Dozens of groups, organizations and decision makers are opposing breaching of the lower Snake River dams in Washington State and are urging that the Trump administration directly intervene and/or convene a “God Squad” committee to protect the dams and put an end to discussions about breaching them.
The request to the Trump administration comes on the heels of a recent ruling by federal Judge Michael Simon in Portland, Ore., in which he ordered that a new environmental study be done regarding the lower Snake River dams, after the federal government’s latest plan for protecting threatened and endangered salmon indicated that breaching Snake River dams did not need to be considered and would cost at least $3 billion to taxpayers.
Additionally, with President-elect Trump stating that he will invest $1 trillion to improve the U.S.’s infrastructure (including transportation, clean water and a modern, reliable electricity grid), many hope that Trump will stop what would likely be a very expensive attempt to try to remove the lower Snake River dams, which have proven to be vital energy and transportation infrastructure to the western United States.
In fact, a recent report from the Bonneville Power Administration highlighted the following benefits of the Lower Snake River Dams:
- The four lower Snake River dams produce over 1,000 average megawatts of reliable, carbon-free energy—enough for over 800,000 average U.S. homes;
- If the region were to replace the energy produced by the lower Snake dams, it would most likely be with fossil fuels and natural gas;
- A 2015 BPA reliability analysis concluded that replacement of the lower Snake dams with highly efficient natural gas generation would still increase the region’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2.0 to 2.6 million metric tons annually;
- The four lower Snake River dams include some of the most advanced and successful fish passage systems in the world; and
- New wind and solar generators depend on the dams for backup power to make them economically viable.
According to an October 2015 news release from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lower Snake River dams provide a marine transportation corridor that helps move 3.5 million tons of cargo, worth $1.5 billion a year, to regional markets. On a related note, the Washington Association of Wheat Growers says the Columbia and Snake Rivers make up the third-largest grain export system in the world. To move the same amount of wheat by road or rail annually would require 137,000 trucks or 23,900 rail cars.
The lower Snake River dams also provide irrigation for 60,000 acres of high-value irrigated crops.
“If the dams were breached, the pump stations would not function,” says Darryll Olsen, board representative for the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association (CSRIA). “The end result would be a substantial reduction in irrigated acres, which would have a huge negative impact on food processing and agriculture in the Pacific Northwest."
The Endangered Species Act allows the Trump administration’s new secretary of interior to convene an Endangered Species Act Committee, or “God Squad,” to set reasonable boundaries for hydro system operations. The CSRIA hopes a Trump administration God Squad would make a fair and equitable ruling that would end the cycle of repeated litigation, as well as the escalating and more expensive plans for what is already the most extensive fish protection and enhancement program in the world.
A key catalyst in calling for God Squad review has been the CSRIA. According to Olsen, the most recent judicial decision requiring the new environmental review has ignored 20 years of improvements of the dams, increased fish runs, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries science on survival rates.
“It is driven by a biased-court decision in what has become a salmon recovery industry over the last 20 years,” Olsen said. “It is not how the Endangered Species Act was meant to be used.”
The Bonneville Power Administration has spent $15 billion to successfully mitigate the dams’ effect on fish and wildlife. In 1992 and 1993, there were about 800 fall chinook above the Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River, according to the CSRIA. The 2014-15 count of adult fish found about 35,000 wild Snake River fall chinook. According to fish survival data, the survival rate at each dam on the river is about 92 to 95 percent.
“The raw fish survival numbers show that the Lower Snake River Dams are working,” Olsen said.