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New U.S. Energy Secretary Gives His Take on Removing 4 Eastern WA Dams by Annette Cary Tri-City Herald, May 13, 2025

A 2022 federal report that said breaching Snake River dams was the only hope
to recover Snake River salmon and steelhead to healthy, harvestable levels.

Kennewick, WA -- The nation's new energy secretary is "passionately in support" of leaving the four lower Snake River dams in Eastern Washington intact, he said at a hearing last week in Washington, D.C.

Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., asked Secretary Chris Wright about his stand on the dams during a hearing to address the Trump administration's proposed fiscal 2026 budget for the Department of Energy.

Newhouse also questioned him about layoffs at the Bonneville Power Administration and money for the Tri-Cities' largest employers -- the Hanford nuclear site and research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The lower Snake River dams provide reliable, low-cost hydroelectric power and other benefits, including transportation and irrigation, Newhouse stated.

Those benefits would be lost if the four dams from Ice Harbor Dam near Pasco to Lower Granite near Lewiston, Idaho, were breached in an effort to help save endangered salmon, he said.

He argued progress has been made to increase salmon populations, showing that hydroelectric dams and salmon can co-exist.

Support for Snake River dams

Wright said the Trump administration is aligned with Newhouse on saving the dams, and thinking first of taxpayers and the citizens who need the power produced by the dams.

The energy secretary praised dams, saying such large infrastructure projects were built "when America was bold" and that a number of dams have been critical to the economic prosperity of the nation.

Hydroelectric dams produce "high-value electricity," because it is there when you need it, he said.

They are "very valuable assets" at a time of increasingly rapid growth in the need for power for artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing, he said.

The nation needs to be ready to meet that demand without driving up the costs for ratepayers, he said.

"We should not spend money to go backward to reduce our energy-generating capacity, particularly of such high value electricity," he said.

In his prepared remarks submitted to the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, Wright said the administration is focused on energy addition, versus subtraction or even replacement.

"As government leaders, we need to be of the mindset that more is better," he said in submitted remarks. "Replacing energy sources does not add to the finite energy supply that American families, businesses and innovators are competing for."

The Biden administration announced in December that it wanted an updated look at findings of a four-year, $55 million federal study completed in 2020 that rejected calls to tear down the four lower Snake River dams.

A coalition of Northwest power, navigation and agricultural users that rely on the dams said what they called a "redo" of the 2020 environmental impact statement could lead to breaching the four dams.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration have began work on a supplemental environmental impact statement, considering possible changes due to species proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act and new reports, studies and information published since 2020.

Hanford nuclear site progress

Wright has pledged to visit every national laboratory, including Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, within a year of his appointment.

When he visits PNNL, he also will visit the Hanford nuclear site and hydroelectric dams, he told Newhouse.

Wright pointed out that the Trump administration's proposed budget for fiscal 2026 includes maintaining level funding for Hanford, while other environmental clean up projects likely will share in budget cuts.

Wright has had multiple meetings with leaders at Bechtel National, the DOE contractor that is preparing to start turning radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks at Hanford into a stable glass form at the vitrification plant this summer.

He's discussed with Bechtel the importance of bringing the plant online this year and is likely to be at the ribbon cutting, he said. Construction on the plant started in 2002.

Budget cuts and PNNL

Newhouse said he is concerned about significant cuts in programs that fund research for PNNL in Richland, including the DOE Office of Science and the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

"We don't want to shrink or stop any of the critical research in our national labs ... from cybersecurity that (PNNL) is so strong at to fusion energy, to advanced computing, artificial intelligence, basic fundamental physics," Wright said. "All of these things will go on, virtually unimpacted."

But in recent years there has been growth in what he calls "political science," because it is tied to political messaging or campaigns, he said.

The goal in the Trump administration's proposed budget is to not touch what he called "hard science," but "to trim out the fluff," he said.

"The future of the national labs is very bright and the scientific and substantive output from the labs will not be reduced," Wright said.

BPA layoffs questioned

The Bonneville Power Administration lost 200 workers who took voluntary layoffs as part of a federal program to reduce federal spending, Newhouse said.

He supports the goal of getting control of waste of federal taxpayer funds, but BPA does not receive federal funds, he said.

There appears to be the potential for the loss of grid reliability due to the loss of employees and institutional knowledge, Newhouse said.

BPA was already short staffed, Wright acknowledged. He said BPA employees were not allowed to participate in a second round of voluntary layoffs.

BPA supplies much of the electricity used in the greater Tri-Cities area and delivers it on the BPA electric grid.

Related Sites:
Redundant Environmental Review is Unlawful, Misleading, and Jeopardizes Services to Millions by a "Save Our Dams" coalition, Columbia Basin Regional Alliance for Transparency, 12/18/24