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Rally in Olympia Calls for Legislative Action to Make Lower Snake River Dam Breaching a Possibility by Elena Perry Spokesman-Review, January 13, 2023

Breaching the dams is not possible without first establishing
alternatives to the benefits the dams provide.

OLYMPIA -- Olympia residents may have noticed an unusual sight as they went about their Friday: a 24-foot, life-size inflatable orca carried by demonstrators who support breaching the lower Snake River dams.

Demonstrators hoped to catch the attention of lawmakers and raise awareness of the dwindling population of the Southern resident orca in Puget Sound, which stands at 74 as of August 2021.

The Washington Youth Ocean and River Conservation Alliance and other activist groups held the rally and called for preserving the endangered orca and their main food source, chinook salmon, also an endangered species. Activists marched from downtown Olympia up to the Capitol steps, where they were greeted by Rep. Alex Ramel, D-Bellingham.

"Oftentimes it'll feel like, as a high school student, you're not heard and you're out here in the streets, but nothing is actually happening," said 16-year-old Maanit Goel, director of WYORCA. "It's great here in Washington that some of our representatives are so receptive to the work that we're doing."

More than 100 people marched through the rain, carrying light-up signs and posters.

"It feels counterintuitive at times that removing four hydroelectric dams is the path we must take to recover Northwest salmon and orca," Goel said in his speech. "It has become evident that the energy these dams produce cannot be considered clean. How can energy at the cost of a keystone species be clean?"

While the decision to breach the dams will ultimately have to come from Congress, Washington State legislators could implement legislation to make it feasible. Breaching the dams is not possible without first establishing alternatives to the benefits the dams provide.

These benefits include hydroelectric power, irrigation, recreation and navigation by barge. Farmers rely on the low costs of transportation of their crops via barges on the Snake and Columbia River systems. Sixty percent of Washington's wheat is barged on these rivers, where it is eventually received globally, according to Michelle Hennings, executive director for the Washington Association of Wheat Growers.

"Transportation costs would go through the roof if we lost our barging system," Hennings said. "With everything else that's expensive for them to operate and to feed the world, it would be detrimental to the farmer having another cost that would increase."

In a benefit replacement report published last August, Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray explored these possible alternatives, saying mitigating the benefits of the dams is paramount in moving forward with the possibility of removal. In their recommendations following the report, Inslee and Murray underscored the need for rapid and comprehensive action.

In the 2022 session, the Legislature, as a request of Inslee, budgeted $375,000 to evaluate the alternatives to the benefits the dams provide. In 2019, Inslee allocated $750,000 to study the possible effects of dam breaching. During this session, Inslee intends to further explore energy alternatives.

The demonstrators at Friday's rally called upon the Legislature to fund more studies and pass legislation to improve Washington's infrastructure, specifically in railways and clean energy. They hope this legislation will bring Washington closer to their final goal of breaching the dams.

Inslee and Murray's report estimates dam breaching to cost $10 billion to $31 billion.

Related Pages:
Bills Push for Improving Salmon Habitat, Removing Barriers by Renee Diaz, The Leader, 1/23/23
Sammamish Youth Board Calls for Removal of Lower Snake River Dams by Misha Agrawal, Sammamish Independent, 7/21/22

SAMMAMISH YOUTH BOARD FOR LOWER SNAKE RIVER DAM REMOVAL

For the past half-century, four dams on the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington have obstructed wild salmon and steelhead migration routes from Idaho to the Pacific. Since their construction, adult salmon and steelhead returns to the Snake River to spawn have dropped from nearly 130,000 annually to under 10,000. Today, Snake River salmon are fast approaching extinction, a threat to many Pacific Northwest communities, including, notably, several Indigenous tribes within and surrounding the Columbia Basin. The endangerment of wild Snake River salmon has already led to steep declines in the populations of numerous regionally endemic species as well, including the Southern Resident Orcas. Without the urgent removal of the lower Snake River dams, restoration of the Snake River and the recovery of these salmon populations is improbable at best.

The lower Snake River dams do not meet our standards for a clean energy future. Energy that comes at the cost of a keystone species is not "clean" by any reasonable standard. Clean energy is about more than greenhouse gas emissions alone. Speaking as the youth who will inherit this planet, climate change will affect none more than us, yet we recognize that this situation is not a tradeoff between the survival of Snake River salmon and a livable future. Replacing the lower Snake River dams with truly clean energy alternatives in other locations will allow for both the survival of this species and renewable energy for our state. To call these existing dams sources of clean energy for our region is misleading at best, and untruthful at worst.

This ongoing ecological disaster has proved devastating to those in our own communities, as well as Native communities across the Pacific Northwest. The cultural and economic significance of wild Snake River salmon far pre-dates colonization. This summer, Northwest Tribes called for the removal of the lower Snake River dams in an Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians' resolution, and we stand by their call to restore the river and its salmon populations to pre-dam levels. It is long past time that our elected officials stand with Northwest tribes. By failing to adequately restore the lower Snake River, those in positions of political power are actively stripping the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of their cultural identities. This consequence alone should be enough to mandate change, and yet thus far the calamitous impacts of the lower Snake River dams have been remorselessly swept under the rug.

We applaud the declared commitment of a handful of Northwest government leaders to deliver an action plan for the recovery of endangered salmon and salmon-dependent orcas. Such a plan, to be both legal and effective, must include breaching the lower Snake River dams, replacing the power the dams provide with truly clean energy, and making investments in irrigation and transportation infrastructure to replace the agricultural services the dams provide. It is imperative that other Northwest political representatives join them in crafting a comprehensive solution that works for salmon and orcas, for farmers and fishermen, and for Tribes and utilities.

We, the undersigned youth of the State of Washington, as the inheritors of this Earth and the future of this country, stand in solidarity with all efforts to breach the lower Snake River dams and restore wild salmon populations. We demand the appropriate actions to be taken to meet this objective, and further demand a guarantee of sufficient new clean energy sources to replace and exceed all energy needs currently met by these dams. Our salmon are out of time.

Maanit Goel
Chair, Sammamish Youth Board