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Environmental Groups Oppose Simpson's Dam Removal Plan by Matthew Weaver Capital Press, March 17, 2021

"Cynically, Rep. Simpson's proposal continues the false narrative that
environmental safeguards are to blame for declining wild salmon populations,"

It's rare that farmers and environmental groups agree.

But both agricultural stakeholders and environmental organizations say Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson's proposed $33.5 billion salmon recovery deal is a no-go.

A group of 17 environmental organizations say Simpson's plan would speed up salmon extension and harm human health, calling it "untenable."

The group, including the Center for Biological Diversity and Spokane Riverkeeper, sent a letter March 16 to Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, all Democrats, opposing Simpson's plan.

A representative for the Center for Biological Diversity has not returned calls seeking further comment.

Agricultural stakeholders and power companies also oppose Simpson's plan.

Simpson, a Republican, has not introduced legislation, but in February unveiled a plan for salmon recovery that includes removing the Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor dams on the lower Snake River in 2030 and 2031.

His proposal includes a 35-year extension of the license of all remaining dams in the Columbia River Basin greater than 5 megawatts and a 35-year moratorium on litigation related to anadromous fish under the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Water Act.

"Each of our organizations strongly supports the removal of the four Lower Snake River dams to help restore the region's culturally significant wild salmon and steelhead, and we fully support aiding every community impacted by the removal of the dams," the letter states.

"However, this goal cannot be achieved by suspending the protections of our bedrock environmental laws for a generation or more, along with an unprecedented attack on environmental justice for millions of people that live across the Columbia River basin," the letter continues. "The proposed suspension of core environmental laws is the most sweeping we have ever encountered and is unacceptable."

The groups claim in their letter that breaching the dams could save four of the most endangered salmonid species from extinction. But Simpson's proposal demands "the most extensive rollback of environmental safeguards in the modern environmental era."

"Rep. Simpson is asking millions of the region's residents to sacrifice their clean water protections and is risking the future of many other endangered, threatened, or sensitive species in the Northwest as the price for removing these four dams," the letter states. "Moreover, this deal would set a terrible and dangerous precedent for the rest of the nation, creating a model wherein environmental progress can only occur by sacrificing human health and environmental protections elsewhere."

"Cynically, Rep. Simpson's proposal continues the false narrative that environmental safeguards are to blame for declining wild salmon populations," the letter states. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

"While we support providing funds and resources to help the communities that would be impacted by the removal of the Snake River dams, Rep. Simpson proposes to spend $34 billion with virtually no accountability on how those funds would be spent," the letter states.

The groups say that under Simpson's proposal, most funding would go towards "special interests and large agribusiness," claiming that funding would go towards "large factory farm agribusinesses to further subsidize operations that already cause massive water and air pollution and other environmental ills" and a "vague list of other infrastructure projects including unproven hydrogen storage and small modular nuclear reactors that have little to do with the Snake River dams." The letter argues that "Rep. Simpson would be the sole arbiter who picks winners and losers for decades to come."

"The entire purpose of breaching the Snake River dams is to rescue populations of wild fish," the groups write to the legislators. "But, perversely, Rep. Simpson's proposal would jeopardize those very same fish by removing their legal protection from other major sources of harm."

The groups "applaud any effort to get the ball rolling on dam removal and welcome a robust conversation on how to make that happen in the near term," the letter states.

Simpson told the Capital Press his concept is designed to improve water quality and quantity of all watersheds in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Montana. He wants producers and stakeholders who voluntarily participate in watershed partnerships to be able to work proactively without the threat of litigation from tribes, conservationists and states, he said.

"I believe conservationists giving up lawsuits for 25 years against agriculture is a fair trade if it means saving Idaho's endangered wild salmon and steelhead from certain extinction," Simpson said. "It seems conservation groups who call my concept a 'non-starter' and 'dead wrong' are more concerned about ending litigation against Northwest dams and agriculture than actually helping the fish and improving the watershed."

Kristin Meira, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, which advocates for maintaining the dams, said agriculture agrees with the environmental groups that salmon recovery needs to be addressed through existing federal laws, regulations, policies and processes that protect and balance both environmental and human interests.

"We do not agree that breaching the Lower Snake River dams is the silver bullet that will address the complexities of recovering our region's wild salmon and steelhead," Meira said.

NOAA Fisheries, in partnership with tribal and state governments and a variety of economic and environmental interests, has already established agreed-upon goals for recovery of the region's salmon and steelhead, with "comprehensive" science-based plans for achieving those goals, Meira said.

"We look forward to working together as a region to accomplish this challenging but achievable work," she said.

Related Pages:
Columbia System Operations Feds respond to comments from bluefish, and bluefish responds back -- Worthwhile and sometimes funny, often sad.

The Honorable Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Jeff Merkley
531 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Patty Murray
154 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Maria Cantwell
511 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

March 16, 2021

Dear Senators Wyden, Merkley, Murray, and Cantwell:

On behalf of our organizations and our millions of members and supporters, we write to express our profound concerns with Rep. Simpson's "energy and salmon concept" and to oppose his proposal in its current form. Each of our organizations strongly supports the removal of the four Lower Snake River dams to help restore the region's culturally significant wild salmon and steelhead, and we fully support aiding every community impacted by the removal of the dams. However, this goal cannot be achieved by suspending the protections of our bedrock environmental laws for a generation or more, along with an unprecedented attack on environmental justice for millions of people that live across the Columbia River basin. The proposed suspension of core environmental laws is the most sweeping we have ever encountered and is unacceptable.

Breaching these Snake River dams may well save four of the most endangered salmonid species from extinction. But in exchange, Rep. Simpson's proposal demands the most extensive rollback of environmental safeguards in the modern environmental era -- a 25-year exemption for what would likely end up being most or all of the basin's agriculture from every aspect of the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, as well as a 35-year exemption from all environmental laws for every other significant dam in the Columbia Basin. In other words, Rep. Simpson is asking millions of the region's residents to sacrifice their clean water protections and is risking the future of many other endangered, threatened, or sensitive species in the Northwest as the price for removing these four dams. Moreover, this deal would set a terrible and dangerous precedent for the rest of the nation, creating a model wherein environmental progress can only occur by sacrificing human health and environmental protections elsewhere.

Cynically, Rep. Simpson's proposal continues the false narrative that environmental safeguards are to blame for declining wild salmon populations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost all of the Columbia Basin dams were constructed prior to the existence of our key environmental laws, and the dams are a primary cause of declining wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest. The safeguards provided by the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Environmental Policy Act -- and, yes, the litigation brought by Tribes, States, and environmental organizations based on those laws -- are the reason that the Snake River wild salmonids are not already extinct. Those very laws are what brought the question of breaching these dams to this point. The strength of the Endangered Species Act is the reason our salmon and the endangered Puget Sound orcas that depend upon them still have a chance to recover, and the strength of the Clean Water Act provides tools to improve the Northwest's water quality to the benefit of species and human health. Efforts to protect water quality, wetlands, farmworkers from pesticides, and communities most impacted by pollution would all be jeopardized by suspending these laws for a generation.

The proposal's basic antagonism to fundamental environmental regulatory programs also fails to recognize that strong regulatory programs incentivize voluntary actions and self-policing by agriculture and others that can contribute to improved water quality and human and species health across the Columbia Basin.

While we support providing funds and resources to help the communities that would be impacted by the removal of the Snake River dams, Rep. Simpson proposes to spend $34 billion with virtually no accountability on how those funds would be spent. And the geographic scope of this spending proposal goes well beyond the scope of communities impacted by the breaching of the four dams. Under his proposal, most funding would go towards special interests and large agribusiness, rather than ensuring that ordinary people are put first with good-paying, reliable jobs. Funding would go towards large factory farm agribusinesses to further subsidize operations that already cause massive water and air pollution and other environmental ills including climate impacts, and a vague list of other infrastructure projects including unproven hydrogen storage and small modular nuclear reactors that have little to do with the Snake River dams. Rather than providing funds to all reasonably impacted communities and concurrently ensuring those public funds are used for public purposes -- such as protecting wild salmon and steelhead from increasingly warm and polluted habitat -- Rep. Simpson would be the sole arbiter who picks winners and losers for decades to come.

Not only does Rep. Simpson's proposal fail to address the current and future impacts of climate change to salmon, it actually would stall efforts to address rising water temperatures in the mainstem of the Columbia River. Every salmon and steelhead migrating through the Columbia faces an existential threat from warming river temperatures, especially in dam-created reservoirs. But by exempting over 80 dams from virtually all environmental laws, it will be impossible to address lethal water temperatures in the mainstem Columbia, such as the John Day pool where most of the 2015 sockeye salmon bound for Idaho perished. Rep. Simpson's proposal does not even mention the critical need to protect and restore cold-water refuges for salmon migrating through the Columbia mainstem.

Finally, Rep. Simpson's proposal dramatically shifts power and management of the Columbia Basin, including the waters of the basin states, in part through proposed new "watershed partnerships" controlled by State Departments of Agriculture and corporate agricultural interests. This undermines existing federalism principles and partnerships between states and the federal government and interferes with existing state agency jurisdiction to manage and allocate water and keep it clean. The proposal would radically depart from well over a century of state jurisdiction over water allocation and management by moving control over waters related to the partnerships to the State Departments of Agriculture. The proposal would also upend other State agency programs designed to protect imperiled species and effectively suspend water quality and other conditions of use in water rights issued by the basin States. Rep. Simpson's proposal also undermines the sovereignty of Tribal nations regarding decisions that affect virtually every aspect of salmon management and environmental protection. Allowing the agricultural sector to operate with impunity -- choosing if and when it will protect water quality, wetlands, or salmon -- is a simple recipe for environmental catastrophe.

Breaching the four Snake River dams cannot come at the price of more polluted water across the Columbia River basin, fewer wild salmon and steelhead in every other watershed of the basin, a continued assault by the mainstem and tributary dams on most Columbia Basin wild salmon and steelhead, degraded and destroyed wetlands, diminished wildlife that depend upon aquatic habitat and agricultural lands, and profound environmental injustice. We should not turn our back on science-based solutions, the rule of law, Tribal sovereignty, and environmental justice based on a moment of political expediency. Rep. Simpson's proposal is untenable and will accelerate the extinction of wild salmon and steelhead and other species in the Columbia Basin and irreparably harm human health.

In closing, we ask you to look beyond the initial appeal of Rep. Simpson's proposal to see its profound implications for water quality, fish and wildlife, federalism, and people. The entire purpose of breaching the Snake River dams is to rescue populations of wild fish. But, perversely, Rep. Simpson's proposal would jeopardize those very same fish by removing their legal protection from other major sources of harm. And, also perversely, it would remove legal protections from all other wild salmon and steelhead, along with numerous other species and human health, across the vast Columbia River basin.

To be clear, the undersigned support removal of the four lower Snake River Dams. We applaud any effort to get the ball rolling on dam removal and welcome a robust conversation on how to make that happen in the near term. We stand ready to negotiate and support a path forward for both dam removal and mitigation of the realistic and reasonably related impacts of removal of these four dams. But the current proposal sacrifices too much, fails to address major limiting factors in the survival of wild salmon, steelhead, and other species in the Columbia Basin, and would lock in a failed status quo or worse for much of the rest of the basin, while providing a financial and regulatory windfall for some of the very forces that are responsible, in large part, for the plight of these species and many of the most serious environmental justice issues in the basin.

Signed,

Brett Hartl
Government Affairs Director
Center for Biological Diversity

Nina Bell
Executive Director
Northwest Environmental Advocates

John DeVoe
Executive Director WaterWatch of Oregon

Travis Williams
Executive Director
Willamette Riverkeeper

Mark Sherwood
Executive Director
Native Fish Society

Greg McMillan
President
Deschutes River Alliance

Sarah Cloud
Executive Director
Deschutes River Alliance

Bethany Cotton
Conservation Director
Cascadia Wildlands

Paula Hood
Co-Director
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project

Pete Soverel and David Moskowitz
President and Executive Director
The Conservation Angler

Jerry White, Jr.
Executive Director
Spokane Riverkeeper

Kurt Beardslee
Executive Director
Wild Fish Conservancy

Tarah Heinzen
Legal Director
Food & Water Watch

Sean Stevens
Executive Director
Oregon Wild ss@oregonwild.org

Amy van Saun
Senior Attorney
Center for Food Safety

Marlies Wierenga
Pacific Northwest Conservation Manager
WildEarth Guardians

Marcie Keever
Oceans & Vessels Program Director
Friends of the Earth

Tim Judson
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service