This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Sign up for Dispatchs to get articles like this as soon as they’re published.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it can make hydroelectric dams on Oregon’s Willamette River safe for endangered salmon by building giant mechanical traps and transporting juvenile fish downstream in tanker trucks. The Corps pushed ahead with the plan over the objections of fish advocates and electricity customers who said the plan was expensive and unproven.
That was until President Joe Biden signed a bill this month ordering the Corps to put the plan on hold and consider a simpler solution: Stop using dams for power.
The new law, signed into law on Jan. 4, follows reports from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica in 2023 that highlighted the risks and costs associated with the Corps’ plan. The agency says hydropower is expected to cost $700 million over 30 years, and scientific studies show that the type of solution the Corps is proposing will prevent the extinction of endangered salmon. It turns out it can’t be done.
The order also requires the Corps to use fish collection devices (which typically cost between $170 million and $450 million each) until studies are completed on what the river system would look like without hydropower. The company said its design for a giant floating vacuum cleaner, expected to be a giant floating vacuum cleaner, would have to be shelved. The Corps must then include that scenario in its long-term plans for the river.
A new directive from Congress has the potential to transform the rivers that support Oregon’s famously lush Willamette Valley. This is a step toward draining water from the reservoir behind the dam and bringing the water level closer to that of the river without the dam.
“There are very real and achievable solutions, and we need to move them forward as quickly as possible,” said Kathleen George, a councilor with the Grand Ronde Confederated Tribes, which have fished the Willamette River for thousands of years. he said. They asked the Corps to move the river closer to its natural flow.
George said he believes OPB and ProPublica’s reporting and believes that without additional public pressure, the Corps would have continued to stall on research that was already past its deadline.
“Our salmon heritage is literally at risk,” she said.
Doug Garlets, a biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, carries the anesthetized Chinook salmon to a loading chute, where it slides into a holding tank before being drained into a tanker and trucked upstream to the other side of Cougar Dam in Oregon. It will be done. This is one of many ways the Corps has tried to prevent the death of endangered fish due to hydroelectric dams in the Willamette River system. Credit: Kristyna Wentz-Graff/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Asked about how the Corps plans to respond to Congress, spokesperson Kelly Solan said in a statement that the Corps is still reviewing the bill’s language.
The 13 dams on the Willamette River and its tributaries were built primarily to control flooding in Oregon’s most populous valley, which includes the city of Portland. There are high concrete walls and no dedicated passage for the salmon to migrate.
Empty the reservoir to the river channel, allowing salmon to pass through as before the dam. During regular rain and snow events, less water is available for recreational boating and irrigation, but during major flooding events, there is more water retention capacity. And the power industry argues that it doesn’t make financial sense to run hydroelectric turbines at Willamette Dam, unlike the money-making hydroelectric dams on the larger Columbia and Snake Rivers in the Northwest.
The dam generates less than 1% of the northwest’s electricity, enough to power about 100,000 homes. But it costs about five times more to light a home with electricity from Willamette Dam than from dams on large rivers in the Northwest.
Congress asked the Corps in 2020 and 2022 to consider the possibility of shutting down Willamette’s hydroelectric turbines. The agency missed deadlines for these studies while proceeding with a 30-year plan for river projects, including hydropower.
Good journalism makes a difference.
Our nonprofit, independent newsroom has one job: to hold those in power accountable. Here’s how our research is driving real-world change.
We are trying something new. Was it helpful?
Oregon state Rep. Val Hoyle, a Democrat whose district includes much of the Willamette River Valley, said in an emailed statement that he would first give lawmakers a thorough look at eliminating hydropower, which they have called for. He said it was “unacceptable” for the corps to advance without a launch.
“Congress needs to have the information it needs to make decisions about the future of hydropower on the Willamette River,” Hoyle said.
The bill also requires the Corps to study ways to reduce problems that draining the reservoir could cause downstream.
Under a 2021 court order to protect endangered salmon, the Corps seeks to drain water from reservoirs behind two dams each fall to allow the river to flow more freely. The reservoir fell for the first time in 2023, releasing chunks of mud trapped behind the dam. The river turned brown and the small city’s drinking water plant worked around the clock to purify the water.
Congress is asking the Corps to consider ways to avoid creating such problems downstream. That could include designing a new drinking water system for the city below the dam.
The Corps has the authority to maintain community infrastructure and pay 75 percent of the cost of improvements, a provision that Oregon has never used.
A week before Mr. Biden signed the new bill, biologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a 673-page report stating that the Corps’ preferred solution for the Willamette River, using fish traps, would lead to extinction. He said it would put endangered salmon and steelhead at risk.
The Department of Energy has committed $32 million in solar subsidies to the tribal nation. It’s almost impossible to access.
NOAA recommended more than 20 changes to the Corps, ranging from increased monitoring of fish species to changing river flows to better accommodate salmon migration. Solan said the agency is still considering NOAA’s opinion and deciding what action to take.
George, who has served on the Grand Ronde Tribal Council since 2016, said he was encouraged by the Willamette’s latest developments, which point to a future in which salmon and humans can coexist.
“For our family here on the Grand Ronde Reservation, it was the very darkest days of our lives that brought us back to the Willamette to catch the salmon that kept us alive,” George said. said. “It is our time and our role to speak up for our relatives and say that our people’s future with Willamette Salmon is essential.”
