A district judge recently granted a stay in litigation regarding the removal of hydropower operations in the Snake and Columbia rivers, which conservation groups claim kill endangered salmon. The litigation is paused until July 31, 2022, to give the parties time to negotiate a settlement.
On Oct. 26, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon in Portland, OR, granted a motion by both sides to allow a stay in the litigation challenging the Trump administration’s late 2020 hydropower operations plan. Litigation between the federal government and conservationists over the Columbia River Basin and threatened or endangered fish species has been back-and-forth since the ’90s.
Earthjustice, on behalf of the lawsuit plaintiffs, said, “Dams have turned the Columbia and Snake rivers from one of the greatest salmon-producing river systems in the world to a deadly gauntlet of dams that yields sick and dying salmon, weakening the very foundation of the region’s ecosystems and economy.”
Conservationists have demanded for two decades that the four dams in the Columbia River Basin—Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite—be breached.
After the late October ruling, the dozen conservationist and fish industry groups who filed the suit, along with the state of Oregon, Nez Perce Tribe and Biden administration, will work together over the next year to find a settlement. The suit was first filed against the Trump administration’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Bonneville Power Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The agreement also covers operations of the Columbia River Basin dams for the next year, such as increasing the spill of water over the top of the dams to help aid juvenile fish migration.
“The conservation and fishing groups recognize, however, that these are emergency, stop-gap measures to afford these species incremental survival benefits,” Earthjustice said. “They are not alone enough to prevent the decline of these fish toward extinction.”
Just a few days before Simon ruled in favor of the litigation stay, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) announced they are looking for a comprehensive solution for salmon recovery in the Columbia River Basin.
“The next step is for us to define how to replace the services of the Snake River dams if they are breached,” Inslee said. “We know that they are a salmon impediment, we know that the salmon are on the verge of extinction, and we also know that they do provide services upon which a lot of folks and our economy depends.”
However, Inslee said he was not announcing a breaching decision immediately, but would have a solution by the end of next July. Still, three Republican Washington representatives voiced their opposition against the potential dam breaching.
“It is becoming more and more clear that the public and stakeholders who rely on the Columbia Snake River System have been shut out of conversations between the Biden administration, federal agencies, and groups whose sole mission is to breach the lower Snake River dams,” Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-05), Dan Newhouse (R-WA-04) and Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA-03) said in a joint statement. — Anna Miller, WLJ managing editor
