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Potential Supplemental CRSO EIS Could Reexamine Snake River Dam Breaching by K.C. Mehaffey NW Fishletter, October 29, 2024

Is a new review under the National Environmental Policy Act needed
due to updated information and circumstances that have arisen of late?

Federal agencies are exploring whether to develop a supplemental environmental impact statement on Columbia River System Operations that could reexamine the impacts of breaching the four lower Snake River dams.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation sent an email on Oct. 16 and 17 to stakeholders and Native American tribes inviting them to engage in an assessment of whether a new review under the National Environmental Policy Act is needed due to updated information and circumstances that have arisen since issuance of the 2020 CRSO environmental impact statement.

Plaintiffs in the decades-long CRSO lawsuit say they're hopeful the notice marks the start of a new supplemental EIS that will more fully examine the impact the dams have had on tribes in the basin, and include numerous new reports and studies that have come out since the 2020 EIS.

Amanda Goodin, a supervising senior attorney with Earthjustice -- which is representing several plaintiffs in the CSRO lawsuit -- told Clearing Up the email is basically like a pre-scoping notice letting everyone know the U.S. government is considering whether to reevaluate the environmental documents -- as the agencies promised to do in the U.S. government commitments in December 2023 that led to a stay in the lawsuit, she noted.

Stakeholders won't know until December what the agencies will decide to do. They could do nothing, make a few minor changes to the EIS, or complete a more comprehensive analysis, Goodin said.

"We hope they will say we are initiating a comprehensive supplemental EIS, which we think needs to look more closely at dam breaching since that's the only way we're going to get to healthy and abundant salmon populations," she said.

At least two stakeholders in the region -- the Public Power Council and the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association -- said they aren't surprised by the notice.

"The 2020 EIS was an extremely robust, region-wide effort that cost BPA electricity ratepayers more than $55 million and resulted in a preferred alternative that allows salmon and hydro to thrive and coexist," Scott Simms, PPC executive director and CEO, told Clearing Up.

He said PPC saw this coming years ago, when NOAA Fisheries issued a report finding that breaching the dams is a centerpiece for restoring healthy populations of salmon.

"Sadly, since that EIS was issued, a handful of single-interest, pro-dam-breach advocates who didn't like that 2020 EIS outcome have worked ever since to politicize this issue and work every angle -- and this weak argument for a rehash of the EIS is further evidence," Simms said, adding, "It is clear the co-lead agencies were politically pressured to release this inquiry."

Last year's settlement agreement was always highly misleading, because it included a poison pill in the agreement, Kurt Miller, executive director of the Northwest Public Power Association, told Clearing Up via email.

"They added a provision dictating that if a new EIS is conducted, the spill requirements from that EIS would take precedence. Now, less than a year into the agreement they're already pushing for a new EIS," Miller said. "Undoubtedly, if they initiate a new or supplemental EIS, the region can count on very harmful levels of spill at all eight lower river dams, threatening the availability and affordability of electricity for millions of people. This is purely a political process at this point. I wish we could say that we didn't see this coming."

Darryll Olsen, CSRIA board representative, told Clearing Up he has seen the need for a new EIS ever since the 2020 document came out, and knew it was headed back to court.

Olsen pointed to errors in calculating impacts to the irrigation and navigation sectors. He also said the agencies failed to provide a reasonable range of alternatives, noting they ignored CSRIA's suggestion to analyze deep drawdowns at two of the projects instead of breaching all four.

"So they've got legal, procedural and technical reasons to go to a supplemental EIS," he said.

In an email to Clearing Up, Tom Conning, spokesperson for the Corps' Northwestern Division, said the email went to tribes and "a robust group of stakeholders with a broad range of interests within the region who may have relevant information relating to the continued operation, maintenance and configuration of the Columbia River System."

"The Co-lead Agencies are currently assessing existing documents, evaluating updated information, and have initiated modeling efforts in response to changed assumptions arising since completion of the CRSO EIS," the email to stakeholders and tribes says.

It notes that some of the information being assessed includes:

• New reports, studies or other information published since the 2020 EIS.
• Anticipated inflow changes expected from a modernized Columbia River Treaty.
• U.S. government commitments that led to a long-term stay in the lawsuit over Columbia River System Operations.

• Changes in operations -- including spill -- and in maintenance and configuration of the 14 CRSO projects.
• New species listings under the Endangered Species Act.

The 2020 EIS, she said, included just over a dozen pages about how some tribes lost cultural sites due to inundation by reservoirs.

Other documents that need to be considered in a new environmental evaluation, Goodin said, include a NOAA Fisheries report on rebuilding salmon populations in the Columbia Basin, a Nez Perce Tribe study showing that several Snake River salmonid species have met the definition for quasi-extinction, and a flurry of recent and ongoing studies that have come out of the stay agreement.

"There's a whole host of new information that really underscores all the problems [in the 2020 EIS] and [makes] it crystal clear that we've got to redo this whole thing," she said.

Conning said the Corps is gathering information needed to examine existing environmental compliance with regard to the continued operation and maintenance of the Columbia River System. "Tribal, stakeholder, federal and state agency input is important," he said. "This effort supports a commitment the U.S. Government made in the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. We recognize the need for additional collaborative dialogue about the system and gathering input from the region is important to inform next steps. The Co-lead Agencies (USACE, BPA & Reclamation) will continue to operate the Columbia River System to meet its congressionally authorized purposes."