Trump Administration may stop planned removal of hydropower dams on Snake River

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By CARLEEN JOHNSON | THE CENTER SQUARE

Proponents of breaching the four lower Snake River dams that provide hydropower in the Columbia Basin concede that plan is likely on hold for at least the next four years under a second term for President-elect Donald Trump. A little more than a year ago, the Biden administration announced its support for preparing to breach. 

“I don’t want to say I know for sure what a new administration is going to do,” said Amanda Goodin with Earthjustice, which describes itself as the nation’s leading environmental law organization. EarthJustice represents several environmental interests seeking to get rid of the dams.

On the one hand, I feel like there is such a win-win opportunity for the region to rebuild our salmon runs and protect the needs of other users in the basin,” Goodin continued during a Thursday interview with The Center Square. “Being real, this is the second time we’ve seen a Trump administration, and under the first Trump administration, we saw that was not a path they were interested in.”

As previously reported by The Center Square, the fight over the Snake River dams has been ongoing for more than 20 years, largely over salmon and steelhead restoration and other environmental concerns.

The four dams are located in the southeastern corner of Washington, near the Oregon border, and they provide as much annual energy – 1,000 average megawatts – as a large nuclear power plant. According to utility Modern Electric Water, the lower Snake River dams can produce up to three times that amount during periods of high demand. As many as 750,000 homes rely on the carbon-free power generated by the dams.

Opponents of removing the dams, including U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., who just won reelection, introduced efforts to kill what they described as a backroom deal last year between the Biden administration and a handful of stakeholders. That deal resulted in a formal memorandum of understanding, with an expected goal to remove the dams.

“These dams are vital to our economy, our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, and the ability to send our commodities overseas,” wrote Newhouse in a Sept. 2023 news release. “The Columbia River Basin is one of our most valuable natural resources in the Pacific Northwest and I will continue to fight each and every day against this Administration’s efforts to breach these vital dams.”

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7 COMMENTS

  1. It’s kind of important to have enough power to replace the power you are destroying. We are stupid enough to give up nice clean hydropower for maintenance hog dirty nasty windmills. Are we going forward or backward in this country.

    • It is important, yet Federal Judge Sharon Gleason had 0 trouble with shutting down the drilling for natural gas that over half the population in SC Alaska uses, and to top it off, they were going to shut down Eklutna dam as well, leaving half a million Alaskans without little to no energy. I guess 500,000 Alaskans freezing to death is worth it to reach their goal of … of … of what, exactly?

      • Be aware when you say “they” want to shut down Eklutna. “They” are the Anchorage Assembly. The voters continue to reward them for their failed policies and wasteful decisions. The voters keep rewarding them for their open contempt to the citizens. And yet the voters keep electing them! The voters keep sending them to the legislature! The voters in Anchorage should get a clue. Our assemble knows they will pay ZERO price for destroying this city. It only takes one election to turn that around. But I haven’t seen the anchorage voters do anything to remove the bad actors. Quite the opposite.

      • Dumb Anchorage voters are responsible for the sorry condition Anchorage is and will be in. The ASSembly is simply their tool.

  2. It’s not just the electricity, it’s irrigation as well. The dam supplies much needed water to surrounding farmlands and is also a “freeway” for barges for fast, efficient transportation of goods.

  3. The same environmental terrorist mentality that wants to tear down dams now, wanted to build the dams in the first place. Notice how there is never a proposal for replacing the power that is being eliminated by dam destruction, none. And as far as the wild fish argument goes, fish ladders do a fine job. The real danger to wild stocks is farmed fish, but that is another topic.

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