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Column on Snake River Dams Was Wrong by Marjorie Millner The Daily News, July 7, 2025

This response is in regard to the column "Trump preserved the Snake River dams. It will benefit the Northwest," published on tdn.com on June 27.

President Trump's abandonment of the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement was a short-sighted error that harms the Pacific Northwest.

The agreement offered the best chance for all stakeholders to work collaboratively to replace services of the dams and settle a decades-long lawsuit. With the agreement scuttled, the court battle will resume.

One claim of the column is that hydropower is "clean." It is not.

The slack water behind the dams emits methane, which is 80 times more harmful in fueling climate change than carbon dioxide.

But "clean" should also mean "does not directly exterminate wildlife and destroy ecosystems." Fossil fuels mainly cause indirect danger to ecosystems, by pumping out greenhouse gases and pollutants that poison air and water.

Hydropower dams cut out the middleman and destroy wildlife and forest ecosystems directly, as a daily, inherent function. Despite $26 billion in mitigation efforts, almost all wild salmon runs are nearly extinct, and the high-altitude Idaho forests where they used to spawn by the millions are now ailing from the lack of nutrients historically provided by salmon.

The services of the dams (a total of 4% of the northwest power grid; irrigation water; transportation for grain) are all replaceable. The river is not. The latest scientific studies acknowledge that breaching the dams is a critical step, needed immediately, for recovery of the Snake River fish and ecosystem. No abandonment of an agreement changes that.

Related Pages:
Dam Accounting: Taking Stock of Methane Emissions from Reservoirs by Tara Lohan, The Revelator, 5/25/22

Related Sites:
Evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from hydropower complexes on large rivers in Eastern Washington US Department of Energy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. (2013)
Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks Environmental Protection Agency, 4/15/22