The 2022 NOAA report, Rebuilding Interior Columbia Basin Salmon and Steelhead,  defines dam breaching on the lower Snake River as “essential” to make progress towards healthy and harvestable salmon stocks in the Columbia Basin.

ESA-listed Snake River salmon and steelhead populations continue to be in peril. The 2024 annual Comparative Survival Study of PIT-tagged Spring/Summer/Fall Chinook, Summer Steelhead, and Sockeye notes that smolt-to-adult return rates (SARs) are not meeting regional goals and would “fail to prevent population declines.” (Fish Passage Center, 2024)

Four National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) 5-Year Reviews for Snake River spring/summer Chinook salmon, Snake River sockeye salmon, Snake River fall-run Chinook salmon, and Snake River Basin steelhead all concluded that these species should retain their protected status under the Endangered Species Act, adding that “climate change increases the urgency of recommended recovery actions. (NMFS, 2022)

Southern Resident killer whales are facing an accelerating risk of extinction, and their recovery hinges on ambitious salmon recovery actions. Protecting them is impossible without restoring diminished populations of Chinook salmon. (Williams, Lacy et al. 2024)

Southern Resident orcas rely heavily on salmon from the Columbia Basin. Columbia River Chinook salmon represented 54% of the prey remains samples collected off the Washington coast from May 2004–2017. (Hanson, Emmons et al. 2021)

The Southern Residents orcas’ reliance on Columbia River Basin salmon is increasing. A 2022 study estimated a 34% increase in the contribution of CRB salmon to the orcas’ diet in the past 40 years. (Couture, Oldford et al. 2022)

Northwest Tribes have inherent treaty rights to fish in their traditional waters – a right the U.S. government is legally and morally obligated to uphold.

The Tribal Circumstances Analysis prepared by the Department of Interior in 2024 details the historical and ongoing impacts of federal dam construction on the Columbia River Basin Tribes, which include flooding of ancestral lands and destruction of vital fishing sites have significantly harmed the Tribes' way of life, as well as significant declines in salmon populations, undermining tribal sovereignty and subsistence.

The lower Snake River dams are not vital for energy generation or stability in the Northwest. They account for a mere 2% of the region’s firm power (BPA 2024 Pacific Northwest Loads and Resources Study). In 2024, the total average power output from the dams was only 606 aMW (US Army Corps of Engineers data). 

The Bonneville Power Administration’s own reports show that the region can replace the dams’ power and maintain grid reliability with clean energy alternatives that don’t threaten salmon.

A 2022 study investigating the cost and feasibility of optimized clean-energy replacement portfolios for the lower Snake River dams concluded that “replacement portfolios will generate power at times when the region needs it the most, resulting in $69M - $143M million per year of energy value above what the LSR dams provide for the same time period.” (Energy Strategies LLC, 2022)

We need to challenge the assumption that removing the lower Snake River dams and replacing their services is cost-prohibitive. The federal government has already spent around $25 billion in fish mitigation efforts that have failed to restore ESA-listed populations. It will have to spend more such money in future, as well as dedicate additional funds to upgrading and maintaining aging dam infrastructure – with no guarantee on recovering threatened and endangered fish.

Replacing existing dam services with viable alternatives has the potential to stimulate regional economic growth. An economic assessment of Representative Simpson’s proposed Columbia Basin Fund noted an expenditure of at least $7.9 billion in the 9-county region around the LSR would create “an estimated average of 11,000 jobs a year in the Northwest over 25 years…injecting substantial resources into the regional economy. (BERK, 2021)

Removing the four lower Snake River dams will open 140 miles of potential mainstem spawning habitat for Fall Chinook, greatly increasing ocean sport fisheries in Buoy 10, Marine Area 1 and off the entire Washington coastline. A free-flowing river would restore access for salmon and steelhead to more than 5,000 miles of protected habitat upstream in Idaho, Oregon and Washington state.

Scientific models suggest that restoring salmon and steelhead abundance to the Snake River basin would more than double the amount of time the mainstem Columbia River is open to sportfishing. For instance, average returns of Spring Chinook would resemble the returns in 2001 and 2002. A sockeye fishery could reopen in the mainstem, and many of the restrictions on Spring, Summer and Fall Chinook could be lifted. 

The lower Snake River reservoirs are one of the main contributors of heat pollution, contributing to water quality standards violations in the lower Snake River. In the summer of 2024, for approximately 60 days, all four reservoirs experienced temperatures exceeding the 68°F “harm threshold” for cold water fish like salmon and steelhead. Some reached 70-72°F for several weeks, the temperature at which some salmon and steelhead species stop migrating altogether.

Warm, stagnant water such as that within the dam reservoirs creates conditions that support toxic algal blooms, causing the river to become unsafe for humans, animals (especially domestic pets), the environment, and salmon.  Two such blooms occurred on the lower Snake in 2023 and 2024, the duration and impact of which were significantly increased from past events.

Emerging research related to the removal of dams on the Elwha and Klamath rivers suggests that dam removal would be effective for salmon recovery. This new information from both projects warrants careful review for potential implications of dam removal on the lower Snake River.

According to the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC), “early results from the monitoring program demonstrate that removing the two large Elwha River dams has positively impacted Chinook salmon and steelhead populations. Combined with hatchery management actions and harvest restrictions, researchers found that dam removal led to: increased adult fish numbers, expanded habitat use, and a resurgence of naturally produced juvenile salmon.” (NWFSC, “The Elwha River Restoration: A Case Study in Adaptive Management for Salmon Recovery” 2024)

A 2021 study on the restored Elwha river stated “in only 5 years, dam removal profoundly influenced fish populations in the Elwha River. After dam removal, we counted 2-4 times as many Bull Trout, trout, and Chinook Salmon and hundreds of Summer Steelhead which were previously very rare in the river.” (Duda et al, 2021)

A 2021 Biological Opinion by NOAA Fisheries analyzed the potential impacts of Klamath dam removal on ESA listed species and “found that the short-term impacts, such as the potential effects of sediment in the water on salmon, would be outweighed by the much greater long-term benefits as river ecosystem processes return at a landscape scale.”