Tribe touts upcoming dam drawdowns, extends offer of support to cities

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

Tribal Council member Kathleen George and Jennifer Fairbrother, legislative and policy director at the Native Fish Society, held a press conference Thursday, Oct. 23, to discuss the importance of deep drawdowns at several Willamette Valley dams, scheduled to begin later this fall and winter.

The Army Corps of Engineers is under court order to perform the drawdowns to increase spawning grounds and survival rates for spring Chinook and winter steelhead, as the fish are at high risk of extinction. It announced in a September press release that “residents living near Cougar, Green Peter, Lookout Point and Fall Creek reservoirs should expect lower water levels,” as the Army Corps conducts the drawdowns. Beginning in October, it said, “the public should refrain from recreating in the reservoirs due to the drawdowns. Additionally, downstream recreators should use caution as suspended sediment and woody debris are likely to be dislodged during drawdowns, causing low visibility and difficulties in seeing submerged obstacles.”

Exposed areas “may be soft and muddy,” Army Corps Park Ranger Christie Johnson said in the press release.

“There have been several incidents in the past where people and pets have gotten stuck in the mud and required rescue,” she said.

The press release noted that the drawdowns “are a critical element of the 2024 National Marine Fisheries Service’s biological opinion, which aims to help endangered salmon exit the reservoirs through the dams to migrate downriver.”

It quoted Kathryn Tackley, a program manager at the Portland district who is working to implement the measure, saying that the drawdowns should be considered “‘the new normal’ for these reservoirs until USACE constructs physical fish-passage structures.”

The Tribe and Native Fish Society have been among the entities pushing compliance with drawdown requirements. However, George said, the Tribe is sympathetic to the frustrations of cities whose drinking water was negatively affected by the drawdowns in 2023 and 2024. The cities of Lebanon and Sweet Home filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps Wednesday, Oct. 1, over damage they say was caused by silt released from the drawdowns clogging their water treatment systems. The cities are seeking more than $37 million in damages.

The cities also accuse the Army Corps of causing the damage by failing to implement recommendations from the National Marine Fisheries Service issued in 2008 for salmon survival and by failing to comply with an order to maintain water quality.

“This failure by the corps had several negative repercussions, including harm to the threatened species, extensive litigation and fallout from the actions necessary to remediate the corps’ failure to act, including harm to its beneficial use in providing water supply for public, private, and industrial use,” attorneys for the two cities wrote in the lawsuit.

In 2018, after a decade of inaction, environmental groups sued the corps, resulting in a 2021 court order to begin deep drawdowns.

“The court was explicit that the corps must not violate the (Clean Water Act) and state water quality standards,” the attorneys wrote. “The corps did so anyway.”

George echoed some of that criticism.

“If the Army Corps of Engineers had invested in the reality that they needed to analyze what the impacts of (what) drawdowns would be and work with affected communities proactively, we might be in a better place than we are today,” she said.

The corps pledged in its press release to work closely with cities.

“We are committed to balancing the needs of the communities with our responsibility to protect endangered species," Col. Dale Caswell, commander of the Portland District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said in the press release. "During these drawdowns, we will continue to coordinate with downstream communities and state agencies to monitor and address drinking water concerns."

George said that “the sediment that has built up behind those enormous walls for decades is moving through the system and we understand that creates some challenges.”

George said those challenges will lessen as the built-up silt is flushed out of the reservoirs. In the meantime, however, “We welcome the conversation about how we can support those communities while sediment is an issue for them,” she said.

“Certainly, drinking water is essential to every community, and we certainly understand communities’ concerns about that,” she said. “We will continue to reach out to those communities and offer any help where we can and because we want to understand their needs. We want to, where we can, partner and support them in seeking solutions. We understand that for example in Lowell, local officials successfully used federal funding to upgrade their water treatment system. … It’s through having more dialogue with those communities that we’re going to understand the variety of what those impacts look like and what support they need.”

Fairbrother said the Native Fish Society is also willing to work with cities to help them obtain federal and state funding.

“Salmon recovery and clean water are not competing goals – we can and must protect both community water systems and the salmon populations vital to our cultures, communities and landscapes,” Fairbrother said in an email.

The drawdowns are crucial for long-term salmon survival, Fairbrother added.

“NOAA fisheries came out last year with a status update that indicated that within the next 15 years, by 2040, we were likely to see Willamette salmon or steelhead run start to go extinct if we didn't make any changes,” she said. “And even before that, now and for the last decade, we've been seeing the impacts of these declines year after year. The state has been asking, and the federal government has been declaring disasters for the Chinook salmon fishery. Recreational anglers have lost days of angling, seasons of angling and then harvest opportunities. Our landscapes for decades have been deprived of the nutrients that these salmon bring back that cultivate our farms and our forests, and our communities for decades have lost their connection to these fish. The health of salmon really does reflect the health of our waterways, our landscapes, our economies and ultimately our communities here.”

The buildup of silt is already decreasing, Fairbrother said.

“We also have already seen that there's been a substantial reduction in turbidity between the first and second seasons of the drawdowns at Green Peter and Lookout Point, and the Corps has indicated that the rivers have rebounded quickly and that there's likely been no impact on the salmon themselves,” she said.

George noted that drawdowns have proven effective in earlier trials at Fall Creek, where “after lowering the reservoir pool during juvenile migration at Fall Creek, the corps' data showed roughly a tenfold increase in the adult salmon that later returned to Fall Creek. That is incredibly encouraging news and we can build on that – we absolutely have to. The corps studies also indicate a 98 to 99% survival rate for those out-migrating Chinook juveniles at Fall Creek during the 2015 deep drawdown.”

She added that “on the nearby Clackamas River basin, salmon and steelhead have more free movement through the dam systems, and that's where we also see one of the strongest salmon and steelhead runs in the Willamette Valley.”

Drawdowns at Detroit Dam are scheduled to begin in 2026.

“Early modeling from the Army Corps of Engineers shows that a smaller portion of the lake should be exposed compared to Green Peter, which is encouraging,” George said. “So based on that, we’re hopeful and optimistic that turbidity impacts in Detroit will be less severe…the truth is, we won’t know until we’re in it.”