End Willamette Basin hydropower to save salmon and lower energy bills, advocates say

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

To save salmon and lower power bills, the Army Corps of Engineers needs to stop producing hydropower from eight Willamette Basin dams, Tribal Council member Kathleen George told Advocates for the West Communications Director Will Shoemaker during a web forum Wednesday, April 30.

“Simply put, the way the Army Corps of Engineers is managing these dams today kills salmon and loses money. A lot of salmon and a lot of money,” George said. “These dams produce far less than 2% of all regional power. But in doing so, they block critical habitat and they raise taxpayer and ratepayer dollars.”

The Army Corps manages 13 dams on the Willamette River and its tributaries, eight of which produce hydropower. For years, it has ignored federal and congressional directives to improve salmon access and study removing hydropower production, George said.

Advocates for the West is a nonprofit environmental law firm that files lawsuits in defense of the environment. Shoemaker hosts a monthly web forum on topics the firm is engaged with. For his April 30 event, Shoemaker was joined by George, Advocates for the West Senior Attorney Laurie Rule and by Jennifer Fairbrother, legislative and policy director for the Native Fish Society, to discuss Willamette Basin spring Chinook and winter steelhead.

 The webinar is available to view at www.youtube.com/watch?v=udmqqT2b0PQ.

Removing hydropower production is not only necessary for chinook and steelhead, George said, “but it will save Oregonians money on their power bill at the same time. Because this very small percentage of power that’s produced at these dams is the most expensive hydropower in the system.”

A fact sheet from the Bonneville Power Administration states that power from the dams costs $30.83 per megawatt hour, compared to $9.03 per megawatt hour from dams on the mainstem of the Columbia River. It further states that the utility must maintain costs near $11 per megawatt hour to remain competitive, and that the dams on average produce “enough power for about 138,000 homes” per year.

Although the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has stocked other salmon species in various rivers and reservoirs in the basin, Fairbrother said spring Chinook and winter steelhead are the “only two historically native anadromous species” to the Willamette Basin, and that “they evolved over many millions of years to be uniquely adapted to the specific watershed that they call home and … their natal waters.”

In 1999, both species were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They remain at risk, with runs of less than 1% of their historic numbers.

George said a 2024 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries division “found that because of the salmon’s lack of passage around the Willamette basin dams, they continue to face that heightened risk of extinction, and NOAA Fisheries has said that’s really likely by about 2040.”

The dams block access to 75% of the most critical spawning habitat. Because of their height and the landscape in which they are located, “even today it’s not feasible to install fish ladders. Which would be the ultimate ideal, because it would allow fish to move up and down under their own timing and their own volition,” Fairbrother said.

Adult fish are taken by the Army Corps and trucked above the dams to spawn but the juveniles are then trapped, unable to migrate to the ocean, where they spend several years of their lives before they return.

“In an ideal world, where you could have the reservoir full all the time, you’d be able to do spill most of the time, and that’s actually a pretty effective route for fish to get past dams,” Fairbrother said. But that method is not used in the Willamette Basin, because the need for flood control prevents keeping the reservoirs full.

Instead, young fish must go through the powerhouse turbines, which injure and kill many of them, “and that’s assuming the fish even find their way to the intake. Because these are species that tend to travel as juveniles in the very top of the water column, in like the first 15 to 20 feet,” Fairbrother said.

There are also regulating outlets, which lack the dangerous spinning turbines but are too deep underwater for fish passage, Fairbrother said. Advocates want the Army Corps to drop the reservoir levels during migration season, in what is called a deep drawdown, low enough that fish can easily pass through the regulatory outlets.

George noted that, “NOAA fisheries has called for seasonal drawdowns for juvenile passage for many, many years, but the Corps has repeatedly ignored those directives and requirements to comply with the Environmental Species Act, and sadly, they’ve also ignored congressional directives to consider a better path forward.”

In 2021, a federal court judge ordered the Army Corps to use deep drawdowns at some dams. The results have been extremely successful, George said. However, it does not want to expand the program to all 13 dams. Instead, it wants to use floating fish collectors, which Fairbrother described as “really big contraptions that you can think of as a vacuum, essentially; you hope that the fish get close enough that that they feel the flow going into these things and they fall into them.

The Tribe’s concern has also been growing, as the Army Corps dragged its feet, George said

 “Our scientists work closely with scientists from the state of Oregon and NOAA fisheries, and all of the best scientists are telling us the same thing; and that’s that time is running out, to save these species from extinction,” she said. “So … while the Grand Ronde Tribe has been involved at the technical level for a very long time, seeing the lack of progress on this issue, our Tribal government has decided that we really have to get more involved, at the local and national level to work with leaders to make sure that things we need to happen to save these species from extinction, happen before time runs out.”

She continued, “We simply do not have time to wait decades for new projects, new floating fish collectors, that are unlikely to be effective and that the Army Corps of Engineers has no funding to support.”

Salmon are a crucial part of the Tribe’s history and culture.

“The Tribes that make up the modern confederation of Grand Ronde have lived with salmon, and in particular Willamette salmon, since time immemorial,” George said. “There’s no part of the history of our people who lived throughout the Willamette Basin, that does not occur in harmony and in reliance upon our salmon relatives. And so that is a very deep relationship and it’s one that’s carried through our ancestors to us today, and it’s an essential part of Tribal culture and identity. The Treaty of 1855 ceded the Willamette Valley to the United States government, but that never terminated our relationship with those salmon and our reliance upon them.”

She continued, “It’s also, in my opinion, an essential part of Oregon and what it means to be an Oregonian. These fish are iconic to our region and our state, and all Oregonians rely on healthy waterways, and our salmon and steelhead are critical indicators of the health of our river systems, and so when our salmon and steelhead are in trouble, our rivers are in trouble and our communities are in trouble. It’s hard for me to imagine a Willamette River that doesn’t have salmon and steelhead in it.”

George urged Oregonians to join in the effort.

“My ask is, tell our senators, tell our representatives that this is important for you. .... We have to prioritize drawdowns, we have to deauthorize hydropower. And tell them that it’s important, that you don’t believe in a future without Willamette salmon and steelhead in it. You know, if we could get some calls or some emails to our senators, to our representatives, to the governor, reminding them that this is essential and we don’t have time to lose, I think that’s what’s needed,” George said. “We have to refuse the path that we’re on, which has been a path of delay. And if this is a priority to you, we ask you to join us in insisting that we reflect that priority, now.”