Washington Policy Center: We should invest in the lower Snake River Dams – not tear them down

By Eleanor Baumgartner

For decades, environmentalists have sought to destroy the four Lower Snake River dams.

The Biden administration’s recent settlement agreement, secretly negotiated with the states of Washington and Oregon and four Northwest tribes in December , was clearly intended to pave the way for the dams’ removal.

Alongside $1 billion for fish restoration efforts, the White House pledged to support alternative energy generation and to study ways to replace the dams’ benefits – transportation, irrigation and recreation.

Only Congress can authorize breaching of the dams, but there is deep concern over what amounted to a roadmap for the dams’ destruction.

We all want Northwest rivers teeming with salmon, the iconic fish so important to tribal nations. However, not only would dam breaching likely make little difference, but the costs would be tremendous.

Approximately 10% of all U.S. wheat exports travel by barge down the lower Snake River. Commodities including fertilizer are moved upstream. Shifting that transportation to road and rail would result in substantial cost increases for agricultural producers who are already on narrow margins, while dramatically increasing pollution and congestion. That’s if it is even a possibility: existing rail services have been cutting capacity and are increasingly unreliable.

Then, of course, there is the dams’ low cost, zero-carbon energy that powers our homes and our economy.

Our utility costs are already increasing. In January, Avista Utilities requested significant rate increases – 20% for Washington residential electricity customers and 8.8% for gas over two years starting this December. Avista’s CEO Dennis Vermillion emphasized the importance of hydropower in keeping costs down.

The lower Snake River dams generate an average of 1,000 megawatts of reliable and clean electricity, enough to power 800,000 homes.

The dams have the capability to produce three times that power during times of high demand, and they can store energy more effectively than any current technology – acting like giant clean energy batteries to store energy for several days when it’s needed.

New fixed blade turbines installed over recent years, notably at Ice Harbor Lock and Dam, not only boosted the energy production by a few per cent, but they are safer for the salmon. As Kurt Miller, executive director of the Northwest Public Power Association, points out, the energy production of the dams is constrained by the need to spill water to help migrating salmon – but as technology improves there is less need for spill and real potential for greater production of the clean energy that helps power our region.

Salmon recovery is vitally important, but a science-based approach is essential when so much is at stake.

Washington Policy Center’s environmental director Todd Myers has written extensively about salmon recovery efforts. In his June testimony to the House subcommittee of Water, Wildlife and Fisheries, Myers noted: “A focus on dam destruction as the key to increasing fish populations contradicts the science and experience of salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest.”

The lower Snake River dams all meet or exceed the federal and state standards for safe fish passage. The survival rate of juvenile salmon passing each dam is estimated at more than 96%.

Salmon populations on the lower Snake River cycle with ocean conditions but have been slowly increasing over the past few years. The spring/summer chinook remains in crisis. The smolt-to-adult returns (the percentage of baby salmon that head downstream and return four years later) are lower than desired, but they are typical of West Coast rivers with or without dams.

Salmon are struggling even in Pacific Northwest rivers where there have never been dams.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has repeatedly highlighted the many factors impacting native fish populations – high water temperatures in streams, lack of quality habitat, blocked culverts, ocean conditions, and predation by birds, seals and sea lions.

More research is needed but breaching dams is not the answer.

Our region’s hydropower is more critical than ever as we move to meet targets for clean energy.

Instead of spending literally tens of billions of dollars breaching the dams, we should be directing those funds to science-based salmon recovery programs – and investing in improved technology that will boost the dams’ production of carbon-free energy.

Eleanor Baumgartner, of Spokane, is the Eastern Washington senior adviser for the Washington Policy Center. Members of the Cowles family, owners of The Spokesman-Review, have previously hosted fundraisers for the Washington Policy Center and sit on the organization’s board.