The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it could make hydroelectric dams on Oregon’s Willamette River safe for endangered salmon by building massive mechanical traps and transporting the fry downstream in tank trucks. The Corps began pushing despite objections from fishing advocates and power users who said the plan was expensive and untested.
That was until this month, President Joe Biden signed a law ordering the Corps to pause its projects and consider a simpler solution: stop using the dams for electricity.
The new law, finalized on January 4, follows reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica in 2023 which highlighted the risks and costs associated with the Corps’ plan. The agency is projected to lose $700 million over 30 years producing hydropower, and a scientific study found that the type of solutions the Corps is proposing would not stop the extinction of endangered salmon.
The mandate says the Corps must shelve designs for its fish catchers — essentially massive floating vacuum cleaners expected to cost between $170 million and $450 million each — until it finishes studying what it would look like the river system without hydroelectricity. The Corps must then include this scenario in its long-term designs for the river.
Congress’ new direction has the potential to transform the river that feeds Oregon’s famous and lush Willamette Valley. This is a step toward draining reservoirs behind dams and bringing water levels closer to those of an undammed river.
“There is a very real and very viable solution, and we need to implement it as soon as possible,” said Kathleen George, a council member for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, which has fished the Willamette for thousands of years. years. They urged the Corps to return the river closer to its natural flow.
George credited the OPB and ProPublica reports and said she believed that without additional public pressure, the Corps would have continued to block already overdue studies.
“Our salmon heritage is literally on the line,” she said.
Asked how the Corps planned to respond to Congress, spokesman Kerry Solan said in a statement that the agency was still reviewing the language of the bill.
The 13 dams on the Willamette and its tributaries were built with the primary purpose of holding back floodwaters in Oregon’s most populated valley, which includes the city of Portland. Equipped with high concrete walls, they do not have lanes reserved for migrating salmon.
Draining the reservoirs into the river channel would allow salmon to pass through as much as before the dams. This would leave less water for boating and irrigation during normal periods of rain and snow, but it would allow more water to be retained in the event of a major flood. And the power industry says running hydroelectric turbines on Willamette dams, unlike lucrative hydroelectric dams on the greater Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest, doesn’t make financial sense.
Dams generate less than 1% of the Northwest’s electricity, enough to power about 100,000 homes. But lighting a home with electricity from Willamette dams costs about five times as much as dams on the Northwest’s largest rivers.
Congress directed the Corps in 2020 and 2022 to study the possibility of shutting down its hydroelectric turbines on the Willamette. The agency missed deadlines for these studies while pursuing a 30-year plan for river development including hydroelectricity.
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 go before without first conducting an in-depth study on the end of hydroelectricity requested by legislators.
“Congress needs to have the information it needs to decide the future of hydropower in the Willamette,” Hoyle said.
The bill also requires the Corps to study how it can mitigate problems that emptying reservoirs could cause downstream.
Because of a 2021 court order to protect endangered salmon, the Corps has attempted to make the river smoother by draining reservoirs behind two dams each fall. The first time the reservoirs fell, in 2023, they released masses of mud 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 these problems downstream. This could include designing new drinking water systems for towns downstream of the dams.
The Corps has the authority to design infrastructure for local communities and cover 75 percent of the cost of those improvements, but it has never used this provision in Oregon.
A week before Biden signs the new bill, biologists from 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 endangered salmon and steelhead.
NOAA has proposed more than two dozen changes for the Corps, ranging from better species monitoring to changing river 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 humans can coexist.
“In the darkest days of our families living here on the Grand Ronde Reservation, it was truly coming back to Willamette to catch the salmon that helped keep our people alive,” George said. “It’s time and our role to speak on behalf of our loved ones and say that a future with people and Willamette salmon is essential.”