The state of Oregon and environmental and fishing groups are seeking a court order to adjust dam operations to help dwindling salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
The filing earlier this week in U.S. District Court in Portland comes after the state and the groups in September resumed their years-long legal battle with the federal government over fish protections.
The renewal of the litigation followed the Trump administration’s withdrawal this summer from a historic agreement to restore salmon runs and honor tribal treaty obligations.
The agreement, signed in 2023 by the Biden administration, would have poured $1 billion into fish restoration and tribal clean energy projects to improve conditions for fish and offset the loss of hydropower. It advocated for adjustments in federal dam operations – including releasing more water via dam spillways – to benefit the salmon and acknowledged the possibility of breaching the four Snake River dams.
Treaties negotiated in 1855 between the U.S. and the Native American groups that now comprise the Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Perce, and Warm Springs tribes promised tribal members would have access to abundant fishing populations at their traditional fishing spots in exchange for ceding their lands.
As part of the emergency preliminary injunction request, Oregon and other groups are seeking to increase the amount of water spilled at the top of dams to make it easier for juvenile salmon to migrate over them and avoid the deadly turbines. The spill request applies to eight dams – four on the lower Columbia River and four on the lower Snake River.
The groups also want dam operators to lower dam reservoir levels on the rivers – which would lower their water temperatures and reduce the time salmon spend migrating through them, decreasing fish mortality.
According to the filing, these are meant as interim stop-gap measures to reduce the risk of extinction for the fish. Rebuilding the species to a healthy population would require, for Snake River fish in particular, the breaching of the four lower Snake River dams, the groups said.
Making the spill and reservoir level changes could mean less water for generating hydropower, which provides a significant portion of the region’s electricity. In Oregon, hydropower accounts for more than a third of the state’s energy mix.
“In an era of skyrocketing electricity demand, these dams are essential to maintaining grid reliability and keeping energy bills affordable,” said the Northwest Public Power Association, a nonprofit coalition of public and other utilities in the region that supported Trump walking away from the historic agreement.
But Oregon and environmental groups argue shifting dam operations – and eventually breaching some of the dams – is the only way to keep the fish alive and fulfill the obligations the federal government has made to the tribes in the region which depend on salmon for subsistence and for their cultural and spiritual value.
The Columbia River Basin once sustained 10 to 16 million salmon and steelhead annually. Today, over a third of those populations are extinct and many are at imminent risk of disappearing.
Of the 16 salmon and steelhead stocks that historically returned above Bonneville Dam, four are now extinct and more than half of those remaining are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The situation is especially dire in the lower Snake River where many populations are below or nearing the “quasi-extinction threshold,” with fewer than 50 wild fish returning to spawn every year, according to fishery experts.
Thus far, the billions of dollars spent on habitat restoration and fish hatchery programs have failed to stop the salmon’s demise. Most of the fish that now make it from the rivers into the ocean are artificially bred, with wild populations barely hanging on.
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