Time is running out for salmon as the Snake River dam removal debate enters a new phase

Removing dams on the Lower Snake River in eastern Washington would give a big boost to salmon recovery efforts, and it would cost a lot of money. Those are two key findings from a newly released draft report commissioned by Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray. Seattle Times Environment Reporter Lynda Mapes has been covering this story. She shared details with KUOW’s Kim Malcolm.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: This report looked into possibly breaching four major hydroelectric dams on the Lower Snake River. Remind us why these dams are getting so much attention.

Lynda Mapes: These dams are in southeastern Washington, they are operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, and they're owned by the people of the United States. If these dams were to be taken down for salmon recovery, it would be the largest dam removal ever in the world and the first-ever takedown of federally owned dams. So the scale of what's being talked about here can't be overstated, either as to the cost, or the stakes; the stakes for salmon, the stakes for electricity ratepayers, the stakes for the climate. These are, after all, zero-carbon producing energy generators. They're powered literally by water. So there's a lot on the table here with this draft report.

One of the driving forces about why we're talking about this is salmon recovery. What does this report say about that, and what it could mean?

These dams are very valuable to the region in generating very low-cost power without carbon. They also provide transportation all the way to Lewiston, Idaho, from the sea. That is helpful to farmers who are moving products. But this has come at a cost to salmon, and the report is very clear about how dire that cost is. The natural runs of salmon in the Columbia River today are reduced by 90% from their historic highs. That's a desperate situation. There are many runs of fish today, 12 in all, that are listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Not a single one of those runs has been recovered, despite spending $24 billion to try to recover them.

Today, you have runs of salmon going back to the Snake Basin with fewer than 50 fish, adult spawners, coming back. That's a quasi-extinction threshold. And don't forget, these are treaty fishing right protected fish in the sense that, under the Endangered Species Act, and under the treaty, the U.S. government is under an obligation that those fish not only survive but be present in the river at fishable levels.

This report was also looking at the cost of what it would take to remove the hydropower dams. How much money are we talking about?

It's from $10 billion to $30 billion approximately. That's a pretty big range. It has to do with a lot of different factors, including the cost of replacing the power that would be lost if these dams were to come down. They generate about enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle. The report emphasizes the importance of replacing all the benefits of these dams, especially power, before anything would be taken down.

This is not a light switch. This is a long-term process. But people who want to see dam removal happen are very clear that we are working against an extinction clock, and there's very little time left. This is just such a radical change from the abundance of the past. The Snake Basin used to generate 50% of the spring-summer Chinook in the entire Columbia Basin. It’s an absolutely crucial fish for people and also for wildlife.

Talking about power, how would hydroelectric power be replaced if those dams were to be removed?

One of the things that's very true about this debate today is there are more options than ever to replace the power. That doesn't mean that it doesn't cost money, but there are more options today than there have ever been, whether solar, or wind, or even distributed battery power. The Nez Perce Tribe is working hard at creating enough power with distributed batteries powered by the sun to replace the entire energy output of these dams.

Now, I will also tell you that one of the things these dams do is — because they are dispatchable power, available at the flick of a switch anytime 24-7 — they help balance all those renewable sources that are on the grid today. The sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow, and this easily dispatchable hydropower from the Lower Snake River dams is one of the things that's kept our grid reliable, and flexible, and helped make these alternative sources so usable and so important. Critics who don't want to see dam removal happen warn that, if you take these dams out, it's going to be even harder to have a reliable dispatchable grid.

There are alternatives. You wouldn't have to replace kilowatt for kilowatt with a non-carbon source. You might in the short term, for instance, turn to natural gas power. That is a fossil fuel. And so no one should think there aren't going to be trade-offs, or that this is going to be easy.

And how are people reacting to the report so far?

Well, it's very interesting. People who want to see dam removal happen, and that includes the tribes from all over the Northwest as well as conservation groups and fishing groups, are ecstatic. They feel like this is the first fair report that's ever come out on this topic.

Irrigators, barge operators, and power producers think the report is deeply flawed, lacking in detail, and doesn't show a grasp of even how the system works. They feel the arguments they made to the consultants who produced this report were not heard and were not included. When that happens, it tells me that this fight is far from over, and this report is going to get a very thorough going over before we get a final.

What kind of influence do you think this report could have on this issue of removing dams from the Lower Snake River?

I think it's possibly very important. This comes at a very particular moment in this very long-running, multi-decadal argument over how to run the Columbia and Snake River dams while meeting the Endangered Species Act and treaty rights. This has been a fight for decades in the courts. At this point, everyone involved in that fight has stood down from the lawsuit and said, look, what we need here is not a court order and not another report from federal agencies. What we need is actually a political process. We need the community to come together and come up with a solution that people can at least live with in the region.

Now, look, the timeframe is very short. The midterms are coming. There's a real effort to try to get anything that happens happening soon for two reasons. Number one, there is always the possibility of a complete turnover politically in Congress. And number two, the fish really are in a very dire way. Especially the Snake River runs are greatly depleted at this point, and there really isn't time for another decade's long process. It's now or never.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.