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Snake River Dams may Need to Be Removed to Help Salmon, White House Says by Staff King 5, July 12, 2022

Replacing the energy created by the dams is possible but it will cost between $11-19 billion.

The Biden administration on Tuesday released two reports arguing that removing dams on the lower Snake River may be needed to restore salmon runs to historic levels.

Replacing the energy created by the dams is possible but it will cost between $11-19 billion.

The reports were released by the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

"Business as usual will not restore salmon," said Brenda Mallory, chair of the council. "The Columbia River system is the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest."

Many salmon runs continue to decline, which environmentalists blame on dams, Mallory said, and her office is leading multi-agency efforts to restore "abundant runs of salmon to the Columbia River Basin."

Mallory cautioned that the Biden administration is not endorsing any single long-term solution, including breaching the dams.

On Tuesday, a draft report by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found changes are needed to restore salmon, ranging from the removal of one to four dams on the lower Snake River to the reintroduction of salmon to areas entirely blocked by dams. A second report studied how power supplies could be replaced if dams are breached.

"These two reports add to the picture -- that we are working alongside regional leaders to develop -- of what it will take over the decades ahead to restore salmon populations, honor our commitments to Tribal Nations, deliver clean power and meet the many needs of stakeholders across the region," Mallory said.

More than a dozen runs of salmon and steelhead are at risk of extinction in the Columbia and Snake rivers. Billions of dollars have been spent on salmon and steelhead recovery, but the fish continue to decline, speakers said, and it is time to try a different approach. Dam breaching is opposed by grain shippers, irrigators, power producers and other river users. Dam supporters blame declining salmon runs on other factors, such as changing ocean conditions.

"We need to go to larger-scale actions," NOAA scientist Chris Jordan said in a briefing on the report Monday.

"We are at a crucial moment for salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin when we're seeing the impacts of climate change on top of other stressors," said Janet Coit, an administrator for NOAA Fisheries.

The issue has percolated in the Northwest for three decades, sparking court fights and political debates over the future of the four dams on the Snake River that environmentalists blame for the decline in salmon and steelhead.

U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, kicked off the latest round of debates in 2021, when he released a plan saying it would cost $34 billion to remove and replace the dams' services in order to save salmon. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, both Democrats, are also preparing a report, with their recommendations expected later this summer.

Last month, Murray and Inslee announced that replacing the benefits provided by the four giant hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state would cost $10.3 billion to $27.2 billion.