Public Power Advocates Rally to Protect the Lower Snake River Dams
By Victoria Hampton
A decadeslong legal battle over Snake River salmon restoration and electric grid reliability is coming to a head in the Northwest. When a confidential mediation document stating the federal government plans to replace generation from the lower Snake River dams was leaked in November 2023, public power advocacy groups doubled down on their concerns about the impacts on Northwest energy consumers.
Following the leaked document, an agreement was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon on December 14, putting into motion the first step to ending a more than 30-year fight.
It’s an agreement supporters are calling “a turning point,” “historic,” and a “salmon recovery blueprint,” while Scott Simms, CEO and executive director of the Public Power Council, refers to it as “a blueprint for how to devalue, deplete and ultimately demolish our region’s clean, renewable federal hydropower projects.
Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, filed its first legal action to protect Snake River salmon in 1992, after the National Marine Fisheries Service issued its first biological opinion on critical salmon habitat, concluding that federal dams would not jeopardize endangered or threatened salmon.
Some 31 years later—which included 6 rulings that Columbia River System Operations biological opinions illegally threaten salmon—attorneys for conservation and fishing groups, federal agencies, 2 states, and 4 Native American tribes filed legal documents asking the court to approve their agreement and pause the case, or put litigation on hold, for up to 10 years.
The agreement commits billions of dollars from the federal government to develop between 1 gigawatt and 3 gigawatts of renewable energy and creates the Pacific Northwest Tribal Energy Program. The document says the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will work with the tribes to “develop and deploy clean, renewable, socially just energy resources” to be planned as replacement power for the lower Snake River dams if Congress authorizes the breaching of those dams.
Public power utilities and hydropower advocacy organizations are concerned that 1 of their fundamental values was missing from recent litigation: transparency.
Although confidentiality is standard in litigation settlements, the magnitude of impacts warranted participation from all the stakeholders, Simms says.
“What we ultimately had here was a steamrolling toward a predetermined outcome,” he says.
Hydropower energy advocates at Northwest RiverPartners, an organization that serves community-owned electric utilities throughout the West, agree.
“The lack of transparency and fairness shows in what can only be described as a serious threat to our region’s economy and clean energy future,” Northwest RiverPartners Interim Executive Director Heather Stebbings says.
Throughout the years of feasibility studies and hearings about the future of the lower Snake River dams, the concerns of public power utilities across the region have remained the same: impacts on Northwest energy consumers and reliability of the Northwest energy grid.
The Bonneville Power Administration delivers hydropower produced in the Columbia River Basin—including power supplied by the lower Snake River dams—to communities across the Northwest, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana, California, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming.
While the agreement states the renewable project funding to replace a generation of the dams will come from the federal government, the Bonneville Power Administration is expected to spend an additional $300 million on salmon recovery programs over the next 10 years. BPA’s analysis shows this could result in a 2.7% rate impact over the 10-year term, reports the Public Power Council’s BPA Ratepayer Financial Impacts statement.
Mandated increases in program funding result in higher rates for electric utilities that receive power supply from BPA. Currently, BPA customers spend $685 million annually on fish and wildlife programs. These increases in electric utility power purchase costs increase electric consumers’ monthly bills.
While mitigation program spending now has limits under the agreement, replacement resources for potential lower Snake River dam breaching remain the largest exposure under the final agreement, just as in a previous version. BPA’s analysis pegs these costs at $415 million to $860 million annually, equivalent to a 21% to 43% increase to BPA power rates, per the Public Power Council’s statement.
When considering environmental and electric grid impacts, hydropower stands out as a carbon-free, renewable and reliable power generation option. Unlike the intermittent nature of solar and wind energy, hydropower provides a consistent supply of electricity day and night, making it a dependable source of continuous power. Hydropower supporters across the region note the power supply’s sustainability and reliability make it an invaluable asset in the pursuit of state and federal clean energy initiatives.
Parties in the lawsuit who are opposed to the agreement had until December 29 to file a response. Idaho, Montana, the Public Power Council, Northwest RiverPartners and the Inland Ports and Navigation Group filed separate requests asking U.S. District Judge Michael Simon to deny the stay. Those requesting the stay have until January 12 to respond to their objections.
Simon had not made a final ruling on the agreement at the time of this publication.
Whether the lower Snake River dams remain a clean, reliable power supply for Northwest energy consumers depends on the decision to breach the dams. While the agreement provides steps that can be taken to replace the power produced by the lower Snake River dams, the final authority to breach the dams is up to Congress.
A final recommendation from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray in the 2022 Lower Snake River Dams: Benefit Replacement Report states, “And crucially, the ultimate decision to breach the Lower Snake River Dams lies with the Congress, which must authorize and appropriate on this matter.”