Hydroelectric Dams in Oregon Kill Salmon. Congress says it’s time to consider closing it.

The US Army Corps of Engineers said it could make hydroelectric dams on Oregon’s Willamette River safe for endangered salmon by building giant mechanical traps and hauling the fish downstream in tanker trucks . The Corps began pressing the objections of fish advocates and power users who said the plan was expensive and untested.

That was until this month, when President Joe Biden signed legislation ordering the Corps to put its plans on hold and consider a simpler solution: stop using the dams for electricity.

The new law, finalized on January 4, follows report by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica in 2023 which underscored the risks and costs associated with the Corps’ plan. The agency is projected to lose $700 million over 30 years generating hydroelectric power, and a scientific review found that the type of fixes the Corps is proposing will not prevent the extinction of threatened salmon.

The order says the Corps needs to shelve designs for its fish collectors — essentially massive floating vacuum cleaners expected to cost $170 million to $450 million each — until it finishes studying what the system will do. the river would be without hydroelectric power. The Corps must then factor that scenario into its long-term designs for the river.

The new direction from Congress has the potential to transform the river that supports Oregon’s famous Willamette Valley. It is a step towards draining the reservoirs behind the dams and bringing the water levels closer to those of a river without a dam.

“There is a very real, very viable solution, and we need to proceed with it as quickly as possible,” said Kathleen George, a board member for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, which has fished the Willamette for thousands. of years They urged the Corps to return the river closer to its natural flow.

George credited the OPB and ProPublica report, and said she believes that without additional public pressure, the Corps would have continued to stall on already delayed studies.

“Our salmon heritage is literally on the line,” he said.

Asked about how the Corps planned to respond to Congress, spokesman Kerry Solan said in a statement that the agency was still reviewing it. the language of the project.

The 13 dams on the Willamette and its tributaries were built for the main purpose of holding back floodwaters in Oregon’s most populous valley, which includes the city of Portland. With high concrete walls, they have no dedicated paths for salmon migration.

Emptying the reservoirs at the river channel would allow the salmon to pass as before the dams. It would leave less water for recreational boating and irrigation during periods of normal rain and snow, but would open up more capacity to hold back water when a major flood comes. And the energy industry says running hydroelectric turbines on the Willamette dams, unlike the hydroelectric dams on the larger Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest, doesn’t make financial sense. .

The dams generate less than 1% of the North West’s power, enough for about 100,000 homes. But lighting a house with electricity from the Willamette dams costs about five times as much as the dams on the larger rivers of the Northwest.

Congress asked the Corps in 2020 and 2022 to study the possibility of closing its hydroelectric turbines on the Willamette. The agency missed its deadlines for those studies while proceeding with a 30-year plan for river operations that included hydroelectric power.

Oregon Rep. Val Hoyle, a Democrat whose district includes much of the Willamette River Valley, said in an emailed statement that it was “unacceptable” for the Corps to move forward without first producing the thorough review. at the end of the hydroelectric power that the legislators demanded.

“Congress must have the necessary information on hand to decide the future of hydroelectricity in the Willamette,” Hoyle said.

The bill also requires the Corps to study how it can reduce the problems that draining the reservoirs could cause downstream.

Because of a 2021 court order to protect endangered salmon, the Corps has been trying to make the river more fluid by draining reservoirs behind two dams each fall. The first time the reservoirs fell, in 2023, they dislodged masses of mud that had been trapped behind the dams. Rivers turned brown and small town drinking water plants worked around the clock to purify the supply.

Congress wants the Corps to study how to avoid causing those problems in the valley. That could include engineering new drinking water systems for the cities below the dams.

The Corps has the authority to engineer infrastructure for local communities and cover 75% of the cost for such improvements, but has never used this provision in Oregon.

A week before Biden signed the new bill, biologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published its own 673-page report saying the Corps’ preferred solution for the Willamette — one involving fish traps — would endanger threatened salmon and steelhead.

NOAA has proposed more than two dozen changes for the Corps, ranging from better species monitoring to altering the river’s flow to better accommodate migrating salmon. Solan said the agency is still reviewing NOAA’s opinion and deciding what action to take.

George, who has served on the Grand Ronde tribal council since 2016, said she is encouraged that the latest developments on the Willamette point to a future where salmon and people can coexist.

“In those darker days of our families living here on the Grand Ronde reservation, it was really going back to the Willamette to get salmon that helped keep our people alive,” George said. “It is our time and our role to speak up for our relatives and say that a future with the people and the Willamette salmon is essential.”