEWISTON – Steelhead are tough, resilient fish, and when it comes to providing regular hatchery-based fishing opportunities, have proven to be largely reliable over the years.

But they haven’t been doing so well of late. Returns of Endangered Species Act-protected wild steelhead have long been a concern and the past five-plus years have been especially rough on them. The hatchery fish that drive fisheries from Astoria, Oregon, to Kooskia and Riggins in Idaho have faltered as well.

Not every year has been alarming. The 2022 return of steelhead surprised fisheries managers. But the fish are expected to tank again this year and fisheries managers are expecting one of the lowest returns, if not the lowest, on record.

So what ails them? No one knows for sure.

There are obvious culprits like the dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers and the predators that take their meals in the reservoirs.

Then there are ocean conditions, a major driver of salmon and steelhead runs in general. Monitoring by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries indicates there was a cluster of tough years between 2015 and 2019. Sea surface temperatures were elevated, upwelling was down and food was scarce. Salmon and steelhead numbers took a hit.

But things started ticking upward in 2020 and improved vastly in 2021. Chinook, sockeye and coho benefited, but the boost to steelhead was less apparent. Their behavior once in the ocean may explain why.

When steelhead smolts hit the Columbia River estuary, they tend to keep swimming, making a beeline for the open ocean hundreds of miles offshore. That is different from coho, sockeye and chinook that stay relatively close to the West Coast of North America. The zone within a few hundred miles of the coast tends to be influenced by upwelling, the movement of cool water from depth to the surface.

That is less true farther out where steelhead spend their time in the ocean.

“They use the high seas and open ocean more and are much more surface oriented,” said John Cassinelli of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Boise. “We continue to have some pretty warm ocean conditions and marine heat waves setting up every year. We think those are contributing to poor ocean survival.

“Steelhead are more surface oriented and the surface continues to be warm so we are continuing to see not ideal ocean conditions for steelhead,” he added.

That is one reason John McMillan, a Port Angeles, Washington-based biologist for the Conservation Angler, is worried about the species across its range. Steelhead spend most of their time within 15 feet of the surface.

“That is the part of the ocean that has been prone to marine heatwaves even as some closer-to-shore ocean conditions improved over the past few years,” he said, while noting those improved conditions may be reversing this year. “Climate change models all say the one part (of the ocean) we are influencing the fastest is the upper water column.”

Managers are increasingly concerned about another trend. For more than a decade, the fish have followed alternating up and down years, perhaps suffering low survival when pink salmon, that have long followed an every-other-year pattern of abundance, are high in numbers.

“We don’t have any hard evidence to support that, but there is definitely a correlation between large pink salmon runs and what appears to be low survival of steelhead when they enter the ocean,” Cassinelli said.

Pinks are the most abundant salmon species in the Pacific Ocean. The U.S., Russia and Japan all operate pink salmon hatcheries.

The forecast of just 910 wild B-run steelhead returning to Idaho this year is troubling to fisheries managers and anglers alike. Brian Brooks, executive director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation calls it a tragedy.

“Those are fish that are found nowhere else on the planet and we have less than 1,000 coming back,” he said. “If the alarm bells aren’t ringing now, I don’t know what does it.”

His group supports Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson’s concept that would help steelhead as well as salmon by breaching the four lower Snake River dams while investing in affected communities and industries.

But Brooks also backs continued efforts to restore degraded habitat and reduce predation while improving management of hatcheries and harvest to ensure wild steelhead are protected. He’d like other members of Idaho’s congressional delegation to join Simpson and noted Sen. Jim Risch is sponsoring legislation to retain the dams.

“It just kind of shows you how unserious Risch is about the crisis at hand, about the industry and culture associated with it,” he said. “If we have restrictions on the season, it’s going to hit the smallest rural towns the hardest.”

Salmon and steelhead fishing contributes an estimated $8.6 million per month to north central Idaho’s economy, according to the Idaho Department of Labor. When the fall steelhead season on the Clearwater River was shut down in 2019, the department estimated it would lead to the loss of 43 jobs and $1 million in wages. At the time, coho and fall chinook fishing remained open on the Clearwater and steelhead fishing was open on the Snake, Salmon and Grande Ronde rivers.

Restrictions may be in store. Oregon is telling anglers to expect some temporary and geographically targeted closures on the Columbia River as steelhead are migrating upstream.

Washington is also signaling that restrictive regulations are likely and Idaho is considering them.

David Moskowitz, executive director of the Conservation Angler, is calling on Washington to follow Oregon’s lead and implement restrictions, such as closing fishing near the mouths of Columbia River tributaries.

“We feel like every action we can take, we should take,” he said. “There are plenty of places in the Columbia where you can catch salmon where you aren’t going to catch many steelhead.

“We just think the numbers are so low, why are we not doing everything we can?”

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/apr/23/this-years-return-could-be-one-of-the-smallest-on-/

Wednesday, MARCH 19, 2014

By Becky Kramer

Note on historic runs: The Upper Columbia River was once home to prolific salmon and steelhead runs, with some fish traveling 1,300 miles to spawn in the river’s headwaters. The annual harvest from the Upper Columbia once numbered between 980,000 and 1.6 million fish. Northwest tribes and their Canadian counterparts are meeting in Spokane this week to discuss engineering solutions for getting salmon over Grand Coulee Dam.

Returning chinook, sockeye and steelhead to the upper Columbia River is a long-standing dream for indigenous people on both sides of the border. When the 550-foot-tall dam began operation in 1942 without fish ladders, it cut off access to hundreds of miles of upstream habitat, delivering the final blow to a fishery already weakened by overharvest on the lower river.

“We all know that our biggest challenge is Grand Coulee, because it’s such a big dam,” said Paul Lumley, executive director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in Portland.

But it’s a worthy challenge, Lumley told 120 people gathered for the three-day technical workshop at Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights, which kicked off Tuesday.

“I certainly hope to see (the salmon return) in my lifetime,” he said. “It’s not just about tribal culture, it’s for all citizens of the Columbia Basin. We all care about the fish.”

Renegotiation of the 1964 Columbia River Treaty between the U.S. and Canada created the opening for discussing fish passage over Grand Coulee. Federal agencies, Northwest states and 16 Indian tribes favor amending the treaty to address ecosystem functions, such as salmon and climate change.

The treaty, which governs flood control and hydropower generation on the Columbia, is up for possible renegotiation beginning this fall.

The tribes and Canada’s First Nations are pushing for fish passage at Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams on the Columbia, and at three Canadian dams: Hugh Keenleyside, Brilliant and Waneta.

They favor pilot-scale reintroductions of fish and said identifying funding for the work should be discussed by the U.S. and Canada during treaty negotiations.

Innovative engineering for getting salmon over high dams is already occurring in smaller watersheds in the basin, said D.R. Michel, executive director for the Upper Columbia United Tribes. Tuesday’s session featured discussions of trapping and transporting fish around dams, as well as methods for getting them safely through dams. Speakers also discussed where good salmon habitat remains upstream of Grand Coulee. With the climate projected to warm, returning salmon to historical spawning grounds in British Columbia becomes critical, said Bill Green, director of the Canadian Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fisheries Commission.

Under climate change modeling, precipitation becomes more uncertain and stream temperatures are expected to warm, Green said. But British Columbia will continue to have glacier-fed streams that will provide cold water for spawning, he said.

The Upper Columbia River was once home to prolific salmon and steelhead runs, with some fish traveling 1,300 miles to spawn in the river’s headwaters. The annual harvest from the Upper Columbia once numbered between 980,000 and 1.6 million fish, said Sheri Sears, a policy analyst for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Salmon was a daily part of tribal members’ diets and integral to culture and religion.

“Without an opportunity to catch salmon, tradition skills and knowledge associated with the harvest, preparation, and use of the fish … is being lost,” the tribes and First Nations wrote in a recent policy paper. The potential for restoring salmon over Grand Coulee also raises the possibility of salmon returning to the Spokane River, said Matt Wynne, a Spokane tribal council member.

The Spokanes once trapped salmon at Little Falls by building rock barriers partway across the river and spearing fish caught in weirs. They also fished at the Spokane River’s confluence with the Little Spokane and Latah Creek. However, three dams owned by Avista Utilities blocked fish passage on the lower Spokane River even before Grand Coulee was built.

The tribe is starting to analyze what it would take to restore salmon to the Spokane River system, Wynne said. The Little Spokane River in particular still has good habitat, he said.

Link to story: http://www.spokesman.com/outdoors/stories/2014/mar/19/tribes-talk-salmon-dams-as-columbia-river-treaty/

October 29, 2013

By Becky Kramer
 
Under terms of a treaty negotiated 50 years ago, the United States sends $250 million to $350 million worth of electricity from Columbia River dams to British Columbia each year.

That’s way too much, a coalition of 85 Northwest utilities says.

The payments were intended to reimburse Canada for building storage dams in the Upper Columbia basin to benefit downstream power generation, but an outdated formula overpays Canadians tenfold, the utilities wrote in a Friday letter to the Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Northwest could use that energy itself, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and lowering bills for the region’s electric ratepayers, said Gregg Carrington, managing energy director for the Chelan County Public Utilities District.

The 85 utilities in the coalition include Avista Corp., Kootenai Electric Cooperative, and Inland Power and Light.

The so-called “Canadian entitlement” has become a sticking point as stakeholders struggle to find consensus for updating the 1964 Columbia River Treaty, which coordinates operations along the 1,200-mile river and its tributaries.

If the United States and Canada can’t agree on key points for a new entitlement formula by next summer, the U.S. State Department should consider giving Canada a 10-year notice for terminating the existing treaty in 2024, and start from scratch, the utilities said.

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Save Our Wild Salmon and Pacific Rivers Council, oppose the hard-line stance, saying treaty termination could lead to significant drawdowns of U.S. reservoirs.

“The utilities are taking a position that I would say is extreme,” said Rachael Paschal Osborn, a water attorney and adjunct law professor at Gonzaga University. “To them, it’s all about the money. We have some of the lowest energy costs in the country, even with paying out the entitlement every year.”

Time is running out for stakeholders to resolve their differences. U.S. State Department officials want BPA and the Army Corps to provide them with a regional consensus on the treaty by mid-December. That would give the State Department nine months to evaluate the Northwest’s priorities for treaty negotiations and assess whether they match national interests, said Mike Hansen, a BPA spokesman.
The September 2014 date is strategic. Although the Columbia River Treaty doesn’t have an expiration date, either country can cancel most of its provisions after September 2024, with a 10-year minimum notice.

The Canadian entitlement totals 500 megawatts of electricity, or roughly enough energy to meet half of the city of Seattle’s needs. In a recently released statement, British Columbia’s provincial government said the entitlement is too low.

The United States isn’t reimbursing Canadians for benefits beyond power, such as flows for recreation in U.S. reservoirs, river navigation and fish passage over dams, B.C.’s government said.

The Columbia River Treaty is widely hailed as a model of international cooperation.

“I think the U.S. is more likely to work out an agreement with Canada than to terminate the treaty,” said the Chelan County PUD’s Carrington. But if the U.S. and Canada can’t find common ground on the entitlement payments, U.S. negotiators should be ready to give notice, he said.

BPA also supports reducing payments to Canada, but uses milder language in a draft recommendation.
The entitlement pays British Columbia for holding back the spring runoff and releasing the water when it is more valuable for power production. It was negotiated in the 1960s, when the outlook for Northwest energy production was much different, Carrington said. Nuclear power and gas-fired electrical generation were expected to increase, with dams playing a smaller role in the future. As a result, Canadian entitlements were expected to drop over time.

Neither prediction came true. Dams still supply the majority of the Northwest’s electricity needs, and the payments have increased. Through a quirk in the formula that calculates the payments, the Northwest gets penalized for 4,000 megawatts of wind energy added in recent years, Carrington said.
The United States paid $254 million to Canada during the treaty’s first 30 years, which funded construction of three storage dams in the Upper Columbia basin.

“When we originally signed the treaty, there was an expectation that when those projects were paid off, we’d be paying off the mortgage,” said Hansen, the BPA spokesman.

The U.S. expected later entitlement payments to fall sharply, Hansen said.

Both BPA and the utilities have calculated what they think the entitlement payments should be after 2024.

“Significantly less than half of what we’re paying now,” is BPA’s position, Hansen said.

The utilities are advocating for $25 million to $35 million annually, which represents half of the downstream power benefit from B.C.’s storage dams, Carrington said.

More information:  http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/oct/29/us-utilities-say-columbia-river-treaty-payments/

March 24, 2023
By Eric Barker | The Lewiston Tribune

LEWISTON – Washington is expected to open limited fishing seasons for hatchery spring chinook on two stretches of the Snake River but not at Clarkston.

Chris Donley, fish program managers for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at Spokane, said the season will be similar to those offered last year, with fishing allowed near Little Goose Dam on Tuesdays and Fridays and near Ice Harbor Dam on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

“We are not planning on Clarkston. We don’t really have enough fish to do it,” he said.

Donley expects anglers on the Snake to have a collective harvest quota of about 670 adult spring chinook and a daily bag limit of one adult fish. He said that could mean eight days of fishing once the run begins to show up.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission approved spring chinook fishing on the lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers near Riggins and on the Clearwater River and several of its tributaries at a meeting March 16. The season will start late next month. Anglers on the Clearwater River and its tributaries are expected to have a harvest share of about 2,500 adult fish, anglers fishing on the lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers will be able to harvest about 3,800 adult fish and there is projected to be about 700 chinook available for harvest near Hells Canyon Dam on the Snake River.

State and tribal fisheries managers are forecasting nearly 200,000 springers bound for tributaries of the Columbia River upstream of Bonneville Dam will enter the mouth of the Columbia River, including 85,900 heading for the Snake River.

The overall prediction exceeds last year’s forecast of about 123,000, as well as the actual return of about 185,000. But the Snake River forecast calls for less than the 103,000 adult chinook that returned last year, and most of the expected return will be hatchery fish.

Forecasters expect a poor return of Snake River wild spring chinook – just 13,200 compared to 23,000 that returned in 2022. Wild Snake River spring chinook, including populations that return to the Salmon River in central Idaho, are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and off limits to fishing. The fish face several threats, including mortality and injury from passing dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, predators and the effects of climate change.

Returns have been so low in recent years that some populations are at elevated risk, known as the quasi-extinction threshold, according to research by the Nez Perce Tribe.

The fish have had to contend with a string of poor ocean conditions. But that appeared to break in 2021 when conditions were graded the second best recorded over a 25-year data set. Ocean conditions were mixed last year, ranking 11th best over the past 25 years.

Donley is warning anglers to prepare for another fall which may see restrictions or limited bag limits for steelhead.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/mar/24/washington-expected-to-have-a-limited-spring-chino/

“People should not expect it to be a good steelhead year. It’s looking like the worst forecast on record or close to it.

“I don’t expect it to be great anywhere, but we will fish,” he said. “It’s going to look similar to what we have been doing since 2017.”

Fishing seasons target hatchery steelhead. Snake River wild steelhead are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and anglers aren’t allowed to harvest those fish.

By Nicholas K. Geranios
Feb 15, 2020

SPOKANE, Wash. — Nearly two decades ago, Republican President George W. Bush stood on a bank of the Snake River near Pasco, Washington, and declared that four hydroelectric dams would not be torn down on his watch, though many blamed them for killing endangered salmon.

This month, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho issued a bold plan that called for removing those same dams to save the salmon. In between those two acts were decades of litigation that show no sign of ending and $17 billion worth of improvements to the dams that did little to help fish.

Now the question is: Can Simpson's plan win approval from Congress and the Biden administration and help save an iconic Pacific Northwest species from extinction?

Other Republicans are vowing to save the dams. Democrats have come out in support of Simpson's plan, which calls for spending $33 billion to breach four dams, replace the lost hydroelectric energy with other sources and ensure that irrigation, river navigation and flood control will continue as before.

The issue of what to do with the Snake River dams has long divided the Pacific Northwest, with Democrats generally siding with saving the salmon and Republicans saying it's foolish to remove hydropower resources in the era of climate change.

But Lindsay Slater, Simpson's chief of staff, said the political winds are blowing in favor of a solution to this decadeslong controversy.

For one thing, the Biden administration is preparing a massive economic relief package for the nation, and Simpson wants the Northwest to designate this solution to the salmon issues for the region's share of the package, Slater said. For another, Democratic control of the Senate has propelled numerous longtime senators from the Northwest into committee leadership positions for the first time in years, he said.

"There is all this seniority in the Northwest," Slater said, pointing to Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden.

"This is lightning in a bottle. It really is," Slater said. "We are telling stakeholders this is a once-in-30-years opportunity. Do we want to grab it?"

Simpson was motivated by the prospect of continued litigation even as salmon die off, Slater said.

Simpson unveiled the plan in a video posted to his website Saturday, saying, "The current system is clearly not working."

Four Republican House members — Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler, all from Washington, and Rep. Russ Fulcher of Idaho — opposed Simpson's plan.

"The hydropower developed in the Pacific Northwest benefits every resident, family, and business in our region," they said in a joint statement. "Without it, life as we know it in our region would cease to exist."

McMorris Rodgers, whose district has several of the dams, has long fought to preserve the structures.

"Spending more than $33 billion to breach them — with no guarantee that doing so will restore salmon populations — is a drastic, fiscally irresponsible leap to take," she said.

Conservation and tribal groups issued statements supporting Simpson's proposal.

"We've spent decades making minor improvements and adjustments that simply haven't worked, and what we really need is serious funding and a major overhaul," said Liz Hamilton, executive director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association.

"Healthy populations of wild salmon and steelhead are essential for Northwest tribes, local economies and the region's way of life — and they're running out of time," said Collin O'Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

The plan calls for the removal of the Lower Granite Dam near Colfax in 2030, with removal of three other dams — Ice Harbor, Little Goose and Lower Monumental — in 2031. The dams were built in the 1950s and 1960s to provide power, flood control, irrigation and to make navigable a portion of the Snake River from Lewiston, Idaho, to the Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco in Washington, and downriver to Pacific Ocean ports.

Simpson's proposal includes removing the earthen berms adjacent to all four Lower Snake River hydroelectric dams to let the river run free, while spending billions to replace the benefits of the dams for agriculture, energy and transportation.

Glen Squires, head of the Washington Grain Commission, said Simpson should look to his own backyard if he wants to help fish.

"If the representative is so interested in dams and getting fish back to Idaho, I'd suggest he look at those within his state that were built without fish passage, cutting fish off from pristine habitat," Squires said.

Nez Perce tribal Chairman Shannon Wheeler, whose ancestors kept Lewis and Clark alive with salmon from Idaho's rivers when the starving explorers stumbled into Nez Perce territory in 1805, said the tribe strongly supports Simpson's plan.

"We view restoring the lower Snake River, a living being to us, and one that is injured, as urgent and overdue," Wheeler said.

Simpson is not the only one seeking a comprehensive solution to helping conserve the salmon population while providing for the region's power needs. The governors of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana have formed the Columbia Basin Collaborative, which must be involved in any solution, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday.

"Washington welcomes Rep. Simpson's willingness to think boldly about how to recover Columbia and Snake River salmon in a way that works for the entire region," Inslee said.

December 14, 2016

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — For the first time in more than a century, steelhead trout and sockeye salmon have been spotted in the upper reaches of the Elwha River.

They're the latest species to return to territory long blocked by the river's dams.

'We had chinook salmon above the dam within weeks (of dam removal), but now we're getting a greater diversity of fish,' said Barb Maynes, spokeswoman for Olympic National Park.

The world's largest dam removal project was completed in August 2014. Chinook and bull trout wasted no time pushing through the narrow channels left after the dams were blasted out.

The park followed up with the removal last year of about a dozen massive boulders that had fallen into the river sometime after the Glines Canyon Dam was completed and before its removal began in 2011.

Blasting out the boulders increased river flows and appears to have encouraged the more reticent fish species to charge higher up the river.
'The combination of blasting out the boulders and higher river flows over the winter has restored the river channel closer to the pre-dam condition,' Maynes said.

Fisheries biologists confirmed the presence of upper-river steelhead and sockeye late last month. Biologists conducted early and late August surveys above the dam sites by donning snorkel gear and swimming the length of the survey area.

Between Rica and Glines canyons, biologists saw a small numbers of chinook, steelhead and pairs of sockeye digging nests, or redds, to lay eggs.

Surveys conducted farther up the river, between the Hayes River confluence and the Elkhorn Ranger Station, revealed chinook, steelhead and bull trout.

Pink, coho and chum salmon and Pacific lamprey already had been observed above the dam sites after the dams were removed.

Along with snorkel surveys, biologists monitor fish tagged with small radio transmitters.

Later this month, biologists will survey redds and DNA from the environment to assess chinook recolonization and spawning.

http://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/local/communities/2016/09/12/steelhead-sockeye-spotted-above-elwha-dam-sites/94345886/

Demonstrators demand the Army Corps of Engineers remove dams to restore salmon for Puget Sound whales

by Stephen Quirke | 12 Oct 2018

Braving the rain and cold, 80 people marched with 20-foot banners to lay flowers, cedar and ferns in honor of recently deceased orcas. They had a 10-foot salmon and a giant inflatable orca in tow.

The crowd was gathered Oct. 5 at Holladay Park in Northeast Portland to demonstrate against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration.

Facing the Northwest District Headquarters of the Army Corps on Northeast Holladay, participants gave speeches through megaphones between shouts of “Breach the dams! Free the Snake!” and “Save the Salmon – Save the Orcas!”

The crowd then marched around the corner to the Bonneville Power Administration on Northeast 11th Avenue, led by Palouse Chief Jesse Nightwalker, and listened to Native drummers and singers while laying down flowers for the baby of the orca mother Tahlequah, who lost a newborn calf in July. Tahlequah spent an agonizing 17 days swimming through Puget Sound on what whale experts called a “tour of grief,” carrying her calf’s body for over 1,000 miles even after it began to decompose. Flowers were left in a memorial in the courtyard.

For the past three years, no newborn member of the southern resident killer whale population has survived past birth, producing widespread fear that this critically endangered species is sliding into extinction. Their primary food source, Chinook salmon, has had its spring run threatened in the Lower Columbia River since 1999, and last month, state fish managers closed all fall Chinook fishing up to Pasco due to their disastrously low rates of survival. Another resident orca, Scarlet, was declared dead Sept. 13.

Rally organizer Michele Seidelman has been organizing weekly overpass actions to build momentum for the rally and plans to return to the Army
Corps building every week until the dams are breached. Seidelman said she is driven by a personal bond with the orcas and her certainty that they cannot survive unless the lower Snake dams are removed.

“There’s no chance of their survival if we don’t do it. Zero,” she said.

“There’s a 2002 environmental impact study that taxpayers spent millions on, and it’s just sitting there gathering dust. They’ve used all the options except option No. 4, which is to breach. And they need to breach this year. The people who can make this decision are working in this
office,” Seidelman said.

“We come today to the rally to push the Corps of Engineers to breach the dams, the four Snake River dams in Washington, because our orcas are starving to death,” co-organizer Miguel Ramirez said. “If we breach the dams, we allow the salmon back in the waters and heal our ecosystem in the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean.”

Demonstrators carried signs with the names of Army Corps officials they said can save these orcas by restoring the salmon in the Snake River. As the largest tributary to the Columbia, the Snake historically provided as much as 50 percent of the salmon eaten by the resident orcas. One sign read, “Ponganis – Do The Right Thing – Breach The Dams.” David J. Ponganis is the director of programs for the Army Corps’ Northwestern Division.

A day earlier, the Army Corps and Bonneville scheduled a media conference call to “set (the) record straight” on orcas. On that call, federal officials with both agencies disputed the connection between Snake River dams and the death of salmon and orcas. Corps officials further insisted they did not have the authority to breach the dams without special approval from Congress.

Each of these claims is disputed by Jim Waddell, a retired Army Corps engineer who worked on the Army Corps’ breaching study in 2002 and now runs the website DamSense.org. Waddell said he has documented communications with then-Assistant Secretary of the Army Jo-Ellen Darcy, confirming that the $33 million study he worked on is still the
framework for ongoing decisions at the Army Corps – meaning the agency can use its breaching option without delay.

“I’m reading what the reports are saying, the empirical data, and I’m saying if we don’t breach two dams, starting in December this year, the empirical evidence says you’re likely to lose Chinook and orcas,” he said. “Certainly orcas in the sense that they will lose their breeding population. There’s 73 orcas left, but there’s only one male and five females that are actively breeding. If you lose those, you’ve made a huge hit in your genetic pool.”

An online petition started by Waddell asks the Army Corps to use its authority to begin breaching the dams this year. In September, the petition had 335,000 signatures; it now has more than 600,000.

The day after the agencies’ conference call, a rally was opened with speeches from the Lower Snake River Palouse matriarch Carrie Schuster and her son, Chief Nightwalker. They were joined by the Umatilla elder Art McConville and Native drummers from across the region.

Schuster spoke to the crowd about how the lower Snake River dams came to be built and what they cost her family. Widely opposed initially for their threats to fish and wildlife, construction began on Ice Harbor dam in 1955, Lower Monumental dam in 1961, Little Goose dam in 1963 and Lower Granite dam in 1965. A fifth dam was proposed but was ultimately
defeated.

“We were the last opposing village in existence on the river,” Schuster said. “They kicked us out of there in 1959 ’cause that’s when the water started coming up, and they had the county sheriffs there. They asked the state patrol ’cause they knew they were gonna have problems with my mother.”

Schuster said her mother made a handshake agreement with U.S. Sens. Warren Magnuson and Henry Jackson, who promised that after 50 years, her land would be returned and the dams would come down.

“That’s the reason that we’re trying to get them to honor the agreement,” Schuster said. “Bringing the dams down – that’s the only thing that’s really going to help, not only the salmon but also all the pods of orcas that are now threatened.”

Like the orcas, Schuster and other local people had much of their food on the Snake River obliterated by the dams – as well as homes and villages buried beneath reservoirs. One 1999 report produced for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission showed that 90 percent of the salmon originally harvested by the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho had been lost since European contact. The same study referenced an interagency scientific study called PATH, originally funded by Bonneville Power Administration, that found breaching the lower Snake River dams created the best chance of recovering endangered salmon in the Snake River - with an 80 percent likelihood of success.

It concluded that “Lower Snake River dams, together with dams on the mainstem Columbia, contributed significantly to the destruction of Nez Perce Treaty-reserved salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, eulachon” and that failure to take strong actions “commits to continued suffering, ill health and premature death for the peoples of the study tribes – all at unconscionable levels.”

On Oct. 5, Nightwalker led the crowd on its march route for three hours, singing several songs with other Native performers before the crowd circled back in to the park’s center, where dozens gathered under canopies to dry their hands and write letters to Army Corps officials.

“I’ve been following the story ever since I heard of Tahlequah carrying her baby, and that really broke my heart,” Marley Delgado said. “I’m writing to the Army Corps of Engineers, asking them to please breach the lower four dams on the Snake River, because they and I both know that’s their only chance at survival at this point. Extinction is forever, and I want to know if that’s the legacy that they want to leave behind.

“It’s time to breach those useless dams,” Holly Cooper said. “We’re not the only ones that live on this earth. Take responsibility. Time is of the essence. These animals are starving to death.”

Other protesters had personalized the suffering of the orcas, carrying their stories as they trudged through the rain in orca costumes.

“Each one of us represents an individual orca. Everybody’s got their own identity,” said Debra Ellers, a traveler from Port Townsend who played the role of matriarch orca Ocean Sun.

“These dams were really built without any meaningful tribal consultation. In my prior life, before I became an orca, I was actually an attorney. And I do believe the dams violated the terms of the treaty because it’s affecting their usual and accustomed places to fish. And many cultural sites are also literally under water,” Ellers said.

“I grew up on a farm, and so did Oreo (another orca) here, so I’m very sympathetic to farmers. But the thing is these dams were just built in the ’60s and ’70s. They’re not like the great pyramids of Egypt that have always been there for thousands of years. So the farmers on the Palouse got their wheat to the market long before, for a hundred years before those dams went in. I do think that when the dams are breached, there should be mitigation packages. I’m totally sympathetic. It would actually be a lot cheaper for taxpayers to pay the farmers to ship alternative ways than to keep doing these crazy salmon engineering fixes.”

At 70 years old, Shuster still believes she will see the dams come down, restoring the home she was forced to leave when she was 9.

Seidelman, the rally organizer, also has hope.

“Since Tahlequah calf’s death, there’s been a new spotlight,” Seidelman said. “We’ve got people doing actions in Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Florida, Tacoma and Seattle. We’re just getting started.”

Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity.

https://news.streetroots.org/2018/10/12/save-orcas-protesters-want-snake-river-dams-breached

by Stephen Quirke | 15 Sep 2017

On the morning of Saturday, Sept. 9, about 100 people descended on the Snake River near Lewiston, Idaho, paddling toward the Lower Granite Dam in canoes and kayaks alongside a giant inflatable orca.
Elliott Moffett, a 65-year old Nez Perce tribal member sporting a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt, addressed the crowd with a booming voice and a familiar chant:

“What do we want?”
“Free the Snake!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”

For decades, river advocates have been tied up in court, demanding the federal government restore threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead populations that migrate through the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Since 1975, when Lower Granite Dam was completed, salmon in the Snake River basin have faced the obstacle of eight massive concrete dams before making it out to the ocean, then they do it all over again when they come back home to spawn.

Running that gauntlet of concrete and warm water puts a major strain on the fish and is considered perhaps the single greatest reason for their precipitous decline.

Two summers ago, scores of dead salmon began washing up on the shores of the Willamette and Clackamas rivers in Portland, alarming visitors with the stench of rotting fish. Water temperatures had risen above the dangerous boundary of 68 degrees, and in some Columbia River reservoirs had actually reached 79. More than 250,000 sockeye salmon were killed, and over 1 million young fish died in Washington state hatcheries. Multiple studies on the impact put the death toll at between 96 and 99 percent of the sockeye salmon run.

Since 1991, the dams have been the subject of legal battles as environmental advocates seek their removal. In May 2016, a federal district judge ordered dam operators to put all options on the table to save threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead – including dam removal on the Snake River. His order led to federal hearings throughout the region that ended earlier this year.

But these studies could be compromised by new federal legislation, HR 3144, co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, (D-5th District), which would specifically prevent federal agencies from studying dam removal on the lower Snake River.
Just last month, Columbia Riverkeeper released an analysis demonstrating that the massive fish kill that surfaced in Portland in 2015 would not have happened if the four dams on the lower Snake River were gone.

Such conflicting pressures have helped to galvanize a coalition taking their energy directly to the waters of the lower Snake where they’ve been gathering since 2015 for an event called the Free the Snake Flotilla.

Street Roots reached out to two organizers in Idaho’s Nez Perce country, who live at the far end of the unified system of rivers and hydro-power dams. Julian Matthews and Elliott Moffett are co-founders of Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, a grassroots organization that co-hosts the flotilla. (Nimiipuu is the traditional word Nez Perce tribal members use to refer to themselves, using their own language. The name “Nez Perce” is a French colonial monikor meaning “pierced nose,” and referred originally to a tribe that lived north of the Nimiipuu).

Read the full article and interview with Elliott Moffatt and Julian Matthews here.

Memo to Northwest writers, reporters, editorialists, and columnists – Aug. 15, 2013

Columbia River temperatures over 70 degrees increase

From August 5 through 11, water temperatures were 70 degrees or higher 56 times at Columbia and Snake River federal dams passable to salmon, up from 45 times last week. Temperatures at The Dalles and John Day Dams have been 70 F or higher 18 straight days, and at week’s end temperatures were above 70 F at all four mainstem Columbia dams. At Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River, temperatures have been above 70 F for 24 straight days. Total daily exceedances this summer have climbed well past the total number last summer.

This week’s specifics:

Forebay (above dam) Tailrace (below dam)

Bonneville Dam      
Aug 5    70.9 F    70.9 F
Aug 6    71.6 F    71.5 F
Aug 7    71.7 F    71.7 F
Aug 8    71.5 F    71.6 F
Aug 9    71.1 F    71.1 F
Aug 10  71.2 F    71.2 F
Aug 11  71.2 F    71.2 F

The Dalles Dam
Aug 5    71.7 F    71.7 F
Aug 6    71.6 F    71.8 F
Aug 7    71.3 F    71.4 F
Aug 8    70.9 F    71.1 F
Aug 9    71.3 F    71.3 F
Aug 10  71.4 F    71.5 F
Aug 11  71.4 F    71.5 F

John Day Dam       
Aug 5    71.4 F    71.3 F
Aug 6    71.2 F    71 F
Aug 7    71 F       70.9 F
Aug 8    71.2 F    71 F
Aug 9    71.4 F    71.3 F
Aug 10  71.5 F    71.4 F
Aug 11  71.5 F    71.4 F

McNary Dam      
Aug 8    70.1 F
Aug 9    70.1 F
Aug 10  70 F

Ice Harbor Dam         
Aug 5    70.1 F
Aug 6    70.3 F
Aug 7    70.7 F
Aug 8    70.4 F    70.7 F
Aug 9    70.4 F    70.7 F
Aug 10  70.3 F    70.6 F
Aug 11  70.3 F    70.6 F

These readings can seem repetitive, day after day after day. That is the point: every day of every month, climate change is now heating up the Northwest’s life-giving rivers.

You may have read or written last week about the Nez Perce Tribe’s blockade of tar sands-bound “mega-loads” crawling through the Tribe’s reservation and sacred lands despite their opposition.  Those mega-loads reached Nez Perce lands by being barged up the 70 degree Columbia and Snake Rivers, bound for the Alberta tar sands where their use will increase carbon emissions that in coming years will heat up the Columbia and Snake even further to 75 F or more. The Nez Perce get this connection even if federal agencies don’t. Thank you for examining rising Columbia River temperatures and what can be done about them.

Columbia-Snake temperatures are at http://www.fpc.org/tempgraphssl/NETFullYear_tempgraph.aspx
 
For more information, please contact:    

Joseph Bogaard, deputy director, 206-286-4455 x103, joseph@wildsalmon.org;      

Gilly Lyons, policy director, 503-975-3202, gilly@wildsalmon.org

By Lee van der Voo

Wind turbines are back to transmitting power without interference in the Northwest as the Bonneville Power Administration has ended a 53-day curtailment period aimed at balancing the grid amid high water flows. But whether that policy benefited more than economics for BPA is now the subject of dispute.

As opponents to BPA’s curtailment policy continue to stoke what’s become a national debate over power transmission rights, one thing is clear: The sparring over BPA’s decision to supress 97,557 megawatts of wind power is just the first round in what’s likely to become a prolonged legal fight.

Read more at Sustainable Business Oregon.

Ken Olsen
October 20, 2020

After two Michigan dams collapsed in May – inundating homes, businesses, and threatening a chemical plant and a Superfund site – a Columbia University research team warned the failures are a preview of coming disasters. A lot of them.

“Two dams down, a few thousand more to go,” Upmanu Lall and Paulina Concha Larrauri wrote in a New York Times op-ed days after the disaster.

There are more than 90,000 dams in the United States, many of which are old, poorly maintained, and vulnerable to large floods and earthquakes that weren’t taken into account when they were built decades ago. Some 15,600 are classified as high-hazard-potential dams, meaning people will probably be killed if the structure fails. And more than 2,300 of these high-risk dams are in poor or unsatisfactory condition. 

States reported 250 dam failures and 539  “incidents” where dams were at risk of failing between January 2010 and April 2020, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO). That includes the 2015 collapse of the Semmes Lake Dam at Fort Jackson, S.C., that contributed to two deaths and caused millions of dollars in damage. In 2019, Vietnam War veteran Kenny Angel was swept away after Spencer Dam in Nebraska was breached. His body has never been recovered. Michigan’s dual dam failure was triggered by floodwaters overwhelming the Edenville Dam near Midland, sending a surge downstream that then took out Sanford Dam. The list goes on. “We have a national infrastructure crisis,” Lall says. It’s a matter of time until there’s a catastrophic dam collapse that kills people and damages important downstream infrastructure such as bridges, highways, hospitals and water treatment plants. The bottom line, Lall and other experts say, is that the nation needs to provide more money to repair essential dams – and remove those that are no longer economically viable. 

“The biggest thing is, if you can’t maintain it, you have to drain it,” says Charles Karpowicz, a dam safety engineer who worked for the National Park Service and the Army Corps of Engineers.

D-graded Dams have long powered U.S. factories, stored irrigation and drinking water, and made barge transportation possible on the Mississippi and other rivers. The Tennessee Valley Authority launched an ambitious dam-building program in the South in the 1930s to promote economic development. The dam-building spree in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River basin provided construction jobs during the Depression and electricity for the aluminum smelters and nuclear reactors that helped win World War II.

Cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas owe much of their existence to dam systems that capture and divert water hundreds of miles. Denver alone depends on approximately two dozen dams, says Del Shannon, senior vice president of Schnabel Engineering and vice president of the U.S. Society on Dams. But the nation isn’t taking care of these vital structures. “We put them in the ground and forget about them,” Shannon says. “And they are crumbling.”

The American Society of Civil Engineers has consistently given dams a “D” since issuing its first Infrastructure Report Card in 1998. The only change: the number of problem dams and the cost of fixing them has skyrocketed. Today, the Army Corps of Engineers estimates it needs $19.6 billion to address its deficient dams. At the current investment rate, these repairs would take more than 50 years to complete, the Corps confirms. As sobering: the Corps is responsible for less than 1 percent of the nation’s dams. The cost of rehabilitating all of the known dam problems in the United States could exceed $80 billion.

Public and private hydropower dams, including the pair that failed in Michigan, are licensed by the federal government. Every state except Alabama also has its own dam safety program. California’s is considered one of the best. Yet dam experts were surprised by the 2017 spillway failure at the Oroville Dam, which at 770 feet is the nation’s tallest dam. Nearly 200,000 people were evacuated and the federal government paid more than $1 billion for emergency repairs for something Lall says was preventable. An independent investigation of the Oroville incident concluded that the spillway defects – including problems with the concrete and the underlying bedrock – were known almost as soon as the dam was completed in 1968 and accepted as an issue that merely required ongoing repairs.  Meanwhile, there is increasing development downstream from dams. That means structures that were built in the middle of nowhere – and therefore considered low-risk – have since become high-hazard-potential dams.  More than half the nation’s dams are privately owned. The owners, which include municipalities and public utilities, are responsible for safety and upkeep. That’s a big challenge because a private entity – say, the homeowners association for a lakeside development – may not make money from the dam associated with the project, says Mark Ogden, a civil engineer with ASDSO. 

It can also be difficult to get owners to do the necessary work on dams designed with a revenue stream in mind, Ogden says. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission revoked Boyce Hydro’s license to operate the Edenville Dam in September 2018 after years of unsuccessfully trying to get the owner to upgrade its dams. 

After the dams collapsed, the principal owner filed for bankruptcy, blaming regulators for the problems, according to the news website Michigan Live. But others think dam regulations were too lax. “From what I know, regulators and politicians are too lenient on dam owners,” Karpowicz says. “There are thousands of unsafe dams that should be removed because the owners have not repaired them in a timely fashion.”

Removal More and more unprofitable or outdated dams are being removed, says Boise-based hydropower economist Tony Jones, who worked for two Republican Idaho governors and the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. “Dams are like any tool. They get old. And when a private utility decides to get rid of an asset such as a dam, it’s a sign something is truly wrong with it.”

More than 1,700 U.S. dams have been taken out since 1912, most in the past 30 years, according to the nonprofit American Rivers. The world’s largest project involved removing the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams in Olympic National Park in 2011 and 2014, respectively. Elsewhere, PacifiCorp has been removing four of its Klamath River dams in southern Oregon and northern California. In recent years, the company has taken out dams on Oregon’s Sandy and Hood rivers as well as the White Salmon River in Washington state. In many cases, dam owners conclude it’s less expensive to remove the dam than add fish ladders and make other changes required to relicense the facilities.

In fact, fish issues and economics fuel one of the most high-profile dam controversies in the western United States. Steve Pettit has fought for removal of the four Lower Snake River dams in eastern Washington and northern Idaho since soon after he returned from a 13-month tour as a helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam and enrolled in graduate school at the University of Idaho. He continued that battle during his 32-year career as a fisheries biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

The dams, opposed by the Eisenhower administration, were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s by the Corps of Engineers with the promise of turning Lewiston, Idaho, into a thriving inland seaport 465 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

“I read the transcripts from the congressional hearings in the ’40s and ’50s,” Pettit says. “Proponents said Lewiston would become the size of Seattle. Fishery experts testified that if all four dams were completed, salmon and steelhead would be extinct within 40 to 50 years.”

The economic boom faded after dam construction was completed, and Lewiston has the lowest economic growth rate of any city in Idaho since the 1970s, Jones says. Wild salmon and steelhead are on the cusp of extinction because of the toll dams take on the fish, particularly young smolts migrating to the ocean where they spend up to five years before returning to the place they were born to spawn.

“The only chance these fish have is for the four Lower Snake River dams to come out,” Pettit says. Wild salmon returned to the Elwha River six months after the dams were removed, he adds, and have returned to other Pacific Northwest rivers after dams were removed.

Before the 20th-century dam-building spree began, the Columbia-Snake system produced 16 million to 20 million chinook, coho, sockeye and chum salmon – more than any other watershed in the world. The Snake River, largest tributary to the Columbia River, produced nearly half of those fish. Chinook salmon swam all the way to northeastern Nevada, where they fed miners trying to strike the mother lode during the 1800s. There were even two salmon canneries in Weiser, Idaho, near Boise, Jones says.

Now, “the wild runs are circling the toilet bowl of extinction,” Pettit says. “Some are down to a hundred fish. Wild sockeye is a museum piece.”

Fishing guides and communities along the Snake and Clearwater rivers are struggling. “A study 15 years ago showed bringing salmon and steelhead back to Idaho is worth $300 million a year,” Pettit says. “It’s a great loss to the economy of these small river towns.” 

Third-generation fishing guide Toby Wyatt of Clarkston, Wash., says at some point he expects he’ll have to find a new line of work as wild salmon and steelhead disappear. And while he supports dam removal and other changes to help wild fish, he also says the region’s hydro complex has become part of the landscape and an
important source of jobs. 

Pettit’s other concern: an enormous amount of silt that was carried downriver before the Lower Granite Dam was built now settles at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater near Lewiston, raising the river level and increasing the odds that a major flood would overtop levees and inundate the city. “If we had a flood like we had in 1974 – or larger – there would be 3 feet of water in downtown,” Pettit says.
 
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which markets electricity from the Northwest’s federal hydropower dams and is responsible for covering the costs of the turbines and other power infrastructure, has spent $16 billion unsuccessfully attempting to restore wild salmon and steelhead and strongly opposes dam removal. But Jones says the economic case for taking out the Lower Snake River dams is overwhelming. The amount of wheat and wood products shipped by river barge from Lewiston to the West Coast has declined, and half of the power generated by the four lower Snake dams is produced from March to June when it’s not needed for winter heating or summer air conditioning.

The four dams are among the most expensive to operate in the BPA system, and three of the four will need turbine replacements in the coming years that could cost $1 billion, Jones says. “If the four Lower Snake River dams were run by a private company, they would get a backhoe up there today and tear them down. Every minute you keep them is a hole in your balance sheet.”

He adds, “Why would you let salmon go extinct for dams that aren’t competitive even without the fish recovery cost?” 

BPA is the most heavily leveraged utility in the country. Its hydropower rates can’t compete with less expensive solar and wind power, Jones says. And when their power contracts expire in 2028, many may not reup with BPA, forcing the agency to raise its rates and potentially lose more customers.  BPA says these assertions are inaccurate. The Lower Snake River dams are profitable and among BPA’s lowest-cost power sources, says Doug Johnson, senior BPA spokesman. And although the dams’ turbines are nearing the end of their design life, BPA does not plan to replace them as long as they remain in good condition – a cost saving practice that has worked well at other area dams.

“When people continue to mischaracterize the costs associated with, and the value of, the hydropower generated by the lower Snake River Dams, it does not advance the conversation about where these facilities fit into the Northwest’s economic and environmental future,” Johnson says.

Coming failure Although he believes the economic and scientific case for taking out the Snake dams is indisputable, Pettit doubts the issue will be resolved in time to save the remaining wild salmon. “When I started fly fishing, I caught 400 to 500 steelhead a year,” says Pettit, who releases his fish back to the river. “Last year I caught two. I doubt I’ll even buy a steelhead tag this year.”  Meanwhile, dam experts worry that the public attention and support for funding adequate dam maintenance will fade despite the fatal dam failures and near-misses in recent years. “I hope the incidents that recently occurred in Michigan will raise awareness,” Ogden says. “History shows it will lose momentum.” 

Karpowicz agrees. “We should expect we’ll be seeing more dam failures.” 



Ken Olsen is a frequent contributor to The American Legion Magazine.
 
DAM AWARENESS 
In addition to the danger posed by dam failures, some 50 people drown in fishing, boating and swimming accidents each year because of safety problems at dams, many of them abandoned. Learn more about dam safety issues in your region at damsafety.org.

By Natasha Brennan
May 4, 2022

Lummi Tribal members and Native communities across the Pacific Northwest gathered with faith leaders, activists and neighbors for the Spirit of the Waters Totem Pole Journey launch Tuesday, May 3, at Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship.

The 2,300-mile journey highlights the vital role of the Snake River, salmon and orca to the lifeways and identities of Tribal communities in the region. The updated pole, created by House of Tears Carvers, will travel for 17 days through Tribal and metropolitan communities in Washington, Oregon and Idaho to advocate for the removal of dams on the Lower Snake River and for the health of salmon and orca.

Sponsored by Se’Si’Le (pronounced saw-see-lah) — an inter-Tribal nonprofit aimed at reintroducing Indigenous spiritual law into the mainstream conversation about climate change and the environment — the Spirit of the Waters Totem Pole Journey informs and engages Pacific Northwest communities through inter-generational voices, ceremony, art and science, spirituality, ancestral knowledge and cross-cultural collaboration.

The pole builds off the House of Tears Carvers’ 16-foot pole created for the journey to Miami to advocate for the repatriation of southern resident orca Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut in 2018.

In addition to a fresh coat of paint, the pole — which has been displayed at the Stommish Grounds on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham — features two 8-foot salmon representing the 150-pound “June hogs,” an extinct salmon of the Columbia River, master carver Jewell Praying Wolf James explained.

“We’re recognizing that all the way from the Chinooks at the mouth of the river to the people of Celilo Falls, Umatilla, Shoshone-Bannock, Nez Perce — we’re all salmon people. From the Columbia River to the Snake River to the Salish Sea,” James said in an interview with McClatchy. “The Salish Sea is being destroyed, life is dying and there’s more than just human beings that depend on it.”

The salmon replaced two seals from the original pole, which represented the food source of the transient orca pod.

A third 9-foot salmon featuring splashing water and a human on the side will join the totem pole on its journey. JoDe Goudy, Se’Si’Le board member and former chairman of the Yakama Nation, brought the piece along the Columbia River for various blessings.

At the tip of the pole’s central orca nose is an addition of a small orca, representing the calf of Tahlequah — a southern resident killer whale who garnered international attention after pushing her dead calf more than 1,000 miles in 2018. James said the red spot on the calf, which was originally carved by accident, now serves as a reminder that ship traffic is a danger to the whale population.

The new additions were carved from cedar from the Lummi Nation culture department. James estimates the updated pole weighs in at about 3,500 pounds.

Speakers at the event included Lummi Tribal members Siam’el wit and Douglas James joined by fly angler Gian Lawrence.

“We need to restore the salmon run. We need to replenish the food for our orcas, our beloved relatives, our qw’e lh’ol’ me chen,” Siam’el wit said, advocating for the removal of the Lower Snake River dams.

In Xwlemi Chosen, the language of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) people, orca are called “qw’e lh’ol’ me chen,” meaning “our relations who live under the water.”

“It’s time to restore Mother Nature back to how it is intended — as falls should fall, as rivers shall flow,” she said.

In a speech, Se’Si’Le founder, Lummi Tribal member and former chairman Jay Julius thanked James for his activism for the climate and Indigenous peoples and asked the community to follow his example.

“One thing we all have — all of us — is a treaty. An immigrant sovereign came together with my family in 1855... It’s been a struggle,” he said. “It’s your treaty too. It’s not just an Indian thing. It’s all of ours. It’s our hope. It’s our future.”

Julius and Santana Rabang — who is of Coast Salish and Stó:lō Nation heritage — presented at the first-ever Indigenous Earth Day event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in April. Rabang spoke on behalf of Indigenous youth at the totem pole launch.

“These fights are going to be left to us and they’re showing us the way,” Rabang said about the elders and Indigenous leaders of the journey.

The launch featured songs from Lummi drummers and singers, music from Native flutist Peter Ali and a choir performance. Various local faith leaders blessed the pole’s journey and supported its message, including Echoes Pastor Emma Donohew — whose ancestor was an Oklahoma dam builder.

The event concluded with the community surrounding the pole to offer a group prayer.

The pole’s 17-day journey will continue in Oregon, then Idaho and will conclude in Washington:

• May 5-7 at Erb Memorial Union Gumwood Room at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon.
• May 9 from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Towler Hall at Clatsop Community College hosted by Chinook Indian Nation Tribal members in Astoria, Oregon.
• May 10 at 6 p.m. at Ecotrust’s The Redd on Salmon Street in Portland, Oregon.
• May 11 at 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. at Celilo Park in Celilo Falls, Oregon.
• May 14 at the Tamastslikt Cultural Centerhosted by Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation Tribal members in Pendleton, Oregon.
• May 16 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Hell’s Gate State Park hosted by Nez Perce Tribal members in Lewiston, Idaho.
• May 18 from noon to 1:30 p.m., location to be determined, hosted by Shoshone-Bannock Tribal members in Fort Hall, Idaho.
• May 19 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House at University of Washington in Seattle.
• May 20 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at St. Leo’s Parish in Tacoma.

For more information on the pole’s journey or to access virtual events, visit spiritofthewaters.org.

By Carol Ryan Dumas

Capital Press 

Sept. 19, 2022

Pacific Northwest groups representing conservation, clean energy, wildlife, fish and other interests are urging U.S. officials to modernize the Columbia River Treaty to avoid what they describe as an ecosystem collapse.

The 32 organizations sent a letter to the U.S. State Department, Bonneville Power Administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers urging them to inform the region on efforts to overhaul the treaty and involve citizens and tribes in decisions.

“Chronic hot water is killing salmon and degrading Columbia and Snake River health today, with worse coming. A modern treaty must give Northwest people greater standing and more tools to withstand this rising damage,” the groups said.

Signed in 1961 and ratified in 1964, the treaty coordinates flood control and power generation through a system of dams and reservoirs in Canada and the U.S.

The groups are asking U.S. negotiators to partner with Canada to add “ecosystem function” — the health of the river — as a third, co-equal treaty purpose. They are also urging the administration to include Columbia Basin tribes in treaty governance, matching Canada’s recognition of the role of indigenous nations.

The groups' final request concerns flood control.

The U.S. currently benefits from a collaborative flood risk management plan that is dependent upon assured Canadian water storage to minimize flood risk in the U.S. That critical collaboration ends on Sept. 16, 2024, if negotiations fail to extend it, the groups said.

There are signs that Congress is preparing for an unspecified “called upon” operation of reservoirs after that date, they said.

A “called upon” operation would require the U.S. to ask Canada for storage of floodwaters on an annual basis, as opposed to the treaty’s current six-year assured operating plans.

“Such operations have a high risk of further degrading already inadequate flows and cooling operations from critical reservoirs for salmon, other fish and overall river health. This risk compounds if ‘called upon’ operations take place under the current treaty, in which for 58 years salmon and river health have been at best secondary and at worst ignored,” they said.

The treaty’s Permanent Engineering Board warns the general lack of planning leaves “...no guidance on the operation of the Canadian storage system with significant consequences in both Canada and the U.S. for power generation, flood risk management and social and environmental objectives,” they said.

If a new agreement isn’t reached, the terms of the current treaty will shift responsibility for flood control from Canada to the U.S., potentially forcing operational changes at eight dams and reservoirs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, Brian Brooks, executive director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation, said in a press release.

Given the lack of transparency to date, the groups “are increasingly worried about how the federal government will deal with uncertainties and operational changes while protecting fish and wildlife, honoring tribal obligations and supporting river communities,” he said.

The U.S. lacks comprehensive plans for the shift of responsibility, said John DeVoe, executive director for WaterWatch of Oregon.

“And we have grave concerns that federal agencies will further deprioritize the health of fish and wildlife to manage flood risk. Upsetting operations for fish and wildlife, agriculture, hydropower and other river uses due to inadequate planning and minimal consultation is an unnecessary and unacceptable outcome,” he said.

https://www.capitalpress.com/ag_sectors/water/environmental-groups-urge-update-of-columbia-river-treaty/article_8202bb4a-385d-11ed-a57d-3f4d9032a204.html

August 22nd, 2019

By Eric Barker of The Tribune

The return of steelhead to the Snake River and its tributaries continues to fall short of what was an already low preseason forecast.

Idaho Fish and Game commissioners will meet in Nampa this week to consider adjusting bag limits for the steelhead harvest seasons that open on the Snake and Salmon rivers Sept. 1 and the Clearwater River on Oct. 15.

“This is one of the lowest cumulative counts to date in recent memory,” said Alan Byrne, a fisheries biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Boise.

The agency begins counting steelhead at Snake and Columbia river dams July 1. By last week, 37,466 steelhead had been counted at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River where the 10-year average is 132,275. This year’s count is among the lowest in the past four decades, second only to the 2017 count of 32,237.

By last week, 1,422 steelhead had been counted at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River compared to a 10-year average of 4,884. It is barely ahead of last year’s count of 1,408 at this time but much more than 2017’s count of only 399.

But the pace is behind what was expected when the agency made its preseason prediction. Fisheries managers had expected a season total of 60,700 steelhead to return past Lower Granite Dam this year. The bulk of those fish, about 55,100 are expected to be A-run steelhead that return earlier in the year. Only 5,600 are expected to be the larger B-run fish that return in September and October.

Byrne said if the A-run doesn’t increase, the predictions will fall short.

On the bright side, he said both wild A-run steelhead and hatchery A-run steelhead that haven’t had their adipose fins clipped are on pace to meet the preseason forecast. Unfortunately for anglers, the only adipose-clipped A-run fish are available for harvest.

The Technical Advisory Committee, a collection of regional fisheries managers that makes the forecasts, hasn’t yet upgraded its prediction. Byrne said they will likely make a new prediction within two weeks.

“The next two weeks are going to be real key to whether these hatchery fish start showing up and make the run somewhat reasonable. My fear is if we don’t get these hatchery fish that come early, that typically get classified as A-index,... it doesn’t look good because we are not expecting a lot of (B-run fish) to show up in September. We are expecting most of this year’s run to be made up of fish that would be classified as A-index.”

In anticipation of the low forecasts for steelhead, Oregon and Washington shut down steelhead harvest on the Columbia River. Oregon also closed the mouth of the Deschutes River to steelhead fishing. Steelhead bound for the Snake River often linger at the mouth of the Deschutes River where the water is cooler.

Chris Donley, fish program managers for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at Spokane, said the steelhead closure on the Columbia should mean better fishing on the Snake River and its tributaries.

“The one positive thing when we back off our fisheries in the mainstream (Columbia) passage up to those areas goes higher because. They are not getting caught anywhere else,” he said.

Differing interests battle over power vs. salmon as the question of the Snake River dams removal rises again

By Henry Brannan, Columbian Murrow News Fellow
Published: December 19, 2024, 1:30pm
Updated: December 19, 2024, 3:01pm

Federal agencies announced Thursday they will update the environmental guidelines that shape how they operate 14 dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

The move follows a decades long legal battle that Native nations, environmental advocates and fishing groups are fighting to get the government to take aggressive action on salmon recovery. A lot of that battle has focused on removing dams on Washington’s lower Snake River.

The fight came to a head in 2020 when federal agencies released the current guidelines for the federal system’s operations — known as the Columbia River Operating System Environmental Impact Statement — which came out against removing the four lower Snake River dams.

Environmental groups and others sued in response. Then, in late 2023, the lawsuits were paused in an agreement between federal agencies, the states of Washington and Oregon, environmental advocates, fishing groups, Native nations and the Biden administration.

That agreement required federal agencies to weigh if new guidelines were necessary. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation have now decided they are.

The guidelines at the center of this shape many crucial aspects of the Columbia River dams’ management — including how much water is used to generate hydroelectricity versus how much passes over spillways to help young salmon safely make it to the ocean.

Reactions

The move to pursue new guidelines sparked celebration among environmental and fishing advocates and condemnation from business interests that depend on a dammed lower Snake.

“At least four Columbia and Snake River salmon and steelhead stocks have already gone extinct and 13 others — including all four remaining Snake River stocks — are listed under the Endangered Species Act,” Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association Policy Director Liz Hamilton said in a statement.

“Revising (the guidelines) is the logical next step toward meaningful change that complies with the law and the needs of the fish,” she added.

Earthjustice attorney Amanda Goodin emphasized that avoiding regional salmon extinction is possible if the agencies commit to needed actions “including breaching the four lower Snake River dams and replacing their services.”

In a joint statement, powerful agriculture, shipping and hydropower interests highlighted the lower Snake dams’ significant role in the region’s economy and called the move to update the guidelines unlawful.

“The coalition contends that a new National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis would be both premature and unlawful, warning that it would be incomplete and could mislead the public about these dams’ vital role in supporting the region’s economy and environment,” their statement read.

Public Feedback

The next step in the process of updating the guidelines — known cumulatively as completing a supplemental environmental impact statement — is public feedback.

That will take the form of a 90-day public comment period, said Tom Conning, spokesman for the Corps, which operates 12 of the dams.

“The goal is really to get the public to be aware,” he said. “We’re trying to get the public to send comments to us for consideration.”

Conning said the comment process isn’t like voting, where the goal is to select the most popular ideas. Instead, it’s about people raising issues the agencies might not have considered to make sure the guidelines include as many factors and potential side effects as possible.

Next, the agencies will release a draft supplemental environmental impact statement, followed by another public comment period. The process will end when the agencies release the final supplemental environmental impact statement.

While it’s unclear how long the whole process will take, the more intensive 2020 review lasted just over four years.

Conflicting considerations

​​To produce the guidelines, the agencies will have to weigh two dozen interconnected factors — each with significant environmental, economic and social consequences across the roughly 260,000-square-mile Columbia River Basin. Any decision is bound to anger parties across the basin that will take the issue to the courts.

On one hand, hydropower is increasingly valuable because of massive increases in demand for electricity from the tech industry, especially data centers. That’s compounded by rising population in the Pacific Northwest and fast-approaching fossil fuel-free grid deadlines in Washington and Oregon.

The four lower Snake River dams produce about 5 percent of the region’s electricity — worth between $415 million and $860 million a year. They also allow grain barges to navigate to Lewiston, Idaho, moving 60 percent of Washington’s roughly $750 million in yearly wheat exports.

The overall cost of replacing the dams could be in the tens of billions of dollars each year, according to the Congressional Research Service — especially if the removal is accompanied by massive investment in hard-hit regions to offset the economic toll, which environmental groups and even a Republican congressman have argued for.

But the harmful impacts of the lower Snake dams on salmon are documented by a growing number of government reports, which show the dams are driving salmon extinction by blocking the fish from historic spawning grounds, favoring predators and other means.

Environmental research groups echo that, noting, “Since construction finished on these four dams in the 1970s, wild Snake River salmon populations have plummeted by more than 90 percent.”

Recent estimates show salmon returns to the Columbia have averaged about 2.3 million fish a year for the past decade — a fraction of the 10 million to 16 million that came before dams.

And that 2.3 million estimate doesn’t differentiate between wild and hatchery fish. A 2022 NOAA assessment found the number of wild salmon spawning in Columbia River tributaries declined substantially for nearly every salmon run in nearly every river they measured between 1990 and 2019.

Uncertain future

In addition to practical concerns, federal agencies must also navigate a minefield of political uncertainty caused by January’s transition in the presidential administration, as well as shifts in Congress.
Conning said that while every administration brings change, the agencies will not be changing course.

“We’re following federal laws to guide what we’re doing,” he said. “And we can’t really speculate on the incoming administration and next Congress, and what they might do.”

Republicans, who will control the presidency and both the chambers of Congress starting in January, have opposed Snake River dam removal.

During his first term, former and future President Donald Trump showed a clear preference for cutting environmental protections for fish and ecosystems, instead increasing the amount of river water available across the West for farming. He doubled down on that stance while campaigning last summer, The Columbian reported in October.

Whatever the agencies decide on Snake River dam removal, the issue will ultimately have to be decided by Congress.

It’s unclear how negotiations on the Columbia River Treaty between the U.S. and Canada — and a stopgap agreement between the two countries on hydropower generation and flood control — might shape the agencies’ choices.

Public comments on the update can be left at www.nwd.usace.army.mil/columbiariver. The Corps and Reclamation will hold at least three virtual public meetings the week of Feb. 10.

The Columbian: ‘Unlawful’ or ‘a critical next step’? Feds to update Columbia River dams’ environmental guidelines

The Columbian
March 21, 2021

At the risk of bastardizing a cliche, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to solve the conundrum of Lower Snake River dams.

But a plan from Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson is a thoughtful approach that warrants additional study. The Republican and his staff spent years listening to the concerns of stakeholders in devising a complex proposal that balances disparate desires.
Environmentalists long have pushed for the removal of four dams along the river, largely out of a desire to invigorate salmon runs throughout the river system. Salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean must swim as far as 900 miles while navigating eight hydroelectric dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers to reach their spawning grounds.

Removing the dams, however, would come with social and economic costs. They provide hydroelectric power, irrigation for agriculture, navigation and flood control.
Any potential plan must include protections for fish and tribal interests, clean-energy solutions, and farm-to-market provisions for farmers without soaking taxpayers. That balance might be impossible to achieve, but Simpson has eagerly attempted to thread the needle.

“Washington welcomes Rep. Simpson’s willingness to think boldly about how to recover Columbia and Snake River salmon in a way that works for the entire region and invests – at a potentially transformative level – in clean energy, transportation and agriculture,” Gov. Jay Inslee said.

Simpson’s $33.5 billion proposal would breach the dams by 2030 and would pay for ways to replace the dams’ function in energy, agriculture and transportation. About $1.4 billion would go to breaching the dams; the rest would invest in other areas.
“I want to be clear that I’m not certain removing these dams will restore Idaho salmon and prevent their extinction,” Simpson said. “But I am certain if we do not take this course of action, we are condemning Idaho salmon to extinction.”

The proposal has drawn pushback from both sides of the political aisle. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, called it “a drastic, fiscally irresponsible leap to take.” Environmental groups called it a “nonstarter,” taking issue with key provisions such as a 35-year moratorium on dam-related lawsuits and a 25-year moratorium on agriculture-related lawsuits in the area. Indeed, the notion of prohibiting citizens from exercising their right to petition the government for a redress of grievances seems capricious – as well as constitutionally questionable.

Simpson’s plan also would extend licensing for other major dams in the Columbia River Basin by at least 35 years, give agriculture interests a larger role in watershed improvement and transfer fish management responsibility from the Bonneville Power Administration to a joint council of states and tribes.

All stakeholders can find something to like in the proposal – as well as reason for opposition. That highlights the complexity of the issue while reinforcing the fact that decades of salmon recovery efforts are falling short. Those efforts have become even more critical with dwindling orca populations, which rely on salmon for sustenance.

Salmon recovery initiatives over the years have cost an estimated $17 billion with negligible results; runs are continuing to decline. While Simpson’s proposal must be scrutinized, it is the most detailed recommendation thus far, comprised of thoughtful examination rather than wishful thinking. It warrants consideration.

Lynda Mapes, Seattle Times, December 1, 2016

Public hearings are under way throughout the Northwest to inform an environmental review of operations of the Columbia River and Lower Snake River dams.

---------

Tuesday, December 6 — Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, River Gallery Room, 5000 Discovery Drive, The Dalles., 4 to 7 p.m.

Wednesday, December 7 — Oregon Convention Center, 777 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Portland, 4 to 7 p.m.

Thursday, December 8 — The Loft at the Red Building, 20 Basin St., Astoria, 4 to 7 p.m.

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The federal Columbia River hydropower system, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is under a federal court-ordered scrutiny of the dams’ environmental effects. The dams provide hydroelectricity, irrigation, navigation and recreation benefits to the region.

So-called public scoping hearings throughout the region are intended to guide an environmental-impact statement ordered by a judge.

The purpose of the review is to gauge the effects of long-term dam operations at the 14 federally operated hydropower facilities up and down the Columbia and Lower Snake rivers on fish, wildlife, irrigation, navigation, native cultures and more.

The hearings are convened by the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from the dams, and the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, which operate the dams.

The agencies are charged with coming up with an operations plan that will protect and recover populations of endangered and threatened salmon and steelhead.

The review is the result of a U.S. District Court ruling last May siding with businesses, conservation groups, alternative-energy advocates, the state of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe, which have challenged dam operations in court as lethal to salmon and steelhead.

Operations at the dams continue under a provisional permit while the court review is under way.

Today 13 runs of Columbia and Snake river salmon and steelhead are at risk and still slipping away, despite billions of dollars spent to save them, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon of Oregon stated in his ruling.

He demanded a do-over of previous so-called biological opinions, created by the agencies defending dam operations. This time around, all aspects of operations and strategies for fish and wildlife recovery must be on the table, Simon insisted, and he demanded fresh analysis, thinking and information.

He sent the agencies back to the drawing board for a new biological opinion and full National Environmental Policy Act analysis, which “may well require consideration of breaching, bypassing, or removing one or more of the four Lower Snake River dams,” to be compliant with the law this time, Simon wrote.

The farthest inland of the four dams, Lower Granite, completed in 1974, capped a long-held regional economic-development dream to create deep-draft navigation from the Pacific to Lewiston, Idaho.

The dams also provide hydropower, as well as irrigation for a small number of growers with large operations along the river.

Much has changed since the last review of the hydropower system, including hard lessons about the risk of climate change to fish as warming water challenges their survival.

The changes in snowmelt patterns, drought and warmer weather make the dams even more detrimental for salmon and steelhead, which require cold, clean, oxygenated water to survive. During the brutal summer drought of 2015, after a record-low snowpack, many fish runs were hammered and, in particular, very few sockeye made it back alive to their spawning grounds.

The dynamics of the power grid also have changed, with more sources of energy coming online, including wind power.

The economics of navigation on the Lower Snake waterway are also under scrutiny, with usage by shippers in a steady slide and maintenance costs on the rise.

Scientists are also gaining a better understanding of the web of life that depends on salmon to survive, which includes endangered orca whales.

Experts fear Trump’s tariffs on Canada, harsh words could hurt hydropower, salmon, more

Hugh Keenleyside Dam on Lower Arrow Lake © Peter Marbach

By Henry Brannan, Columbian Murrow News Fellow
Published: March 29, 2025
Updated: April 7, 2025

Flood risk management, hydropower generation and salmon runs will suffer if the United States and Canada don’t renew a key provision of the treaty that guides how they manage the Columbia River.

That key component, part of a stop-gap agreement the two countries reached late last year, expires July 31, 2027.

If a new treaty doesn’t come into force by then or the two sides can’t agree on another set of interim measures, Canada will no longer have to hold back more than 1 trillion gallons of water it stores for the U.S. each spring to prevent flooding in the lower Columbia River and maximize hydropower production year-round.

The two countries have been working on a new Columbia River Treaty since 2018. President Donald Trump paused negotiations earlier this month, a routine step at the beginning of a new administration, experts say. What’s not normal, they say, is the backdrop for the pause — a dramatic trade war and diplomatic clash between the two countries.

“Things that we counted on — that the United States would be a friend and ally to Canada — are now no longer true,” said Adrian Dix, British Columbia’s energy minister.

Mutually profitable?

The 1,243-mile-long river springs from Columbia Lake in southeastern British Columbia and flows into the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Ore.

Over the course of the 20th century dams transformed the once-wild Columbia into a machine that prevents previously inevitable seasonal flooding while also generating hundreds of millions of dollars in hydropower each year and allowing ships carrying billions of dollars in goods to travel from the ocean as far inland as Idaho.

The U.S. and Canada have fine-tuned that machine since the Columbia River Treaty came into force in 1964. Under the treaty, Canada and the United States share the river’s benefits.

Canada helps regulate the flow of water through a system of dams and reservoirs, and the U.S. sends back payment for half of the extra power that can be generated from that re-timed water. In recent years, the payments ranged from roughly $100 million to $300 million each year, but that amount will decline under the 2024 interim measures.

Without a new agreement, worst-case scenarios could include increased flooding along the lower Columbia River in communities like Vancouver; river and reservoir conditions that threaten salmon runs; and costly disruptions to hydropower production, farm irrigation and commercial navigation.

“Either country alone could build dams and do stuff for flood control and power production and whatever else they want to do, but they could only get so much,” said Richard Paisley, director of the Global Transboundary International Waters Governance Initiative at the University of British Columbia. “But it’s only when they decided to cooperate and run together and synchronize their operations that both sides could do better.”

That, in turn, he said, has generated something more valuable than any other commodity: certainty.

And certainty is the foundation of every dollar the Columbia River drives. That’s true for the $31 billion in goods shipped on the deep water channel each year; for the $3 billion in crops watered with nearly 1 trillion gallons of water in the Columbia Basin Project each year; and for the ever-growing residential, commercial and industrial power fueled by hydropower.

All of those depend on the river to be managed just as it is now. They turn that relative consistency into the foundation of the region’s economy. Tens of thousands of jobs rely on the system. And it all stands to be disrupted to varying degrees.

The State Department, which is leading the negotiations for the U.S., declined to answer questions. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation, which together run the Columbia River federal dam system, also declined to comment, as did the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets the power generated by the federal system. The Columbian spoke with 10 officials and experts from both sides of the border; four declined to be quoted.

Diplomatic dominoes

Although the two countries reached an agreement in principle late last year, Canadian officials fear the Trump administration will depart from it.

“We’ve come to an agreement. The only question is, will that agreement get caught up in the currently erratic politics of the American government?” Dix said.

While Trump has singled out the Columbia River Treaty in talks with Canada, his threats to annex the country and the impact of his trade war policies on both countries’ economies are particularly worrying to Dix.

Experts and officials on both sides of the border also fear negotiations won’t succeed in time. During his first term, Trump was slow to appoint key figures, and that’s shaping up to be the case again. Without those officials in place, negotiations can’t continue.

If the key flood-management provision expires Aug. 1, 2027, the Columbia River would shift to a “called upon” storage regime. Through the treaty, Canada assured the U.S. about 3 trillion gallons of pre-planned flood risk management storage each year from 1973 until 2024.

Without action, Canada would provide none. Instead, the burden of managing flood risk while trying to preserve U.S. hydropower generation capability would be shifted to the U.S.

And while it’s taken for granted, the task of managing the Columbia River’s nearly 65 trillion-gallon yearly flow is not easy. That’s especially true because Canadian runoff accounts for as much as half that amount each year, and most of that comes in May, June and July. Between 15 trillion and 19 trillion gallons barrel down across the border in those months alone. To combat those flows without pre-planned Canadian storage, the U.S. will have to call on Canada to hold back water as it becomes clear it will be necessary.

But that’s complicated because the two countries never agreed on the price the U.S. will pay, how drastically the U.S. will have to first disrupt its river operations and how much flood damage communities like Vancouver will have to be projected to incur before Canada will provide that called upon storage.

To Barbara Cosens, a former law professor at the University of Idaho who has studied the treaty for more than 15 years, all of that leaves the U.S. vulnerable in the unlikely but possible event that these issues end up having to be settled during a year when there’s extremely heavy precipitation and risk of a serious flood.

“Those two things mean that you have to have to have good working relationships when that occurs,” she said, “and even the interim measures themselves really depend on continued good working relationships, and so that is clearly one of the wild cards we have in play now.”

Impacts

The potential loss of the last trillion gallons of pre-planned Canadian storage could have dramatic impacts on U.S. flood risk management, hydropower production, agricultural outputs and salmon runs.

For flood control, the loss of the first 2 trillion gallons of storage earlier this year already increased flood risk along the lower Columbia in communities like Vancouver.

Much of the burden of the loss of the final 1 trillion gallons would likely be shouldered by operations at the massive Grand Coulee Dam and Lake Roosevelt reservoir behind it, officials and experts say.

But that comes with consequences. If Grand Coulee is being operated more conservatively to battle floods, its operations will, by definition, be less tailored to producing power when it’s needed and prices are higher. That lack of flexibility could lower production.

The Corps’ Julie Ammann, acting chief of the Columbia Basin water management division, acknowledged that in a September 2023 talk.

“Changes to flow and storage project operations may have an impact on power generation,” she said.

Lower levels at Lake Roosevelt also mean higher pumping costs for area irrigators during an already difficult period for them.

The potential loss of assured storage in 2027 would also affect salmon, said Joseph Bogaard of Save Our Wild Salmon. The change would increase uncertainty and, in the battle between all the competing interests looking to get their slice of the river, salmon would likely continue to come in last place.

“I think it’s safe to say that salmon will continue to pay a heavy price under that sort of scenario, perhaps even heavier than it’s been under the current scenario,” Bogaard said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

Of course, the whole issue could be resolved if the two countries agree on another set of interim measures or manage to ratify a modernized treaty.

Even barring those rosy outcomes, other factors may minimize the impacts of the potential end of assured Canadian storage in summer 2027.

Hydropower coordination between the two countries is set to continue until 2044 and that lets the U.S. know a bit about how Canada will manage the river. Corps’ models show that will lessen the impact.

Cosens also noted that Canadian hydropower operations happen to sometimes align with U.S. flood control interests.

“There is synergy between using those dams for flood control and using them for hydropower,” she said.

Those factors, combined with the long-standing, close relationships between water managers in the two countries and the fact that former President Joe Biden kept on Trump’s lead State Department negotiator all leave Cosens hopeful.

But she fears logic alone is not enough anymore.

“If you follow the logic, they should find — this Trump administration when they review the treaty — that it’s consistent with their original marching orders,” she said, pausing then adding, “whether logic applies, I don’t know.”

The Columbian: Pause in Columbia River Treaty talks stokes worry for flood control in Vancouver

Read more news

2nd gentleman vows to pass along tribal concerns

By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick
April 6, 2021

TOPPENISH – The nation’s second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, heard pleas Tuesday from the Yakama Nation to tear out the lower Snake River dams and to take action on missing and murdered tribal members.

The husband of Vice President Kamala Harris met with the Yakama Nation Tribal Council at Legends Casino, pledging to pass on their concerns to Harris when he saw her Tuesday night and to President Joe Biden when he next sees him.

It was Emhoff’s second visit on behalf of the Biden administration to a tribal nation, a sign of how seriously the administration takes tribal concerns, he said.

“It is very humbling to be on your land,” he said, after bowing his head during a song of blessing for him and Harris. It is the same song that has protected the Yakama people in Washington as they went out to gather food and the veterans in the tribe, he was told.

Emhoff called the blessing “very emotional” and said he would never forget it, before he and the council began to discuss issues.

Over the last month he has been traveling the nation to promote the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package signed by Biden.

“This administration is fully committed to working in partnership with Indian Country,” he said.

Emhoff’s visit showed that tribal nations are no longer taken for granted by the U.S. government, said Roger Fiander, chairman of the Yakama Nation General Council.

Tribal council Chairman Delano Saluskin brought up the proposal of Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, to breach the four Lower Snake River dams to help restore endangered salmon, saying the Yakama Nation supports it.

Under Simpson’s proposal, $34 billion in taxpayer money would be spent to help those who now benefit from the dams, including the Tri-Cities, irrigators and shippers.

“We are fish people,” Saluskin said. “We live off fish. We honor the fish in our first foods ceremony. And if we don’t do something now we are all going to be competing to catch that last salmon.”

Emhoff made no comment on the issue, instead discussing the new administration’s concern for missing and murdered Indigenous women, the toll the COVID pandemic has taken and the administration’s proposals to strengthen the economy, including for the nation’s tribes.

The federal investment in native communities is $31 billion. It provides immediate relief to those who need it most, support for native businesses, housing and schools, and provides money for increased COVID vaccinations.

Emhoff was scheduled to tour the Federal Emergency Management Agency Community Vaccination Center at the Central Washington Fairgrounds in Yakima with Gov. Jay Inslee early Tuesday afternoon.

Locals got their chance to comment on the future of dams

By Edward Stratton, The Daily Astorian

January 10, 2017 10:26AM

Supporters of the removal of four dams on the Snake River rallied at Astoria’s Suomi Hall Monday before attending the last of 16 public scoping meetings organized by federal agencies to gather public comment on the future operation of the Columbia and Snake Rivers hydroelectric dam system.

The scoping meetings have been organized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation, tasked with gathering public comment and developing alternatives on how to operate the system.

In May, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon ruled the current salmon recovery plan violated the Endangered Species Act by not doing enough to protect 13 listed Columbia River Basin species of salmon and steelhead. It was the fifth-such plan to be rejected.

Simon’s predecessor in the case, Judge James Redden, said after stepping down that the four Snake River dams — Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite — should be removed to help struggling salmon species.

Simon stopped short of such a pronouncement, but said the government needed to look at more aggressive approaches to help struggling salmonids, including removal of the dams. The four dams on the Snake River provide about 5 percent of the Pacific Northwest’s hydropower, along with barge transport for agricultural products between Lewiston, Idaho, and the Columbia.

Simon’s ruling has renewed a push to remove the dams, seen as an impediment to healthier salmon runs by some and an economic lifeline by others.

Freeing the Snake
“Since the erection of the Snake River dams, I have witnessed the end of … commercial canning in Astoria,” Dioniscio Y. Abing, a self-described adopted member of the Chinook Nation who worked in the former Bumble Bee Cannery on Pier 39, said during the rally at Suomi Hall.

Abing said the removal of two dams on the Olympic Peninsula’s Elwha River showed the benefits, soon to be followed by the removal of several dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California. He said those opposed to dam removal should look to develop better rail connections to move cargo.

“Astoria is symbolic of the non-native demographic groups that have lost the most in the headlong rush of the federal government into hydropower development of the Columbia River Basin,” said Hobe Kytr of Salmon for All, a local group supporting commercial gillnetters.

Kytr said the previously flourishing salmon canning industry has been decimated by projects like the Grand Coulee Dam, which cut off the upper third of the Columbia from fish passage, and the dams on the Snake River, while commercial fishermen have been unfairly scapegoated.

Dan Serres, the conservation director of environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper, said his group had monitored temperatures in the reservoirs behind each Snake River dam in 2015. “The river temperature steps up with each dam, and it’s obvious why,” he said.

He and Kytr both pointed to 2015, when nearly all Snake River sockeye salmon counted at the Bonneville Dam died amid warm water temperatures before they reached Idaho.

Feeling disenfranchised
Joseph Bogaard, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon, said part of the reason for the rally before the scoping meeting was the disenfranchising nature of the federal agencies’ collection of public comment.

Instead of impassioned public comment in front of a crowd, visitors to the scoping meeting walked into The Loft at the Red Building filled with posters displaying information about the hydroelectric dam system and scoping process. Staffers from the federal agencies stood by to help answer questions. Public comment was taken one-on-one through a stenographer, or by writing.

Rebecca Weiss, a program coordinator with the Army Corps, said the format of the meeting was meant to allow more of a two-way dialogue between visitors and staffers. She said the agencies expect about 50,000 public comments from the scoping period, most of them standardized form letters created by various groups and signed by supporters, from as close as Astoria to as far away as Sweden. “They’re all weighed the same as far as scoping,” she said.

Bogaard argued the format allowed the agencies to control the information being presented — information based on salmon recovery plans that have been struck down by a federal judge.

“It’s a dog-and-pony show; that’s what it is,” Kytr said.

He and other locals took umbrage at only one of the 16 meetings being held on the coast, arguing that salmon migrate out of the Columbia as far as Alaska, affecting much of the coastline.

Sonja Kokos, an environmental compliance officer with the Bureau of Reclamation, said  the 16 meetings were sited based on the location of projects and multiple benefits they provide to society. “Those are all on the same playing field, just like the fish,” she said.

Public Comment
The federal agencies are taking public comment on the dam system through Feb. 7. Submit comments and find more information at www.crso.info; email comment@crso.info or send comments by mail to: CRSO EIS, P.O. Box 2870, Portland, OR 97208-2870. After public scoping ends, the agencies will develop alternatives and draft an environmental impact statement, expected in late 2019 to early 2020.

http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20170110/debate-spills-over-the-dams

June 4, 2015 9:39AM

Members of the L pod of Southern Resident Killer Whales came back to the mouth of the Columbia River for Memorial Day weekend.

Satellite tag finally detached, bringing this season's NOAA tracking to an end

CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT, Wash. — Orcas made it back to the vicinity of the Long Beach Peninsula in time for the Memorial Day weekend as this year’s satellite-tracking program came to an end.

“As we sat on the beach on Long Beach Peninsula on Memorial weekend, we saw killer whales fishing just on the other side of the surf. It was very cool,” visitor Geneane Bentley Stahl wrote.

Orca L84, an adult male member of the L pod of Southern Resident Killer Whales usually identified with Puget Sound, along with other family members, made a rapid swim from the west coast of Canada’s Vancouver Island to the Columbia River plume between May 11 and May 17, NOAA Fisheries West Coast-Science & Management reported.

The orcas then went a little farther south for a few days, hunting off Tillamook Head and Clatsop Beach, before returning to the Columbia River on the morning of May 21.

Scientists from Olympia-based Cascadia Research Collective intercepted the whales and observed L84 and a few other members of his pod, or extended family group.

The tag that permitted scientists and the public to keep such close watch on orca movements along the outer coast this winter and spring is designed to eventually fall off, and apparently did so late last month, so this will be this year’s last tracking report.

It has been a fascinating set of sightings. This year at least, all or most of L pod — sometimes joined by members of the K and J pods — spent four months ranging up and down the West Coast between Vancouver Island and northern California. Much of that time was centered in the waters of the Columbia River plume, and the ocean off the mouths of Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. This year joins 2013 as a successful deployment of the satellite tags; in 2014, the tag came off soon after it was attached to an orca.

By Shari Phiel

August 03, 2014

Rev. Kathleen Patton of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Longview helpsRoy Rochon Wilson, honorary chief and spiritual leader for the Cowlitz Tribe,as he sings and drums Sunday at a prayer vigil for the Columbia River.

 YAKIMA, Wash. — A U.S.-Canada treaty that governs operations of the fourth-largest river in North America — affecting everything from power pr… Read more
The Columbia River is more than an economic engine — it’s a symbol of life.

More than 100 residents from across the county joined with members of the Cowlitz Tribe at Willow Grove Park on Sunday evening to share that message and pray for the health of the river.

The ceremony is part of a weeklong series of events throughout the region to spotlight the effort to bring salmon upstream of Grand Coulee Dam.

The Longview event opened with a traditional canoe ceremony, and the evening featured spiritual leader and Honorary Chief Roy Rochon Wilson, along with ministers and pastors from local churches and a potluck salmon dinner.

“The water flowing by is like the events of today. But there’s water up there that hasn’t gotten here yet. That’s tomorrow’s events.

What’s going to happen when it flows through my life,” Wilson said.

Much like how he treats the water, Wilson said how he treats life will in turn affect those downstream.

“It will make an impact on the generations to come,” Wilson said.
Woodland resident Tanna Engdahl, also one of the tribe’s spiritual leaders, said she and others came to the vigil because of her concerns about ongoing negotiations about the Columbia River between the United States and Canada.

“We came to pray to remind negotiators for the U.S. and Canada that it’s not all about profit and economic benefit,” Engdahl said.

When Grand Coulee was built in the 1930s without fish ladders, salmon runs extending into Canada ceased. Ever since, U.S. tribes and Canada’s First Nations have lobbied to get the salmon back.

Now may be their chance.

With the 50-year-old Columbia River Treaty up for review, native peoples from both sides of the border are pushing for salmon restoration above Grand Coulee. The 1964 treaty oversees U.S.-Canadian operation of the river for flood control and power generation.

In a recommendation to the U.S. State Department last December, the Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suggested that the two countries share the cost of investigating what it would take to get salmon back to Canadian spawning grounds.

Tribes and First Nations hope to see the design work for pilot studies begin as early as next year.

“The river provides so much: lifestyle, recreation, transportation... but it also creates life,” Engdahl said.

Engdahl said returning salmon to Canadian spawning grounds means a bountiful flow for the river, which will in turn support marine life along the entire river system.

Wilson said the river is a symbol of life itself, and without a healthy river we can’t have a healthy life.

“I think we should pray and really think about the people above the Grand Coulee Dam, the Spokane tribe, the Colville tribe and all the other people living up there,” said Adam Wicks-Arschak, who works for Voyages of Rediscovery, an environmental education program on the Columbia.

Wicks-Arschak, who lives in New York, spent the last six years traveling the length of the river making his way from the ocean to the river’s source advocating to make it possible for spawning salmon to return to Canada.

The group has been holding prayer vigils this week along the path of the river. Earlier in the day, they held a vigil in Astoria. They will next work their way down to Portland and then Hood River.

“This is one river, and we’re all in it together,” Wicks-Arshck said.

http://tdn.com/news/local/residents-cowlitz-tribe-pray-for-return-to-natural-salmon-runs/article_0ee57584-1b9d-11e4-9dd3-0019bb2963f4.html

Apr 29, 2019

By Mallory Gruben

Port, power groups fear whales could undercut Columbia system commerce

Proposals to breach the four Lower Snake River dams have found fresh support in orca advocates who want the dams removed to restore a “critical” food source for Puget Sound’s endangered killer whales.

What do the dams have to do with the orcas, which live hundreds of miles from the Snake River? To put it simply, the dams affect chinook salmon runs, a winter food source for the starving orcas.

It’s a breath of new life for a decades-long debate on whether to remove the dams — a decision that could dramatically impact the local port and power industries in Cowlitz County.

“Without the Snake River dams, you don’t have the peaking power capability to back up wind and solar. And you don’t have the ability for inland empire farmers to get their product to market at a price that can be sold internationally,” said Rob Rich, vice president of marine services for Shaver Transportation, a regional tug and barge company that hauls commodities on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite are the four dams advocates hope to see breached. 

Courtesy Corps of Engineers

Gov. Jay Inslee’s Orca Recovery Task Force wants dam-breaching brought into the killer whale conversation with a $750,000 “stakeholder forum,” which may or may not be approved as the Legislature winds down work on the state budget.

Conservationists and business industries are almost as split over the forum as they are about the dams.

On one side, conservationists back proposals to remove the dams to assist Chinook salmon runs, but Islee’s Orca Recovery Task Force recognizes the need to account for any consequence of dam removal, said Stephanie Solien, co-chair of the the group.

“There’s just no doubt about it: The dams have had a huge impact, and we really felt that it needs to be looked at as a possible solution. But we can’t do that until people come to the table and communities that rely on the dams have a chance to have their voices heard,” Solien said.

The barge in the foreground of this photo unloads wheat into the Export Grain Terminal, known as the EGT, at its facility at the Port of Longview. Barges like this use the Columbia/Snake River system to move nearly 10 percent of all U.S. wheat exports each year. 

Courtesy of the Port of Longview

On the opposing side, business and industry officials say the dams provide huge benefits to the Northwest economy through port cargo transportation and clean energy, and removing them could hurt the industries that rely on the river. Plus, these groups contend that the public has had ample opportunity to be involved with forums at the federal level.

“All of these things folks have been asking for in the last couple of months, like a dam-breaching impacts forum, is already being done by the federal agencies (the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation), and their process includes the states and the tribes — and it will have the opportunity for citizens to provide our public comment,” said Kristen Meira, executive director of Pacific Northwest Waterways Association (PNWA), a coalition of ports, businesses and other public agencies.

Dwindling salmon populations

The movement to remove the dams dates back to at least 1991, when Snake River sockeye salmon were listed under the Endangered Species Act. Since then, 12 other salmon species have been added to the list, including three that are native to the Columbia/Snake River Basin.

NOAA

Salmon advocates, including Joseph Bogaard, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon, point to the dams as one of the leading causes for the salmon’s decline. They turned the Snake and Columbia rivers into a series of slack, warm water pools that exhaust young salmon’s energy on their way to the ocean, Bogaard said.

“As a result, if they get to the ocean alive, they are severely depleted of nutrition and energy. … They are much less likely to survive, and they come back at lower levels,” he said.

The Columbia/Snake River Basin was “once the most productive salmon landscape on the planet,” producing 10 million to 20 million returning adults annually, Bogaard said. Last year, just more than 175,000 spring chinook returned from the ocean, according to a 2019 TAC fish run forecast.

Fewer fish mean less food for the orca, whose diets consist primarily of Chinook. And less food means a lower survival rate. Puget Sound’s Southern Resident orca population, once numbering 200, now is 74, a 30-year low. Many other factors, such as pollution, vessel noise and boat-caused injuries are also thought to be involved in their decline.

“There’s a number of causes of decline for orca, but the most important and pressing one is that we need to get them more food,” Bogaard said.

Snake River Chinook are not the orcas’ only food. They also eat Chinook originating from rivers in Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia and the Fraser River in Canada, among other rivers. But Snake River Chinook are among the 10 most important food stocks for orcas, according to NOAA Fisheries. And they are especially important in the winter months, when food sources are more scarce and some orca pods are spending time near the mouth of the Columbia River where spring Chinook are returning.

Bogaard said removing the dams is not a “silver bullet,” but it is a “critical step” in helping the salmon and orca.

This map shows the areas where the three Southern Resident orca pods (J-pod, K-pod and L-pod) frequent during fall, winter and spring months. All three pods move to the Salish Sea, which includes Puget Sound, in the summer. K-pod and L-pod spend a portion of the winter along the Washington coast near the mouth of the Columbia River, where they're likely to feed on spring chinook returning to the Columbia and Snake rivers. 

NOAA

The opposing side, though, argues that healthy salmon populations can coexist with the dams, thanks to investments to make the structures more fish friendly. Adding safe fish passageways and spilling more water over the dams have increased the survival rate of juvenile chinook to more than 90 percent — without the need to remove the dams completely, said Meira, the PNWA director.

Dams necessary for local ports

The shipping locks that are part of the lower Snake River dams — and which make the river navigable by barge — mean the river is an “important gateway” for U.S. wheat and forest projects, according to Meira’s organization. In 2017, more than 3.5 million tons of cargo was barged along the waterway. That’s the equivalent of 244 four-barge tows. Much of that cargo goes to the local grain terminals at the port of Kalama and Longview.

It would more than 135,000 semi-trucks or 35,000 rail cars to move the same amount of goods. And those alternative modes of transportation are less fuel efficient, have higher emissions and would congest roads and railways, according to PNWA.

The Port of Longview opposes dam removal for this very reason.

“The benefit of barging is that it takes trains and trucks off the road. It’s also more environmentally friendly,” said port spokeswoman Ashley Helenberg. “If one of the efforts is to improve the environment, it would be a counterproductive argument to place that cargo on rails or in trucks.”

Barging also keeps the price for the goods — especially wheat — competitive on the international market, said Rob Rich of Shaver Transportation. That’s hugely important for families who work in river-based transportation and wheat farming, he said.

“All of the wheat the comes down the river by barge is from the inland empire. … It’s from our local farmers,” Rich said. “The Snake River accounts for nearly 10 percent of all United States wheat that is exported … and there’s a reason it’s shipped by barge. You can’t ship it by rail or truck and compete in the international market.”

Without the dams, barge transport is “not possible at all,” Meira said. All the cargo moved on the river would need to be shipped another way.

Rich added that “people who want the dams removed say you could truck it or rail it, but there is not possible way for us to do that,” and keep prices competitive.

Clean, renewable energy

The dams are also an important piece of the Northwest’s energy industry. Those four structures — the Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams — account for about 10 to 15 percent of the total megawatts generated by the 31-dam Columbia hydropower system.

Cowlitz PUD General Manager Steve Kern said there is no immediate replacement for that clean energy source. Solar and wind technologies are not yet “adequate or reliable” enough to meet Northwest power needs, he said, and other replacements might require burning coal and gas.

It could also mean an increase in consumer electric rates as the PUD and other energy groups invest in alternative sources for power to meet the region’s growing demand for energy.

“(The dams) are not a resource we should throw away without carefully looking at the benefits,” Kern said.

A multimillion dollar federal study investigating the dam’s effects on river wildlife is currently underway. That study will look at strategies for salmon recovery while also considering the effect of those plans on different river and dam “user groups,” like ports and utility districts, said Matt Rabe, spokesman with the Army Corps of Engineers in Portland. A draft of the study should be released early in 2020, and a final decision is slated for September of that year.

No species recovery

Federal, state and local agencies have spent billions of dollars trying to recovery salmon runs. Despite that expenditure, the runs still are struggling. Not a single one of the endangered runs has recovered adequately enough to be taken off the endangered species list, said Bogaard, the salmon advocate.

“What we’ve been doing a long time has cost a tremendous amount of money, and it hasn’t worked. If we are going to comply with the law and we are going to save these species, we will have to do things differently,” he said.

His proposal is to bring dam removal back to the “center of the conversation.”

Bogaard attended a conference in Idaho where legislators, farmers, power industry officials and other communities did just that, marking a “pretty significant pivot point” in the debate, he said. Even Republican legislators from Idaho showed their support for “taking a closer look at … restoring the Snake River,” Bogaard said.

Solien, the chochair for Gov. Inslee’s Orca Task Force, agreed that interest groups can no longer “stay in our own silos and keep fighting and suing each other.” Instead, they need to create a plan that addresses the needs of the Washington communities, should the federal government decide to breach the dams, she said.

But Meira said that the forum is “a bit of a head scratcher” because it “won’t result in anything that is as actionable as what the federal agencies are doing.” Kern and Rich added that they don’t think it’s worth investing even more taxpayer dollars to replicate the current federal study.

However, despite their opposition to funding the forum, port and power officials said they still want a seat at the table should it happen.

“We want to ensure all interests are represented and a balanced solution is reached. … We definitely want to be part of the conversation,” Helenberg said.

Marissa Luck, January 16, 2017

(Eds' note: This informative article contains a number of misleading quotes and assertions by defenders of the lower Snake River dams - including, for example, the impact of dam removal on regional electrical rates, the "need" for natural gas plants to replace lost hydro-power, or the implications of dam removal on transportation and the opportunities to replace waterborne navigation with salmon-friendly alternatives like rail. For more information specifically on transportation issues associated with lower Snake River dam removal, see this new piece by Idaho resident Lin Laughy: Many Dollars and Little Sense.Salmon and fishing advocates welcome a fact-based debate on the actual costs and benefits of the lower Snake River dams - and the opportunity to work with people in the region to develop an effective plan to replace the dams' modest services with alternatives in order to restore the river and its endangered salmon populations. -jb)

Longview, WA. Even though the four Lower Snake River dams are nearly 300 to 400 miles away, breaching them could unleash far-reaching effects on Cowlitz County. Local electricity rates, port industries and fisheries could all be impacted by removing the dams. And that’s exactly what some want.

Advocates say removing the dams is the fastest and best way to save wild salmon runs, which would be a boon for both commercial and recreational fishers here and across the region.

“It just seems like it’s common sense. We’re facing climate change. We’re facing ocean acidification. But the one thing we can do to give them a shot against all these other factors is opening up this huge piece of habitat,” said Sam Mace, outreach director for Save Our Wild Salmon.

But Cowlitz PUD officials, like other utilities in the region, worry that removing the dams would drive up electricity rates for their customers. Paper mills like Norpac contend it could hike up their costs, making their products less competitive on the global market. And several area grain mills — including one in Longview and two Kalama — would have to find a new ways to get white wheat from Idaho, possibly driving up costs.

Whether dam removal would increase or decrease greenhouse gas emissions remains a hotly-debated concern.

Rob Rich of Shaver Transportation argues the four dams play a vital role for the whole river system. “Can you take a large blood vessel out of your leg? Yes you can actually. And eventually your leg will function again. It will just never function as well,” Rich said.

Dams at issue again
Debates have swirled around the four Lower Snake River dams for 30 years. Last May, a federal judge rejected the government’s fifth plan to manage endangered salmon and ordered the three federal agencies responsible for dams to prepare a new plan and take a hard look at all options, including dam removal.

“Despite billions of dollars spent on these efforts, the listed species continue to be in a perilous state,” Judge Michael Simon wrote in his decision. “The (Federal Columbia River Power System) remains a system that ‘cries out’ for a new approach.”

His order triggered a new five-year environmental review of the entire Columbia-Snake River system, led by Bonneville Power Administration, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation. A comment period on the scoping of the environmental impact statement ends Feb.7.

How fish would fare
Dams present some tough challenges for juvenile salmon: Warmer water temperatures behind the dams, predators and the energy-intensive process of swimming through locks and ladders can be lethal for baby fish trying to make it to the ocean.

A total of 13 salmon and steelhead species were listed as endangered or threatened after reaching dramatically low number in the 1990s. Since then, federal agencies have invested billions of dollars into making the dams more fish-friendly by increasing the number of ladders, spillways and diversions, and even transporting salmon around the dams by barge and tank trucks. In Cowlitz County, about 25 cents of every dollar Cowlitz PUD pays to Bonneville goes toward BPA’s fish and wildlife program.

“We really believe that the survival of fish coming through the system is better than it used to be,” said Micheal Milstein, spokesman for NOAA Fisheries. In the 1970s and 1980s, just about 80 percent of fish successfully survived through each individual dam. Now about 95 percent to 98 percent of fish survive from the top of each dam to the bottom. “That’s the a pretty significant improvement,” Milstein said.

Despite the improvement, last year NOAA’s five-year review of Snake River salmon and steelhead runs found that there wasn’t a significant enough improvement to take them off the endangered species list.

And advocates say that fish recovery rates are a far cry from where they need to be. For every 100 salmon that go out to the ocean, about 2 percent to 6 percent of them must return for sustained recovery, according to targets from Northwest Power and Conservation Council. According to the Fish Passage Center, over the last 15 years, return rates have frequently hovered around 2 to 4 percent, but have dipped to 1 percent or lower at some points. And in 2015, a heat wave killed off thousands of returning Columbia Basin salmon, compounding the problem.

Electric rates to rise?
About 5 percent of the region’s power comes from the Lower Snake River dams. That’s enough to power the City of Seattle, according to BPA.

Advocates claim power from the dams could be replaced with renewable energies. But there’s a hitch: energy from wind and solar can’t be stored, so they can’t mimic the continuous reliability of hydropower. Instead, BPA says it would have to replace the dams with gas-fired power plants, which are expensive and have higher greenhouse gas emissions.

While BPA isn’t certain how removing the dams would affect electric rates, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council estimated in 2010 that Bonneville’s rates would rise anywhere between $1 to $8.15, per megawatt hour. As BPA’s second largest customer, Cowlitz PUD gets 80 percent of its power from the federal agency. Any increases to BPA costs could have a direct impact on customer rates here.

And a potential increase could be a blow for paper mills and energy- intensive industries here, dam supporters say.

“For industry here on the river, especially Noparc, Weyerhaeuser, Nippon Dynawave and KapStone, low-cost electricity is absolutely critical to our survival. That’s one of the reasons why these industries are here today, because of the hydroelectric system,” said Craig Anneberg, CEO of Norpac, who also serves on the board of Northwest Riverpartners, a pro- hydroelectric group. Any increase in electricity costs could hurt paper mill’s competitiveness on the global market, Anneberg said.

“This issue could have an impact on jobs, especially in our county,” he added.

But anti-dam advocates say fears about electricity rates spiking are overblown. Todd True, an attorney with Earthjustice, said studies suggest residential bills may increase by about $1 per month. He argues that additional gas-fire plants could be avoided by using “a combination of wind, solar and smart gird management and planning.”

How would it affect industry?

Paper mills aren’t the only industries paying attention: the dams are used to move barges of wheat, wood chips, logs and the occasional large, odd-sized cargo smoothly from Idaho to the mouth of the Columbia River. Without the dams, rapids, waterfalls and swift-moving currents would make the river impassible. About 10 percent of all U.S. wheat exports move through the Snake River, according to Pacific Northwest Waterways Association. In Cowlitz County, grain terminals in Longview and Kalama rely on the dams for shipments of white wheat from the Snake River region.

“If we were not able to get it by barge... that makes us noncompetitive on the the global stage,” said Matthew Kerrigan, manager at EGT in Longview. “I really don’t know if we would be able to get (the wheat) elsewhere” but rail shipments may also be more expensive, he added.

While opponents to the dams claim freight traffic over the dams has been trending downward over the last 20 years, Pacific Northwest Waterways Association shows cargo use of the dams spiked 34 percent between 2012 to 2014.

Regardless of how often or for what purpose the dams are use, opponents believe the economic benefits are far outweighed by the damage to native salmon.

“The (dam navigation) system we’re subsidizing with taxpayer dollars is destroying the salmon runs, which are a huge economic asset,”said True, the Earthjustice attorney. “We have alternatives that can be just as efficient and just as (positive for) economic without the Snake River dams.”

http://tdn.com/news/local/removing-dams-could-affect-cowlitz-industry-electric-rates/article_6347b242-b7df-5233-8b13-ac42fd8be9b6.html

The river’s steelhead are struggling.

By Steve Hawley
June 13, 2017

Tucker Jones is certainly comfortable speaking in front of a surly audience. This much is clear from the outset. The burly, self-deprecating Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist is standing in front of a group of 50 guides and anglers on a blustery spring evening at his agency's office overlooking the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon. Jones and his colleague, Rod French, who manages ODFW's Deschutes River fisheries program, are here as the bearers of bad news. Before they begin their presentation, a Tidewater Lines barge glides ominously past the picture windows opposite the lectern where Jones is just clearing his throat, as if to remind anglers that the river was re-made a half-century ago. It isn't just for fish anymore. "Well, as most of you know," Jones begins cordially, going for a yarn-around the campfire tone, "steelhead and salmon runs in the Columbia are in pretty bad shape this year. So we're here to tell you about some management actions we have to take."

Read the full article here.

Note: see below the article two letters-to-the-editor that were submitted to the Economist shortly after this article appeared.

Canada and the United States face tough negotiations

Jun 7th 2014

WHEN Dwight Eisenhower, then president of the United States, and John Diefenbaker, his Canadian counterpart, signed a treaty in 1961 to jointly control the unruly Columbia river, they hailed their collaboration as a model for the rest of the world. Fifty years after the treaty was implemented, in 1964, cracks are appearing.

The treaty involved a series of new dams and an agreement to share the power generated as a result. It has worked well. There has been no repeat of the catastrophic flood that wiped out the second-largest city in Oregon in 1948. The United States dutifully hands over Canada’s share of the hydropower generated, worth an average of C$215m ($170m) a year between 1998 and 2013. But the Americans in particular are keen to make changes. Nigel Bankes of the University of Calgary says there is “zero chance” that the disagreements between the two countries can be resolved before September 16th—after which date either country can give ten years’ notice that it wishes to terminate the agreement.

Money is one of two main differences. In return for building three dams—Duncan, Hugh Keenleyside and Mica (see map)—on its side of the border, Canada received an upfront payment from the United States and a guaranteed share of the extra power that could be generated downstream as a result of more dependable water flows. The Americans think Canada has been more than reimbursed for the costs of dam construction, and want to whittle away the annual energy payment known as the Canadian Entitlement. In an open letter to Barack Obama in April, 26 senators and congressmen from the Pacific north-west said a reduction should be part of a renegotiated deal.

Not so fast, say the Canadians. They point out that people were displaced and fertile land flooded to create the dams. That represents a continuing loss. There are also benefits not captured in the treaty, says Bill Bennett, the minister of energy and mines for British Columbia (BC), which implements the treaty for Canada. More dependable water flows lead to improved navigation and irrigation south of the border; BC also co-operates when the United States asks it to spill water over its dams to help meet obligations under endangered-fish-species legislation.

In fact, fish are the other slippery issue. The restoration of salmon migration on the upper reaches of the Columbia river is being pushed by First Nations (native Indian) tribes on both sides of the border. The United States wants salmon on the negotiating table, but the Canadians do not. None of the treaty dams was built with fish ladders and they would be costly to construct today. “Salmon migration in the Columbia river ended 26 years before the treaty was ever ratified,” says Mr Bennett. “It was eliminated by the Grand Coulee dam in 1938, and our position is that’s an important issue but it’s not part of the Columbia River Treaty discussion.”

There is still tremendous cross-border goodwill at the regional level, a product of working co-operatively for 50 years. But relations at the national level are fraying at the edges. The Canadian government has already been riled by the Obama administration’s delays in making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would take oil from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries in the United States, and by its foot-dragging on financing a customs plaza for a new international bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit. The model friendship is not what it was.

Click here to view this article online.

The following two letters were submitted to the Economist:

Sir,

Your story on the U.S.-Canada Columbia River Treaty ("Salmon en route", June 7) is welcome, given its almost certain re-negotiation next year. But two vital linked points were missed.  The most urgent reason to modernize the Treaty was not mentioned:  the spreading effects of global warming on the Columbia River Basin waters both countries share.  A modern Treaty that includes the health of the river as a primary purpose is needed if both nations' people in this vast basin are to have a foundation from which to weather climate change's harms to our shared waters in the next 50 years.  Second, a modernized Treaty will greatly help the people and communities of both nations lead this task.  It is certain that the actions of our governments and their agencies will not keep the Columbia watershed in reasonable health through global warming.  The watershed's people and communities will have to do the lion's share.  The best thing our governments can do is to give those of us who live in the basin a modern Columbia River Treaty as a joint tool for use by people.

Thank you.

Pat Ford
Boise, Idaho

---------------------------------

Sir,



Your story on the U.S.-Canada Columbia River Treaty ("Salmon en route", June 7) aptly touches on the complex, shifting relationships between the federal governments in Ottawa and Washington, DC which could delay, or even impede the treaty’s much needed re-negotiation/modernization. Any such delay would, however, harm the economic interests of the greater Pacific Northwest which are at risk due to climate change, as well as perpetuate the moral debt owed to the regions’ First Nations and Columbia River Tribes.

The 1964 Treaty, while acclaimed as a successful international water agreement, utterly ignored the interests of the region’s native peoples. The four dams built with U.S. dollars flooded aboriginal lands in eastern British Columbia, further decimating the economic and cultural livelihood of native peoples there who had been cut off the great salmon migrations when the US opened Grand Coulee dam in 1942. Shortly thereafter, British Columbia moved to “disestablish” the native peoples of the Upper Columbia basin who had suffered the greatest losses. Of course, three decades of dam building on the US side of the border, largely without fish passage, had already wrought similar devastation, both economically and culturally, to Columbia Basin tribes south of the 49th parallel. The deliberate indifference of both the US and Canadian governments to the incalculable harm to the Pacific Northwest’s native peoples from the mighty dams that have enriched the region is a profound, and ongoing violation of civil and human rights. There is a debt owed on both sides of the border that should be, and probably can only be, addressed through a modernized Columbia River Treaty. 

There is a baser reason for modernizing the treaty: the threat climate change poses to the economy of the greater Pacific Northwest. The Columbia River dams on both sides of the border have fueled tremendous growth, not just through hydropower, but through control of water—for flood avoidance and irrigation. Dams made the region an agricultural powerhouse turning sagelands into orchards and potato fields. Irrigation depends upon the regions’ glaciers and snowpack, which are already melting quickly due to increasing temperatures, and, climate scientists predict, will have largely disappeared on the US side of the border in the next forty years. The Columbia’s flows will change as the impacts of climate change grow, threatening the tremendous prosperity the region has enjoyed as an energy and food exporter.

Renewing and modernizing the Columbia River Treaty could provide the essential framework to address past wrongs, and to cooperate across the border to preserve prosperity region-wide in the face of climate change. It could also create cross-border impetus to restore the beleaguered Columbia River which is severely degraded, and to restore fish to cooler waters in the upper basin which will be essential to the region’s fishery with temperatures rising. The people of the region need the Canadian and US governments to look past short-term interests and to modernize the Columbia River Treaty to provide a framework for adapting to climate change and increasing water scarcity, for the benefit of both countries. 

Thank you.


Suzanne Skinner
Mercer Island Washington, USA

Historic dam removal project sets important precedence for other rivers

By Pat Ford - Executive Director, Save Our Wild Salmon

This Saturday, on September 17th, America celebrates a national achievement on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State:  removal of the two Elwha River dams. This is the largest dam removal project in the world, ever.  The Glines Canyon dam on the Elwha at 210 feet marks the highest dam ever removed as well.

Read more over at the SOS Blog.

If we are to avoid the extinction of salmon runs and orcas, talks regarding the dams should continue.

By The Herald Editorial Board
August 9th, 2020

It’s not water over the dam.

In other words, don’t assume the word “final” in three federal agencies’ Final Environmental Impact Statement regarding salmon and steelhead preservation strategies on the Columbia and Snake rivers has ended the debate over the fate of four dams on the lower Snake River in Eastern Washington.

At the end of last month, three federal agencies — the Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversee management of the Northwest’s hydroelectric dams — released their final analysis and recommendations on how best to preserve threatened and endangered runs of salmon and steelhead on the rivers.

For more than 20 years, environmentalists and regional tribes have advocated for river habitat enhancements, including the removal of the four Snake River dams built in the 1960s and 1970s between the Tri-Cities and the Washington-Idaho border. Removal of the dams is seen as the most effective way to save and rebuild declining runs of the fish on which tribal, sport and commercial fishing depend, as well as other endangered species, especially the state’s orca whales, which spend part of the year at the mouth of the Columbia feeding on salmon before returning to Salish Sea waters in Northwest Washington.

Currently, 13 runs of salmon are listed as endangered or threatened species; four of them return to the Snake River to end and begin their life cycle.

But the dams’ removal has been opposed by many who warn that the loss of the dams would bring a decrease in available electricity and higher costs for the region’s ratepayers and difficulties for Eastern Washington farmers who depend on the dams for irrigation and barge shipping.

The federal agencies in the 5,000-page report recommend leaving the four dams in place, instead using increased spill of water at the dams during spring and early summer to aid the passage of juvenile fish on their way down river to the Pacific Ocean. Increasing spill during times of low demand for electricity would reduce the number of fish killed in turbines and screens.

The agencies’ report, however, admits that removal of the dams would provide endangered sockeye and threatened steelhead and spring and fall chinook the best chance at recovery, the Lewiston Tribune reported last week, and that the “flexible spill” plan’s effectiveness is limited, providing enough chance for fish survival to stop the decline of runs but not to rebuild fish numbers.

That’s because the fish need more than the spill of water when it’s convenient for electricity production to thrive and rebuild their numbers, said Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director for Columbia Riverkeeper, which advocates for the river, speaking last week with The Herald Editorial Board.

The dams slow and limit the number of salmon returning to spawning grounds above the dams, but the dams themselves also are a major source of water pollution that is killing salmon; not from a chemical contaminant but from water that’s too warm for fish survival.

“It’s become so hot on the Snake, we think that dam removal is likely the only way to meet safe temperature levels for salmon,” VandenHeuvel said.

That threat was recently affirmed in a report by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The Snake River dams, called run-of-the-river dams because of their limited storage capacity, are shallower than other dams on the Columbia, allowing for temperatures to build during summer heat. Salmon can tolerate temperatures up to about 68 degrees; last week, temperatures behind three of the four dams ranged from 71 to 73 degrees for the week ending Aug. 3, a range they had exceeded for at least two weeks this summer, according to the most recent “hot water report” by Save Our Salmon, a state organization advocating for salmon.

In 2015, an estimated 250,000 adult sockeye salmon died from exposure to warm waters during a hot summer with reduced river flows, VandenHeuvel said. On other occasions adult salmon — fighting their evolutionary drive to spawn — have swum in circles or actually reversed course on the river, swimming downstream to cooler water when confronted by high temperatures, he said.

Environmental groups, tribes and others don’t deny the potential impacts of the dams’ removal for hydroelectric production, irrigation and barge transportation, but they continue to encourage a discussion among residents, interest groups and officials about workable solutions for all.

There are options, Sam Mace of Save Our Salmon told the editorial board to replace lost power production with solar and wind generation; as well, continued investments in rail freight and irrigation could address the concerns of farmers, she said.

The dams are not without their own costs, Mace and VandenHeuvel said. The dams’ components, including their turbines, are nearing the end of their service lives and will need replacement in coming years; likewise there are continuing costs to maintain the locks and dredge the river bottom to keep barge traffic moving.

The final determination by the involved federal agencies shouldn’t mean an end to discussions about the potential benefits of removing the dams, said Jacqueline Koch of the National Wildlife Federation.

Lawsuits that challenge the federal plan remain a possibility. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed lower court rulings that will require the state of Washington to spend up to $3.7 billion to replace culverts under highways and roads that block salmon access.

Ultimately, a decision on the dams’ removal could be left to Congress. Koch, Mace and VandenHeuvel expressed support for continuing discussions that move forward on infrastructure improvements that would be necessary should the dams be removed in the future.

Those discussions, Koch said, don’t necessarily fall along the nation’s red-blue divide. While Washington’s three Republican House representatives have stated their support for keeping the dams, among those encouraging a discussion of what dam removal would look like is U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.

Even as the federal plan recommends keeping the dams, Koch said, “we do actually see a bright spot, because it does recognize that we need to be thinking about this in a different way.”

That time to think — and then act — however, is not unlimited, especially as changes in climate more frequently affect seasonal snowpack and river water temperatures.

If the number of salmon returning to spawn continues to fall — and the number of the state’s Southern Resident killer whales also continues its decline — we are left with fewer options and costlier remedies to prevent their extinction.

Renewed waterway treaty must focus on rebuilding fish stocks, native spokesman says

February 24, 2014

By MARK HUME

When salmon runs were cut off to the upper reaches of the Columbia River, the loss to native communities was culturally devastating, says the head of a native group that wants the restoration of fish stocks to become part of a renegotiated Columbia River Treaty.

"The loss of salmon is equal in cultural impact to the residential schools... I think that gives you an order of the magnitude of cultural loss," Bill Green, director of the Canadian Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fisheries Commission, said Monday.

Mr. Green said his organization, together with the Okanagan Nation Alliance in B.C. and 15 tribes in the U.S., are now pushing to have the restoration of salmon runs become a key part of talks between Canada and the U.S. over the Columbia River Treaty.

The 50-year-old international agreement, which deals with how the river is managed for flood control and power generation, is up for either renegotiation or cancellation by either side this year. Mr. Green said when the dams were built on the Columbia, First Nations weren't consulted – and he argues that is an oversight that should be corrected in a new treaty. Mr. Green said an extensive review of historical literature has shown that salmon were caught by tribes far upstream, in southeast B.C., before runs were cut off by the dams.

"We found historically, Chinook salmon went all the way to the headwaters at Columbia Lakes, so that's 2,000 kilometres upstream from the ocean," said Mr. Green. "We found sockeye used to be in very large numbers in the Arrow Lakes... an annual average return of around six million.... So it was truly a breathtaking resource. And all [of those salmon runs were] totally wiped out."
Mr. Green said governments on both sides of the border have a legal obligation to restore those salmon stocks so native communities can resume harvests they traditionally relied on.

The Columbia, which once had runs of 17 million salmon each fall, now sees only about two million fish return. And none of those fish make it to the upper Columbia.

Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams, in the U.S., and the Keenleyside, Brilliant and Waneta dams in B.C., were built without fish passageways, completely cutting off salmon from upstream spawning grounds.

A joint paper recently released by U.S. and Canadian tribes states that salmon can be brought back through a variety of techniques, ranging from building fish passageways to catching migrating salmon and then barging them past dams, before releasing them to continue their journey.

"[Salmon] reintroduction is critical to restoring indigenous peoples' cultural, harvest, and spiritual values," states the proposal. "Reintroduction is also an important facet for ecosystem function."

The paper states the number-one goal of the project should be to "restore naturally spawning and hatchery-based runs of sockeye and Chinook," but coho and steelhead stocks should also be included.

The First Nations proposal states that potential donor stocks need to be identified from which extirpated runs can be restored, disease threats have to be identified and specific methods for getting salmon past dams have to be worked out.

"There are technical solutions, but you've got to do it a step at a time," said Mr. Green.

Paul Lumley, executive director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said U.S. tribes have made the restoration project "a high priority issue" and are holding a salmon conference in April to which government officials and others are invited.

"It's going to take contributions from both sides of the border," he said of the restoration project. "But I'm absolutely convinced this can be done."

Mr. Lumley said if planning work gets under way this year, salmon could be returning in significant numbers to the upper Columbia River in 20 years.

"I'm 50 years old. I want to see this happen in my lifetime," he said.

Link to article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/first-nations-push-to-restore-columbia-river-salmon-runs/article17077250/

By Mark Hume, The Globe and Mail

Wednesday, Aug. 14 2013

Vancouver, British Columbia - A growing movement on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border wants to make the restoration of salmon runs in southeast British Columbia a key issue in negotiations over the Columbia River Treaty.
If the runs are revived, salmon would once again spawn in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains where they vanished nearly 70 years ago after the Grand Coulee dam was built in Washington State.

“The dream of salmon restoration is alive and well,” said Gerry Nellestijn, who is a member of a citizen group appointed by the B.C. government to provide a “sounding board” for issues related to the Columbia River Treaty.
Mr. Nellestijn said the opportunity to re-establish the runs arises because the treaty, an international agreement governing the management of water in the Columbia River, is up for renegotiation for the first time since it was ratified in 1964.

“A lot of people don’t realize what a big opportunity this is. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to restore our salmon runs,” he said.

Salmon were cut off from reaching Canada in the Columbia when the Grand Coulee was completed in 1942.
Canada and the United States began to look at joint management of the Columbia in 1944, but didn’t get around to ratifying a treaty until 1964. Under the deal, B.C. built three dams on the upper Columbia to hold back water that is released to control floods and on demand to maximize power generation south of the U.S. border. B.C. was paid $275-million up front and receives entitlement to half of the hydroelectricity generated in the U.S. by the controlled water releases.

Mr. Nellestijn, who is also the co-ordinator of the Salmo Watershed Streamkeepers Society, said the dams have caused widespread environmental damage in B.C., where river and reservoir levels fluctuate wildly.
“Fish weren’t an issue when they negotiated the treaty,” Mr. Nellestijn said.

He said 40- to 60-pound chinook salmon once spawned in the Salmo River, a tributary of the Columbia in the Kootenays, and other species spawned upstream in tributaries in the Rockies.

“We have lost our coho, chinook, burbot, steelhead and sturgeon. It’s pretty much a disgrace to think about how we allowed this to happen,” he said. “In the treaty they talk about the dollars and cents of the Canadian [power] entitlement, but we are entitled to a healthy environment too.”

John Osborn, a spokesman for the Sierra Club in Spokane, Wash., said the environmental group has written to the two U.S. federal organizations involved in the treaty, urging that “salmon and river health” be made a priority in any negotiations.

Mr. Osborn said restoring salmon runs would require building fish ladders at both the 160-metre high Grand Coulee dam and the 72-metre high Chief Joseph dam, which is located just downstream.

Fisheries experts would also then have to figure out how to reintroduce salmon runs that became locally extinct.
“If we can put a man on the moon we can return salmon to the waters of British Columbia,” said Mr. Osborn of the challenge.

In an e-mail Matt Gordon, a spokesman for the B.C. Ministry of Energy, said the provincial government is currently conducting a review of the Columbia River Treaty, as are the two U.S. agencies involved – the Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Mr. Gordon said the B.C. government “will not comment on issues raised by U.S. stakeholders as part of the U.S. process.”

He also said the management of salmon is a federal issue.

A representative of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was not immediately available for comment.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/revised-columbia-river-treaty-could-restore-salmon-runs/article13749271/

"I think we're taking this whole salmon metaphor way too far..."

Luke Nelson and Ty Draney complete an epic journey.

As you may recall, on September 30th,  endurance athletes Luke Nelson and Ty Draney set off along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River into the Frank Church / River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho. Their mission: cover over 120 miles of rugged terrain - with an elevation gain approaching 20,000 feet - in less than two days, all to raise funds and awareness for SOS' campaign to restore Columbia-Snake River salmon.

In a nutshell, they made it. What was thought to be 120 miles turned out to be closer to 140. But it sounds and looks like it was quite an adventure (and we'll let them tell it). Check out Ty's awesome recount over on Patagonia's Cleanest Line blog.

It's not too late to donate to this project. Please give what you can to help our cause:

Donate to the cause here.  And thank you.

More info on the Great Salmon Run.

By Rocky Barker for The Idaho Statesman

December 28, 2017

When they were first built, Columbia River dams like Grand Coulee and Bonneville were technological wonders that placed the Pacific Northwest on the edge of the future. Millions of acres of farmland were irrigated. The dams fueled the growth of urban areas around Seattle and Portland, and powered reactors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation that produced the plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in World War II.

Salmon and the region’s Indian tribes were a second thought during this period — until the dams took their toll. In 1991, the fish were listed under the Endangered Species Act, forcing the region to face how the dams that powered its growth now threaten the future of its natural wonders, such as the salmon or the Salish Sea orcas.

I spent much of 2017 re-examining what we are doing to protect and recover the salmon and steelhead that are critical to our identity. The most important trend I found was the transition going on in the electric power industry. Digital technology has changed the way we communicate, we shop, we sell and we learn; it is also revolutionizing our utilities.

Read the fuill story here at the Idaho Statesman

This essay appears in Patagonia's Summer 2010 catalog and is also available here.

Wolves are thriving in the Idaho woods for the same reason salmon should be - lots of protected, healthy habitat. But it's the fish whose presence triggers the larger ecological ripple. Salmon tend to wander a bit farther than wolves. In 2003, an Idaho steelhead was caught in the Pacific near the Kuril Islands in northern Japan. Fattening on the bounty of the sea makes salmon the building blocks of forest ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest and until recently, the region's rivers were the highways that delivered them to and from the trees. More than a hundred vertebrates, from the tiny Trowbridge's shrew to wolves to the more cumbersome killer whale depend on the sustenance salmon provide. Decomposing salmon bodies provide ocean-derived nutrients for soils that nurture old-growth forests.

The sin lies not in the wilderness, but in the dammed. Wild Idaho waters feed the Snake, which eventually joins the Columbia. These two rivers have been transformed into a series of eight slackwater impoundments behind as many obstructions in the long, slow ride between Lewiston, Idaho, and Portland, Oregon. For nearly two decades, a growing constituency of fishermen, farmers, business leaders, brave politicians and conservation groups like Save Our Wild Salmon have been backing a modest proposal: Take out half the dams. Just the four smaller ones on the Snake. With the grim prospect of climate change posing an added threat to the myriad Pacific ecosystems, many of which rely on salmon as a keystone species, removing the dams has become a mission that's moved beyond regional borders.

Ken Balcomb is the director for the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island in Puget Sound. It's a long way from here to Lewiston, but Balcomb sees the connection. He's spent most of his time tracking the resident killer whales that cruise the sound in summer. He knows that chinook are whale food. The health of these orcas and that of the chinook population in the nearby ocean neatly track each other. Unfortunately, it's a track leading toward extinction. Orcas joined Snake River chinook on the Endangered Species list in 2006. "There used to be this huge biomass of chinook in the ocean, produced by all the rivers of the Pacific Coast; the Columbia was the big horse of all those," Balcomb told me. "We're down to less than one percent of historic abundance. Climate change doesn't look good for salmon in the Klamath or the Sacramento. But there's a lot of intact habitat left on the Snake. It's our best shot. I think any reasonable biologist will tell you the only way to take advantage of it is to tear out the dams."

Samantha Wohlfeil
August 27, 2020

By the time a coalition of anglers and conservationists came together in 1991 with the common goal of saving fish runs on the Snake River, there had already been a dramatic decline in many of the androgenous species that split their time between crystal clear Northwest rivers and the vast Pacific Ocean.

As the number of Snake and Columbia river dams that fish must pass continued to grow during the mid-1900s, wild fish passage numbers for Snake River spring/summer chinook, sockeye and steelhead all plummeted.

The groups' shared goal became the name of their coalition: Save Our Wild Salmon.

"Snake River coho [salmon] had been declared extinct in 1988," says Sam Mace, Inland Northwest director of Save Our Wild Salmon. "So many of the salmon stocks were getting listed under the Endangered Species Act. The runs were in decline."

Even as the impacts of the hydro system seemed significant when the coalition formed, it didn't immediately push for removal of four lower Snake River dams, Mace notes.

"Conservation and commercial fishing and sport fishing groups don't agree on every issue affecting salmon and steelhead, but coming together and finding that common ground to work on shared problems has really been the success of our coalition," Mace says. "We worked hard for years to see, 'Are there ways to manage the hydro system that are easier for the fish and gives them a chance?'"

But by 1997, when the economic gain of the dams seemed outweighed by the economic devastation on the fishing industry, removal became a priority.

In the meantime, the coalition has pushed to increase water spill over the dams to ease the journey for juvenile salmon. They've also lobbied lawmakers to seriously consider dam removal, participating in environmental studies over the last 20 years.

Even as the most recent environmental plan for the dams won't require removal, Mace says she's more hopeful than ever that people are understanding their perspective.

"Even under this weird time in our country right now, I am the most hopeful that we're gonna succeed than I've ever been," Mace says. "I think it's a wakeup call for folks to see the orca starving in Puget Sound and their connection to our river. People are seeing there has yet to be an unsuccessful dam removal. They're seeing the positives for communities, and it's definitely growing the support."

The small Northwest staff is supported by interns and volunteers, Mace says. This fall, in addition to taking on interns for the school year to monitor things like water temperatures in reservoirs (email carrie@wildsalmon.org for internship opportunities), the coalition will also work on a Snake River vision project, she says.

"We're imagining what the lower Snake River will look like free flowing," Mace says.

That work could include gathering historic photographs and imagining opportunities for recreation. Importantly, it will also envision what a revitalized rail transportation system could look like for agriculture, as well as the other renewable energy resources that might replace energy generation. Everyone from birders and kayakers to historical researchers can help with that effort, she says.

"We haven't restored the fish back to healthy numbers yet but we've gotten a lot more help for the fish over the years in terms of how the dams are managed," Mace says. "We feel really good about that work... and people are realizing we don't need every single dam." 

August 22, 2019

By TJ Martinell

As efforts continue in favor of breaching the lower Snake River dams to aid salmon and Southern Resident Killer whale recovery, NOAA Fisheries – also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service – is close to finishing a new analysis of the dams as part of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prepared by three federal agencies.

Previous studies done by NOAA Fisheries, including a biological opinion and its recovery plans, have concluded that removing the dams is unnecessary to help salmon and orca populations. The latest analysis looked at the effects of the dams and removing them in order to improve fish survival rates. The EIS process was started in 2016 as part of a U.S. Court order; later that year, a U.S. District Court judge issued a ruling which stated that the new EIS “may well require” breaching the dams. The EIS is expected to be completed in 2020.

The agencies developing the EIS are the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA).

Although the new analysis by NOAA Fisheries for those three agencies has yet to be released, Rich Zabel told Lens the analysis’ conclusions won’t be much different than past studies as to whether the dams should be breached. Zabel is the director of the Fish Ecology Division at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

“I would say at this point we’re not recommending it,” he said. “I would say we are interested in exploring habitat restoration. Breaching the dams would take an act of Congress, so I think in the short run we’re interested in pursuing as many activities outside of breaching dams.”

He added that while there may have been “various degrees of support” for removing the dams, none of their previous studies have ever said it’s necessary or required.

The analysis comes as the state legislature earlier this year approved a $750,000 study that would also examine the effects of removing the dams. Environmentalists and some tribes argue the dams impede fish passage and are contributing to their dwindling populations. According to Governor Jay Inslee’s Salmon Recovery Office, several endangered salmon species include the Snake River spring and summer Chinook, and their populations have not improved. Other endangered salmon that migrate through the Snake River include Steelhead, which is showing signs of progress, along with the fall Chinook which is approaching state recovery goals. The diminished amount of salmon is consequently blamed by some for the shrinking number of Southern Resident killer whales.

However others, including NOAA Fisheries, highlight other factors harming both killer whales and salmon, such as sea lions. Others point to the electricity the dams provide – seven percent of the total state production – along with the agricultural benefits. Removing the dams would affect roughly 350,000 acres of private-sector agricultural lands and prevent the use of barges to transport 40 percent of the nation’s wheat production. There is also the cost to remove the dams; the BPA estimates it would take $1 billion to do so.

Recently, an ECONorthwest study examined the tradeoffs of removing the dams, claiming that the agricultural impacts could be mitigated, though its conclusions are disputed by Washington Policy Center Agricultural Director Pam Lewison.

Meanwhile, several public utility district (PUD) commissions such as Grays Harbor PUD and Cowlitz PUD have thrown support behind the dams. The most recent resolution in favor of the dams came in July from Mason PUD 3.

September 10, 2019

By TJ Martinell

As federal agencies continue work on a new environmental impact statement for the lower Snake River dams, Washington state is preparing a new stakeholder process with meetings planned in December.

As the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USAE), U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) continue work on a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) affecting the lower Snake River dams to be released next year, Washington state is preparing a new stakeholder process examining whether or not those dams should be breached to improve salmon and orca recovery. However – state officials at a Sept. 9 meeting of the Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force emphasized the narrow objective of the process and the final report that will be submitted to Inslee and the state legislature in February.

“The goal is not to develop the mitigation option here,” state Office of Financial Management Senior Budget Assistant Jim Cahill said. “We’re trying to gather information on what stakeholders and communities and others feel are important things that we need to consider, or possible mitigation options. We can’t go out of the kind of the scope of our charge.”

During this year’s legislative session, state lawmakers approved $750,000 in the 2019-21 budget for a stakeholder process to continue ongoing discussions over whether the four lower Snake River dams should be breached to aid salmon and killer whale recovery. The move was advocated last year by the task force as part its recommendations to improve the dwindling orca population.

At the Sept. 9 task force meeting, San Juan County Commissioner Jamie Stephens said: “there are specific questions that I think need to be answered on both sides – for the advocates of tearing down the dams as well as Bonneville Power trying to save the dams.”

Washington Policy Center Environmental Director Todd Meyers told Lens that “the fundamental problem with this whole study is that it’s $700,000 that will do literally nothing for a single salmon or orca. It’s the Burning Man for environmental activists. It’s a chance to dress up.”

The final report sent to Inslee is intended to help him decide what recommendation to submit as part of the EIS process. Meanwhile, NOAA Fisheries has already confirmed that its new analysis for the EIS will not advocate for breaching the dams.

“It is a discussion that the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA Fisheries are doing in a very detailed and scientific way right now,” Myers said. “What is the governor going to hear that they aren’t going to examine?”

Some advocates for removing the dams point to a 2002 USACE report on juvenile salmon migration which concluded that breaching would provide “the highest probability of meeting the survival and recovery criteria” for the salmon out of the alternative options included in the study. However, the report noted that the benefits for salmon would be a “slightly reduced” risk of extinction for spring/summer Chinook and a “moderately reduced” risk of extinction for fall Chinook and Steelhead.

The report also noted that it did not address whether removing the dams was necessary. “The bottom line is that no single alternative stands out as the ‘silver bullet’ for listed stocks.”

A 2000 biological opinion by NOAA Fisheries also found that “breaching the four lower Snake River dams would provide more certainty of long-term survival and recovery than would other measures,” though it noted that the “breaching is not essential to implementation of the initial actions called for in the Reasonable and Prudent Alternative (RPA).”

NOAA Fisheries officials have previously told Lens that while the agency’s previous studies have offered “some degree of support” for removing the dams, none have concluded it’s necessary for salmon recovery.

One of the issues the process aims to address are the potential economic consequences of removing the dams. Their vital role in shipping inland produce was underscored by the recent, unexpected closure of the Bonneville Lock by USAE that froze barging on the river. In addition to generating hydropower, the Bonneville dam is the first of eight in the 465-mile Columbia Snake River System that barges use to move agricultural products to market.

According to the Washington Grain Commission, in 2014 alone the system barged 4.4 million tons of cargo that would have otherwise required 43,600 rail cars or 167,000 semi-trucks to move. According to the USAE, the system moves around 10 million tons and $3 billion worth of cargo each year.

To facilitate the forums for local, state, federal and tribal stakeholders, the state has hired Ross Strategic, Kramer Consulting, White Bluffs Consulting and Anchor QEA. Public workshops are tentatively planned for December, with possible venues in Vancouver and the Tri-Cities.

Biden administration also created the Columbia River Task Force to implement efforts to restore fish population

By Eric Barker
Jun 19, 2024

The Biden Administration took multiple steps Tuesday to make good on its commitment to honor tribal treaty rights and restore Snake and Columbia river salmon runs.

It released a report acknowledging dams have gravely harmed salmon runs and Columbia Basin tribes like the Nez Perce that depend on them. It also created the Columbia River Task Force and charged it with implementing the administration’s efforts to restore the iconic fish.

The Tribal Perspectives Report is an acknowledgement that construction of hydroelectric and other dams benefited the region at the expense of tribes, fish and the environment. Starting in about 1900 and lasting seven decades, the federal government and partners began building dams that transformed much of Columbia and Snake rivers from free-flowing streams into a series of slackwater pools.

They spurred development of the region by producing cheap and reliable hydroelectricity, controlling floods and creating a waterborne transportation system. But the dams changed the nature of the rivers. Salmon, steelhead and other species that were already depressed from overfishing and destruction of habitat suffered even more. The dams also displaced tribal villages, destroyed important fishing and gathering spots like Celilo Falls and Kettle Falls, and swallowed important cultural sites including burial grounds.

During their construction, the government took few if any steps to ensure the tribal fishing rights enumerated in treaties were protected. Subsequent efforts to mitigate the harm have failed.

“While the transformation of the Columbia and Snake rivers brought economic gains to the region, the Tribes have not shared equitably in those benefits,” reads the report. “Instead, by providing affordable electricity, irrigation water, barging routes, and other benefits to regional industries while simultaneously contributing to the decline in salmon populations and degradation of natural resources, the dams transferred wealth away from the Tribes to other communities.”

Shannon Wheeler, chairperson of the Nez Perce Tribe, was in Washington D.C. for a meeting with Biden administration officials Tuesday and said the report is a more honest assessment of the impacts the dams have had on his and 10 other Columbia Basin tribes than previous attempts.

“We are thankful the administration understands the true impacts the tribal nations and the Nez Perce have felt over the course of time and more importantly we have been able to express the suffering the salmon have had to endure, and other species associated with the salmon like the orca and the starvation they face because of loss of salmon.”

He said the report also recognizes the 1855 treaties the federal government signed with the Nez Perce, Yakima, Umatilla and Warm Springs tribes — that among other things reserve their right to fish in usual and accustomed places — are recognized by the U.S. Constitution as the “supreme law of the land.”

The report details ways the harm may be mitigated moving forward, including a call that upholding tribal treaty rights be an integral part of National Environmental Policy Act processes. Every time the federal government endeavors to implement actions that may disturb the environment, the act requires potential harms be spelled out and alternatives proposed.

Last year, the federal government signed two agreements with Columbia Basin Tribes that led to a decades-long lawsuit being put on hold for as many as 10 years. One promised to reintroduce salmon to the upper Columbia River. The construction of Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams extirpated the fish from that section of the Columbia.

The second agreement committed the federal government to the Columbia River Restoration Initiative. It aims to help the Nez Perce and other Columbia River treaty tribes develop alternative energy projects that can be counted as replacement power if the lower Snake River dams are breached in the future. The initiative also calls for studies that look for the best ways to replace the transportation and irrigation services now provided by the Snake River dams.

Executive director selected for Columbia River Task Force

On Tuesday, the government announced the creation of the Columbia River Task Force to oversee implementation of the initiative and appointed Nik Blosser, of Portland, to serve as its executive director. Blosser served as chief of staff for former Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, was a vice president at Portland General Electric, served on the Biden administration’s transition team in 2020 and worked in the Office of Cabinet Affairs for Biden.

“The Columbia River Task Force will implement President Biden’s vision to develop affordable, clean, and reliable energy options for the region while working to restore wild fish populations and address the grave harms the federal dams have inflicted on Tribal communities,” said Brenda Mallory, chairperson of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “President Biden recognizes that to confront injustice, we must be honest about history — even when doing so is difficult. The report released today is an important step to recognize and overcome the past together.”

The Lewiston Tribune: Report: 'Dams hurt salmon and tribes' article link

In western Washington’s Elwha River, the removal of two dams led to a resurgence of fish runs; could a similar scenario play out on the Snake River?

By Eric Barker
December 12, 2021

Editor's Note
RIVER ROAD TRIP PART 1 -- THE ELWHA RIVER

The Tribune’s Eric Barker recently visited two Northwest rivers, the Elwha and the John Day, to see some dams vs. salmon dynamics in action. This is the first of Barker’s two stories, with the second scheduled for next Sunday.

PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Mel Elofson thought of his ancestors when he spotted a chinook salmon swimming past the old Glines Canyon Dam site on the Elwha River here.

“It was not even 20 feet away,” he said. “A nice, big, fat silver female.”

For decades, members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe called for the removal of two dams blocking the river and preventing several species of salmon and steelhead from reaching spawning grounds and they worked to make that vision a reality.

In 2012, the Elwha Dam came down. Two years later, Glines Canyon Dam was gone and the intrepid chinook spotted by Elofson pushed upstream just a day and a half later.

“We were high-fiving. It was pretty awesome to see. It was something my grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles wanted to see. I got to be their eyes, I guess.”

Members of the Nez Perce Tribe share a similar vision. They have led a decadeslong fight to breach the four lower Snake River dams and free the lower Snake River so its salmon, steelhead and lamprey can thrive.

The Snake and Elwha rivers and their dams are very different. The Elwha is a short coastal stream surrounded by a temperate rainforest. It begins in Olympic National Park and gains speed and size as it races 45 miles north to meet the Salish Sea at the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.

“So a lot of it was never altered,” said George Pess, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at Seattle. “There wasn’t road construction and timber harvest and all of that other kind of stuff that you have a lot of times in all of our watersheds.”

But the dams, built to power mills at nearby Port Angeles, lacked fish ladders and blocked salmon and steelhead from progressing more than a few miles upstream.

The Snake River is long. It starts in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, covers about 1,000 miles as it courses across the width and length of Idaho and traverses southeastern Washington before joining the Columbia River near the Tri-Cities. Much of the land it slithers through is arid, but its tributaries reach high into the forested mountains and snowy peaks of central Idaho and northeastern Oregon, where wild salmon and steelhead still spawn in cool-running streams.

The four Snake River dams in eastern Washington have fish ladders for upstream-bound adults and elaborate systems to pass juvenile fish downstream. Nonetheless, the dams are a hindrance to the fish, and wild runs of spring, summer and fall chinook; sockeye salmon; and steelhead have needed Endangered Species Act protection for the past 30 years.

The tribe, Oregon and several fishing and environmental groups, backed by strong science, say breaching the dams will unleash the productivity of higher-elevation Snake River tributaries — including the Salmon River and its middle and south forks, as well as the Imnaha, Grande Ronde, Clearwater, Selway and Lochsa rivers — to save the fish from extinction.

To prove it, they point downstream to yet another river, the undammed John Day in Oregon. It joins the Columbia River about 100 miles downstream from the mouth of the Snake River after flowing north out of the Strawberry, Elkhorn and Blue mountains.

The Snake and John Day are closer than they might appear. Some of their headwaters share the same mountains in northeastern Oregon. They are both long (though the Snake is much longer) and both support wild runs of chinook and steelhead.

But they differ in the number of dams fish must negotiate between the ocean and spawning grounds and in the quality of spawning and rearing habitat used by those fish.

John Day River salmon and steelhead must negotiate three dams — Bonneville, The Dalles and John Day — on the Columbia during their migrations to and from the ocean. Snake River fish must get past eight dams — four on the Columbia and four on the Snake.

The John Day, despite flowing through a sparsely populated region, has been significantly altered.

“In general, it’s been heavily impacted by humans in most of the area,” said Ian Tattam, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife at La Grande. “There is widespread agriculture and timber and grazing, and the roads and the water diversions and associated paraphernalia that go along with those activities.”

As a result, the fish habitat is largely in much poorer shape compared to the habitat found in pristine Snake River tributaries like the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, Imnaha and Selway rivers. Yet its salmon and steelhead are doing considerably better than those in the Snake River basin.

Today the Tribune looks at the Elwha River and what has happened there since the dams were removed. Key topics include how the river dealt with the sudden animation of sediment trapped behind the dams and how salmon and steelhead and the river itself are responding.

“What has been really exciting has not only been the increase in abundance we have seen in a lot of species, but we are starting to see new life histories arise that we didn’t see before the dams were out. For example, summer steelhead have come back really strong, the bull trout have resumed migration back to the ocean and the king salmon are starting to produce remarkable numbers of naturally produced offspring.” - John McMillan, a fisheries scientist with Trout Unlimited’s Wild Steelhead Project

Next week we will visit the John Day River, take a look at its habitat, and how its fish have fared.

Elwha

It’s been less than a decade since the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams came down. As hinted at by that first chinook spotted by Elofson, a member of the Lower Elwha Tribe and an employee of its fisheries department, dam removal has allowed salmon to occupy habitat that was inaccessible for more than a century.

Fish numbers, while subject to normal ups and downs shaped by ocean and weather conditions, have generally responded positively to the regained access.

“We went from the first couple of years and having 100,000, 125,000, 130,000 (spring chinook) smolts go out … to having 550,000 in one year. And we went from that to 1 million the next year,” said Robert Elofson, Mel’s brother and a fisheries department employee who served as a liaison with the National Park Service during the dam-removal process and lobbied Congress while legislation authorizing the project was up for consideration.

Coho and winter steelhead are holding their own and summer steelhead stormed back, surprising everyone. Pink and chum salmon have yet to make significant gains but fisheries managers are hopeful for a turnaround.

John McMillan, a fisheries scientist with Trout Unlimited’s Wild Steelhead Project, marvels at the way summer steelhead recolonized the river. The run went from just a few fish, to nearly 1,000. McMillan said it is likely the largest summer steelhead run on the coast of Washington.

“What has been really exciting has not only been the increase in abundance we have seen in a lot of species, but we are starting to see new life histories arise that we didn’t see before the dams were out,” he said. “For example, summer steelhead have come back really strong, the bull trout have resumed migration back to the ocean and the king salmon are starting to produce remarkable numbers of naturally produced offspring.”

Muck and moonscapes

Despite the success so far, there were significant uncertainties. About 26 million cubic yards of mostly sand and silt were trapped behind the dams, three-quarters of which was above Glines Canyon. That changed the way the river and its floodplain interacted during the life of the dams and posed a problem for dam removal — where would it all go once the river was free?

“Sediment was the big question mark,” Pess said.

It’s a question many people have about the Snake River and the estimated 178 million cubic yards of sediment stored behind its dams.

Would the Elwha be so clogged with silt, sand and gravel that it would kill nearly everything? Would the emerald green and aqua blue pools fill with muck? Or would the sediment feed the floodplain during highwater pulses and allow the river to meander across the valley, splitting into side channels and create better habitat for fish? Would the sediment build up and create high banks? Or would it flush through the system and create a delta at the river’s mouth?

“The answer to all of this is yes,” Pess said. “It wasn’t any one thing. All of these things happened to some extent.”

The flow of sediment increased when the lower dam was removed. But the big pulses came after the removal of Glines Canyon and the movement of both fine sediments and larger bedload material. The effect on aquatic life, particularly the bugs that live between and under the rocks that make up the riverbed, was dramatic.

“That is where most of the productivity is happening in a stream system,” said Sarah Morley, another NOAA scientist, who studies these creatures.

In 2012, when the sediment started to accumulate in the lower river, Morley and her team recorded a 95 percent drop in aquatic insects.

“I didn’t expect it to be that extreme,” she said.

“In the lower river we saw virtually all invertebrates wiped out. But by 2015, once the sediment was mainly through the river, there was a very rapid rebound.”

Two years later, in 2017, everything, including numbers of invertebrates and the species composition, was back to normal.

During high-sediment periods, Morley said some fish seemed able to find alternative food, perhaps by feeding more on terrestrial insects that fell into the river.

“Even though there was so much less aquatic invertebrates available, they were still getting the same amount of energy in their diets.”

Within four or five years, the sediment levels returned to normal.

“So even though we had a lot of sediment in a short period of time, the river was able to integrate that sediment and do what a river does with sediment, and that is move it or store it or do whatever it needs to,” Pess said.

Some of it was deposited on the floodplain or stored in islands between braided channels and in sandbars. But the vast majority flushed through the system.

“Most of it just ended up in the Strait of Juan de Fuca,” Pess said.

And in that body of water, it created a delta and estuarine habitat for juvenile fish.

“If you and I were standing (at the mouth) in 2006 and we closed our eyes, we would hear the surf and the surf would be like BAM, BAM because it would be big boulders and cobbles,” Pess said. “If we were standing there in 2015 or even today, you would hear this swishing sound because it’s all finer sediment.

“Before fish were coming out straight into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the near shore was pretty minimal in terms of kelp forests or eel grass, but now we have a sandy beach with blind tidal channels.”

The Army Corps of Engineers predicts the lower Snake River would go through a similar process of significant negative short-term effects from sediment movement, followed by long-term benefits for fish.

Nature’s Band-Aids

McMillan, the Trout Unlimited scientist, snakes his way through a maze of willows and young cottonwood trees that reach high above his head. The 10-year-old vegetation is thick and tall — maybe 15 to 20 feet. But a decade early, McMillan would have been underwater at the same spot.

“This was all lake bed, which is pretty amazing to think, and now it’s all overgrown,” he said.

The area that sat behind the old Elwha Dam is lined with river rocks and gravel. The river, braided into multiple channels, rushes past. It’s a spot favored by chinook for spawning.

Further downstream, Mel Elofson stands on a bedrock cliff that was the anchor to the old Elwha Dam. In a downstream pool, a keen eye can see the dark shadows of adult chinook lurking as they stage before moving upstream.

He remembers what it looked like when the dam came down.

“It was like a moonscape once they drained all the water out. Not a single plant there. Now it’s totally revegetated.”

The scene is similar at the former site of Glines Canyon Dam and Lake Mills. What was once a reservoir is now a flowing river, with multiple channels. Alder trees, which Elofson calls nature’s Band-Aids, have repopulated the former lake bed.

Snake River

Although proposals to breach the four lower Snake River dams hinge almost entirely on reducing the direct and indirect mortality juvenile fish suffer during their downstream migration, McMillan sees an important secondary benefit. He believes breaching will restore the lower Snake River floodplain and create critical resting and rearing habitat for the fish.

Just like the scenario that played out on the Elwha, McMillan thinks a free-flowing lower Snake River will emerge with increased complexity. What is now a flat, canal-like body of water would evolve into a river with islands, side channels, riffles, pools and rapids. He said gravel bars connected to groundwater will create cold-water oases.

“What this should do is provide basically a pit stop, like a resting stop for these fish to park and have some food, experience a little bit cooler water if that is what they need, and then resume their migration downstream.”

Mel Elofson is a believer in the power of rivers and their salmon and steelhead to rebound if given the chance.

“It proves it works. It proves salmon can return and be resilient. They were totally resilient, just surviving that long, that many decades without being able to use their habitat.”

His brother Robert also believes in the commitment of Native Americans and their allies to affect long-term change.

“We weren’t going anywhere. We aren’t going anywhere, and neither are the Nez Perce for that matter.”

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker. A grant from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources helped defray some of the travel expenses associated with this series.

Salmon in Oregon’s John Day River encounter adverse conditions caused by both nature and man; but they don’t have to traverse as many dams, and that seems to be a crucial benefit

By Eric Barker
Dec 19, 2021

JOHN DAY, Ore. — Ian Tattam pushes the tip of a walking stick into a likely spring chinook salmon redd.

“It’s loose,” he says of the mound of gravel in the upper reaches of the Middle Fork of the John Day River.

That squishiness is a sign of recent spawning activity. In September, an adult female chinook used her body to excavate a depression for her eggs and then carefully piled gravel over them. The eggs will mature into juvenile fish sometime between March and May.

“The strategy they have evolved is to spawn in the fall so the fry emerge first thing in the spring and maximize the productivity benefit in spring when growth conditions are good,” said Tattam, a fisheries biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife at La Grande.

But that strategy comes with risk. Adult fish that return to the river in the spring when water is high and cold must survive over the summer when they are vulnerable to low flows and high temperatures. The emerging fry will face the same perils and others, like an abundant predator population, during the year or more they spend in freshwater. Intense heat waves like the one that struck in June can take their toll on both adult and juvenile fish.

It’s an evolutionary gamble made by spring chinook throughout the Columbia Basin and Pacific Northwest — one that will become more risky with climate change.

A good and bad example

The John Day starts in the Elkhorn, Strawberry and Blue mountains of northeastern Oregon and flows about 300 miles west and north across a sparsely populated region to join the middle stretch of the Columbia River. Despite the relative lack of development, humans have had a significant impact on the river, which has been degraded by mining, logging, grazing and irrigation withdrawals. In many places, the river has been disconnected from its floodplain. Its lower sections are hot and low in the summer. Some stretches have been hemmed in by dredge mining and riparian alteration.

“None of the habitat would strike you as being what you would consider excellent chinook habitat,” said Jim Ruzycki, fish program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Efforts are underway to repair some of that damage. The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation have conducted extensive habitat improvement work on the river’s Middle Fork, some of it on the same ground covered by Tattam and his crew during spawning surveys in September.

But its lack of high-quality habitat makes the relative success of wild spring chinook in the John Day River remarkable.

“It’s kind of counterintuitive. You wouldn’t expect that John Day fish would return at a rate three to five times higher than Snake River fish, but they do,” said Adam Storch, a scientist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Storch is one of several scientists who has worked on a long-running study comparing salmon and steelhead returns in the John Day and Snake rivers. The work shows John Day fish, despite the degraded habitat, routinely outperform fish from the Snake River Basin in one key survival metric — smolt-to-adult ratio. The metric tracks the percentage of juvenile salmon and steelhead that survive their migration through freshwater to the ocean and ultimately return as adults. The survival disparity between the two tributaries of the Columbia River is one of the key arguments made by scientists and fish advocates for breaching the four lower Snake River dams.

Fisheries scientists and policymakers say for a run to be stable, it needs to achieve a smolt-to-adult return rate of at least 2 percent. A rate of 4 percent is necessary for a run to grow.

The long-term rate for wild Snake River spring chinook, as measured at Lower Granite Dam, is less than 1 percent, and for wild steelhead, it’s about 1.7 percent. On the John Day River, the rate is more than 4 percent for chinook and above 5 percent for steelhead. The John Day River doesn’t have any hatcheries, so all of the fish, with the exception of strays, are wild.

It’s the kind of survival fisheries managers on the Snake River, with its abundance of high-quality habitat in the mountains of central Idaho and northwestern Oregon, dream of.

What explains the disparity in smolt-to-adult survival? Why would the river with habitat that is in much poorer condition and more vulnerable to climate change be home to fish runs that are doing better?

The scientists conducting the study say dams are the most likely explanation. The John Day River is free-flowing. Fish that return there must negotiate just three dams on the Columbia River — Bonneville, The Dalles and John Day. Fish that return to the Snake River must pass eight dams — four on the Columbia and four on the lower Snake. Dams slow the speed of the river and lengthen the time it takes for juvenile fish to reach the ocean. That makes them more vulnerable to predators and getting lost in slackwater reservoirs.

The fish are also exposed to stress and injury when passing the dams. Studies show the fewer times smolts pass through hydroelectric turbines at the dams or the system of screens and pipes designed to protect them from that fate, the better they survive to return as adults.

“You start running out of culprits,” said Art Martin, a fisheries scientist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “The fact that those Snake River fish have to traverse more dams as juveniles and adults is a likely factor in this increased mortality in the Snake River fish compared to the John Day fish.”

Breaching the four dams has long been discussed as a way to save Snake River salmon and steelhead. The effort to do so gained momentum this year when U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, unveiled his $33.5 billion concept that would remove the earthen portions of the dams and compensate affected communities and industries. Now Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., are also looking at breaching and how services provided by the dams might be replaced. At the same time, the Biden administration is negotiating with the Nez Perce Tribe, Oregon and environmental groups in an attempt to settle decades of litigation over the dams. All three entities support breaching, something the federal government has long resisted.

Tattam says the poor-quality habitat on the John Day has an impact on juvenile fish survival. But so do the dams. Having just three dams to contend with, instead of eight, makes a difference.

“John Day fish are behind in freshwater. They are not producing as many smolts per spawner in freshwater as even just the neighboring Imnaha and Grande Ronde populations,” he said. “But they make up for it, or even surpass the other populations in the Columbia River and later in the ocean.”

Others note that chinook in the John Day and Salmon River had comparable survival rates decades ago. But they diverged after hydrosystem development between Lewiston and the Tri-Cities.

“If you want to do something for anadromous fish in the entire Columbia Basin, you’ve got to do something for the Snake River Basin”- David Johnson, director of the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management

“Whatever side of the argument you fall on, something happened around 1975 when the Snake River dams were finished,” Storch said.

Salmon bread basket

If you want to find good spring chinook habitat, just look at a relief map of central Idaho, says David Johnson, director of the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management. It’s wrinkled with mountain valleys above 5,000 feet in elevation and peaks that reach even higher. Spawning streams, fed by spring and summer snowmelt, stay cool even in July and August.

Many are in wilderness areas owned and managed by the federal government. Those not protected as wilderness are mostly surrounded by public land where development is limited.

“The Snake River Basin makes up the lion’s share of the remaining habitat (in the Columbia Basin) for anadromous salmonids, and actually it’s always been that way,” Johnson said. “The Snake River Basin really has been the bread basket for salmon in the Columbia River Basin.”

It once produced an estimated 2 million spring and summer chinook annually, 50 percent or more of the entire Columbia Basin population.

“The vast amount of remaining habitat in the Snake is the exact type of habitat they need. It’s mountain streams,” he said.

Johnson and other fisheries scientists contend removing the earthen portions of the four lower Snake River dams will reduce dam-related mortality, allowing the fish to achieve smolt-to-adult rates in the 2 to 6 percent range and take fuller advantage of their high-quality habitat.

“If you want to do something for anadromous fish in the entire Columbia Basin, you’ve got to do something for the Snake River Basin,” Johnson said.

Change is coming

Much of that habitat sits at elevations that scientists expect to remain viable even as temperatures rise because of climate change. That is critical, said Jay Hesse, director of biological services for the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management. As the climate warms, areas below 5,000 feet are likely to see more rain than snow during the winter. They will accumulate less snowpack, resulting in a much shorter duration of high spring flows that both adults and juveniles depend on. Streams will run lower and warmer in the summertime and surviving during the hottest days will be more difficult.

“The prediction is that snowpack-driven systems will not be existing under 5,000 feet or even higher,” Hesse said.

“That is why we see the Snake Basin as being so important to hanging on to these fish,” he said.

He points to places like the South Fork of the Salmon River and its tributaries like the Secesh River, Johnson Creek and the East Fork of the South Fork River.

“Those fish spawn at 6,000 feet in elevation and the mountains go up from there and that is where the snowpack is predicted to remain in the future. Those fish will still be spawning and rearing in habitats that are driven by winter snow and spring snowmelt.”

But despite the high quality of habitat, wild Snake River spring chinook and steelhead are struggling. They have been under the protection of the Endangered Species Act for about 30 years. According to an assessment by the Nez Perce Tribe, 42 percent of wild Snake River spring chinook and 19 percent of wild steelhead have seen 50 or fewer spawning adults return to their spawning grounds for at least four consecutive years, putting them at risk for extinction.

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Back on the John Day’s Middle Fork, Tattam records the redd and marks it by tying a piece of pink flagging to a nearby bush to ensure the nest isn’t double-counted in follow-up spawning surveys. At the end of the day, he and his team have counted only a handful of redds, far below the long-term average. Counts are down on the river’s North Fork as well. Like a lot of places in the Pacific Northwest, it’s a tough year for wild spring chinook salmon.

The river is showing vulnerability of its habitat. Tattam says the low numbers could be tied to the June heat wave but also noted this year’s adults are descendants of adults that returned and spawned in 2013 when another hot summer took a heavy toll on adult fish. Low numbers tend to beget low numbers.

“It would be common in big abundance years to walk up to some of these tail outs and see two or three females digging and four to eight males lined up by size jousting for position,” he said. “But right now I’m pretty happy to have seen two redds thus far. This could have been a really bad year, especially with the heat dome, but they somehow seemed to have survived it.”

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker. A grant from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources helped defray some of the travel expenses associated with this series.

Gathering of young people advocating for the fish planned for Saturday; event will include students from the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley and tribal members from elsewhere in Northwest

By Eric Barker Of the Tribune 
Sep 23, 2022

Young people from Lewiston and throughout the Pacific Northwest will gather at Hells Gate State Park on Saturday to advocate for salmon and the removal of the four dams that made the community a seaport.

The debate over the best way to save wild salmon and steelhead that spawn in the Snake River and its high-elevation tributaries, and whether the lower Snake River should be restored to its free-flowing state for their benefit, is more than three decades old now. It was raging before many of the participants in Saturday’s event were born.

Growing up immersed in the debate, they have staked a position. Some of them were born into it, like members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation’s Youth Leadership Council. They have been circulating a dam-breaching petition for nearly two years and have gathered just shy of 23,000 signatures. They plan to submit it to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. The petition drive was recently boosted when the rock band Pearl Jam highlighted the effort on social media. The kids have also reached out to the president in a separate letter.

“America made a deal and promised that we would be able to fish forever. We can’t fish if there aren’t any salmon left,” they said in the message sent to Biden.

Scout Alford started the Lewiston chapter of The Youth Salmon Protectors, a group under the umbrella of the Idaho Conservation League with chapters throughout the Northwest that advocate for wild fish recovery. The 16-year-old junior at Lewiston High School said she is passionate about the outdoors and has a desire to protect the planet. Why not, she said, work on an issue that is so central to her community?

“I’ve lived at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers for almost all of my life,” said Alford, who is the daughter of Nathan Alford, editor and publisher of the Tribune, and Joanna Alford, digital marketing strategist for the Tribune. “Salmon have always been something that has been prominent in my life. What better way to contribute to protecting the environment than protecting something that has been so close to me?”

Alford also wants to advocate for her neighbors — tribes like the Nez Perce, with treaty rights to fish for salmon and steelhead.

As much as adults argue over the fish, Alford said she hasn’t received negative feedback from fellow students.

“People around my age don’t really say anything about it. I think people just don’t realize it’s an issue.”

Tanya Riordan of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition based out of Spokane said young people bring vitality and urgency to environmental issues that often proves influential.

“I think young people have an advantage in that they really speak from the heart in a less filtered way than we do as adults on a lot of these issues,” she said. “Because of that, they change hearts and minds in their communities, in their peer groups and of policymakers, very effectively.”

Saturday’s event that will feature both youth and adult, Native and non-Native speakers, is aimed at elevating the issue. Shannon Wheeler, vice chairperson of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, is slated to speak. Other speakers included members of the Umatilla Tribes’ youth leadership council, Alford and Nez Perce elders.

The celebration starts at 10 a.m. with time reserved for young people from various locations and cultures in the Northwest to meet and network with each other. The formal celebration kicks off at 11 a.m. with a series of speakers and will be followed by a served lunch at about 12:30 p.m. A salmon ceremony on the river with canoes will happen after lunch and there will be a community mural project.

The celebration will happen in the midst of the fall chinook fishing season and the front end of the steelhead fishing season. Returns of spring and summer chinook, sockeye and fall chinook are higher this year than they have been during the previous five-year period that was marked by poor ocean conditions and alarming low runs. But the returns, dominated by hatchery fish, remain protected under the Endangered Species Act and well short of recovery goals.

Alford said the group hopes the celebration will help raise awareness among her peers and others in the community.

“It’s just to make a call to action and make our presence be known and that we as Idahoans, tribal youth and youth in general don’t want salmon to go extinct,” she said.

https://lmtribune.com/outdoors/speaking-up-for-salmon/article_33a606f0-213b-5257-8b15-38fb2a3e462d.html

An article published today in the Lewiston Morning Tribune provides a glimpse into the "future" that is here now. The Clearwater River, a tributary of the Snake that originates in Idaho hit 76 degrees on July 2. Different sections of the lower Snake reached 71 and 72 degrees. This is bad news for salmon, steelhead, and the rest of us who rely on and value healthy rivers and the benefits they provide.

The Columbia and Snake Rivers have been gradually, steadily warming over at least the last half century. Water temperatures above 70 degrees begin to stress and harm - and can eventually kill - salmon and steelhead. In recent years, river temperatures in August and September have routinely exceeded 70 degrees in the lower Snake River - harming salmon and violating state and federal water quality standards.

"Hopefully it [high record heat] will be short-lived," says the Army Corps' Steve Hall.  

"This [using cool Dworshak water to temper heat in the lower Snake] is not sustainable," says NOAA's Paul Wagner.  

In this article's context, both are talking about now - this summer in 2013.  But climate change means the high heat will NOT be short-lived whatever happens the rest of this summer, and it also means Wagner is correct not just for summer 2013 but for the next 5, 10 and 25 summers, with spring and fall river heat growing too.

Along with other circumstances such as diminishing federal resources and rapidly aging infrastructure, climate is an inescapable challenge to the Columbia/Snake Rivers and its communities and natural resources. Of course we need to dramatically reduce the delivery of carbon into our atmosphere. And we also need to adapt and adjust to its consequences in the near-term. We'll need to work together as a region, together and in collaboration, if we hope to preserve and protect both our ecology and economy, and a way of life we treasure in the Northwest and beyond.

LMT: Dworshak to give up its cool bounty

Soaring temperatures move managers to release chilled water from dam early to help migrating fish

July 3, 2013

By Eric Barker

Salmon and water managers from the Pacific Northwest are hopeful a strong pulse of 43-degree water from Dworshak Reservoir will help cool a quickly warming lower Snake River.

Every summer, about 2 million acre-feet of frigid water from the depths of the reservoir is released to help keep the Snake hospitable to migrating juvenile fall chinook and returning adult steelhead, some of which are protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Most years, the cooling flows don't begin until after the Fourth of July weekend. But this week's heat wave, which is sending air temperatures past the century mark across much of the region, is elevating water temperatures and prompted an earlier-than-normal call for relief.

For example, the Clearwater River at Orofino above the mouth of the North Fork reached 76 degrees Tuesday. The Snake River south of Asotin hit 71 degrees and the lower Salmon River near White Bird was 72 degrees. Below Lower Granite Dam, which is 35 miles west of the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, the water was 65 degrees Tuesday.

Temperatures in the low 70s are considered unsafe for salmon and steelhead.

"We have seen this kind of scenario back in the late (19)90s but since about 2000 we haven't seen anything quite as severe as we are seeing right now," said Steve Hall, reservoir manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Walla Walla. "Hopefully it will be short-lived."

The agency began increasing the outflow from Dworshak Dam on Sunday and by Tuesday flows had hit 13,000 cubic feet per second, more than double the volume of just a few days earlier. The water that is drawn from more than 100 feet below the surface exits the dam at 43 degrees.

Hall said it will take about four days for the cool flows to reach the downriver side of Lower Granite Dam, where the federal government's salmon and steelhead protection protocols call for a maximum temperature of 68 degrees. But it has already cooled temperatures near Spalding. On Sunday, before the increased flows from the reservoir, the water rose to 64.5 degrees there. On Tuesday, it was 59 degrees.

Paul Wagner of the National Marine Fisheries Service at Portland said the state, tribal and federal officials try to time the flows to prevent overheating at Lower Granite. "Once you get behind, you are too late," he said.

But he also noted the water will be exhausted ahead of schedule at the current volume. "This is not sustainable," he said. "We can't keep it at this rate or we are going to run out too quickly."

According to the provisions in the federal government's plan that outlines how Snake and Columbia River dams will be operated to lessen effects on protected fish, the elevation of Dworshak Reservoir should reach 1,535, or 65 feet below full pool, by the end of August and 80 feet below full pool by the end of September.

This week's early start will mean the reservoir won't brim over for holiday campers later this week. On Tuesday, the reservoir was 2 feet below full pool after being full Saturday. The corps estimates the reservoir will be 5 feet below full pool Thursday and 8 feet below by Monday. The receding water can make it difficult to access some of the remote campsites on the shoreline of the 55-mile-long reservoir and is unpopular with many campers and boaters there.
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