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By Matthew Weaver
Sep 12, 2024

"We say, 'As salmon runs go, so go the Salmon People,'" said Joe Oatman, deputy program manager for the Nez Perce Tribe. "If salmon are suffering, we're suffering. If salmon have broken homes, we have broken homes."

Salmon used to be a core part of the tribe's economy, he said.

"We suffer from higher rates of unemployment and poverty. We have the lowest per capita income. We suffer from higher rates of diabetes and inflammatory cardiovascular diseases. We have higher rates of alcoholism, drug use and suicide. Restoring fish and our fishing is a really necessary part of restoring balance back to the lives of our people.

"There's not a single Nez Perce that can make a living off of salmon," he said. "Not just putting those fish on the table to feed themselves, but also to earn some money to acquire all the basic things you need in life. ... We want to be able to have livelihoods, safe and healthy communities, being able to carry on all of those things that matter to us. That's what bringing fish back will do."

Austin Smith Jr., general manager of natural resources for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Austin Smith Jr./Contributed Photo

Austin Smith Jr., general manager of natural resources for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, points to creation stories in which salmon were the first fish to give themselves to humans as they settled the lands.

Salmon is always on the table in some form, he said. It's used in celebrations and ceremonies.

"We were given the creation story that water, fish, deer, elk, roots, berries and all the other first foods, if we were to take care of those foods, all the cycles would continue and everything would be in sync," he said.

Salmon also play a role in the nutrient cycle, Smith added.

"As resources leave a watershed, resources return with salmon," he said. "Life returns with salmon. ... If salmon disappeared in these areas, so would life, so would the balance, so would the cycles."

Wild harvest limits

The tribes estimate about 6,000 wild fish will return to the Snake River and its tributaries this year, Oatman said. Of that, tribes can target 183 from fisheries across the region under abundance-based harvest value scales, from May to August.

"We can take one wild fish in the Tucannon Sub-Basin, and if we have a single tribal member go there and take that one fish, that fishery closes, and that's really the only fishing opportunity we have," he said. The Tucannon River empties into the Snake River between the Little Goose and Lower Monumental dams.

In Northeastern Oregon sub-basins, the tribe might be able to harvest up to 55 wild fish.

In the Salmon River Sub-Basin and its four tributaries, the tribe can harvest 65 wild fish. Half of the entire wild fish harvest comes from one river system, Oatman said.

There might not be enough hatchery fish for a hatchery run on the South Fork Salmon River, which is "a pretty odd circumstance," he said. "Right now we're trying to figure out how to go after 42 wild fish and keep our impacts to hatchery fish as low as we can."

For nine populations in the Middle Fork Salmon River, tribes can only harvest a range of zero to one or two wild fish, up to 37 wild fish all together. For some populations, once one fish is caught, it shuts down the fishery for the year.

"It's a difficult management conundrum to operate," Oatman said.

The Nez Perce Tribe targets 9,000 fish, and had harvested 5,500 in late June. By season's end, it hoped to have 8,700 hatchery and 200 wild salmon, including unlisted natural runs to the Clearwater River. About 90% or more of the harvest will be hatchery fish.

The tribe's Jay Hesse pointed to the 2022 National Marine Fisheries Service report assessing rebuilding salmon and steelhead to abundant levels. No one particular action could be taken to rebuild things, but a suite of actions would be needed, Hesse said.

Multiyear study

Hesse pointed to a "multiyear process" to study replacing the services of the four Snake River dams and expand the energy sector in the Pacific Northwest to meet state and tribes' decarbonization goals.

"It is our expectation that those products will inform and allow Congress to think about authorizing taking those dams out," he said

The region is already in an energy crisis, he said, with unprecedented load growth occurring now that was not modeled even two years ago by the energy sector.

"Without huge increases in clean energy generation in the basin, the lights are going to go out," he said. "What we're simply asking for is, make a small modification in that transformation that has to occur anyway, and do it in a way that works for salmon. That doesn't seem like a huge ask for Congress, once you put it in the context of what people on the whole landscape need for day-to-day lives."

'Changes the fish deserve'

Hesse believes dam advocates "like to point fingers to some other impact and say that's the problem."

Improvements are needed in all sectors, he said.

"But we can't get there if we don't address the hydrosystem," he said. "We've got 50 years-plus of having the Snake River dams here, and tried a whole bunch of things to improve fish survival during that 50 years. Yet we're still on the brink of extinction. I think we've given it a good go of trying everything but hydro. The time is now, and we're running out of time to actually make changes the fish deserve."

That includes addressing dams, predators, agricultural runoff, developments, and working with irrigators, cities and the Environmental Protection Agency, while allowing the tribes to be "part of that voice," Smith said.

"We're going to keep being resilient like the fish," Smith said. "We're going to hold the federal government, any agencies involved in the water systems ... we think about those seven generations ahead of us. We can't stop, because I want my grandkids to have fish to fish on, salmon available."

Wallowa County Chieftain: 'First food: What the fish mean for tribes' article link

Toxic algal blooms in the Lower Snake River Oct. 2023 © Dr. Judy Parrish, Lighthawk

By Courtney Flatt
August 17, 2024

Toxic algae is turning up once again on the Snake River.

Water sampling on Aug. 12 revealed a large algal bloom near Granite Point, also known as Granite Rock, on the Snake River. It’s a popular swimming spot roughly 28 miles from Lewiston, Idaho. Public health leaders said it’s been especially busy since college and university students have returned to campus.

The algae, microcystins, is a liver toxin that can harm people, pets and livestock in high concentrations. Toxins can also accumulate in fish. It’s the same type of algae that turned up on the Snake River last year.

Washington health leaders are advising people to stay out of water that’s got a green scum on the surface. The bloom is popping up in different spots along a roughly 50 mile stretch of the Snake, between Nisqually John Landing and Little Goose Dam.

The Whitman County Public Health department took a baseline sample in June, said Chris Skidmore, the director for the department. No toxins showed up in those samples, he said.

If ingested in high concentrations, it can cause liver damage or death. In lower concentrations, health leaders said it might irritate skin.

These blooms often happen when there’s too much runoff into rivers and lakes, Skidmore said.

“Recently, when we have these thunderstorm rain events after a very long dry period, my theory right now is that it’s flushing extra nutrients into the water,” he said.

The bloom could last for months. Signs have been posted to warn people. But Miles Johnson, the legal director for Columbia Riverkeeper, said an ongoing bloom could close public access to waterways.

“People should be able to go to the river and swim and take their pets there without fear of encountering toxic algae blooms or other toxic pollution,” he said.

One way to help decrease the chances for large algal blooms in the Snake River would be to remove the four Lower Snake River dams, Johnson said.

“In the Lower Snake River, there is something real that we could do, for a lot of reasons,” Johnson said, referring to the ongoing debate about removing the four dams. “The dams slow down the river. They make it too hot, and they’re leading to these toxic algae bloom events that prevent people from using the river.”

Whitman County Public Health leaders said it will continue to check water quality each week, testing for toxins in various locations. In addition, Skidmore said, satellite photos could help show the size of the bloom.

“A lot of times you can see a clear outline of that bloom and how far it’s stretching down the river,” Skidmore said. “Last year, it was pretty helpful to us.”

To stay safe, health leaders ask people to not go in water where there is a visible bloom. They said to wash skin and clothing if you come into contact with water that is smelly or discolored. Health leaders added that boiling water from an algal bloom will not remove the toxins. Shellfish should not be eaten from waters with algal blooms.

NWPB: 'Toxic algal bloom found on the Snake River for second year in a row' article link

By Pete Danko – Staff Reporter, Portland Business Journal
Jul 25, 2024

Oregon's and Washington's U.S. senators on Thursday called on the Bonneville Power Administration to slow its roll on a "monumental" decision the regional power behemoth could soon make.

In a letter to BPA Administrator John Hairston, the four Democratic senators avoided stating a preference among two competing wholesale energy markets that are developing in the West. But they threw a barrage of questions at the agency and called on it "to refrain from making any draft or final decisions until there is less uncertainty and BPA can prove that any decision will provide the greatest benefit to the entire Northwest."

The issue is whether to join a "day-ahead" market being organized by California's major grid operator, or one a regional transmission organization in the Midwest is developing.

What a day-head market could mean
There's widespread agreement that such a market could pave the way to more efficient use of energy resources amid the pressures of load growth, decarbonization and transmission constraints. But the scale of the benefits could hinge on how united the West's dozens of utilities and grid operators are.

That's where the decision by BPA, which sells power from 31 federal dams and owns a big chunk of the transmission grid in the Pacific Northwest, comes into play.

BPA staff in April recommended Markets+ from the Southwest Power Pool as its best choice. The agency said then it would release a draft record of decision in August and a final decision in November.

Meanwhile, Oregon's two big investor-owned utilities, Portland General Electric and multistate player PacifiCorp,have thrown in with the California Independent Operator's Extended Day Ahead Market. The major IOUs in Nevada and Idaho also say they're leaning toward the EDAM.

The senators have questions
There's some debate over how harmful the "seam" such a split could create would be, but those who fear the outcome have clearly gotten the attention of the senators — Oregon's Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and Washington's Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

Their 14 questions to BPA reflect the concerns expressed by regional energy players such as Renewable Northwest and Angus Duncan, a former Northwest Power and Conservation Council member.

The senators' letter also lauds "real progress" by the West-Wide Governing Pathways Initiative in addressing concerns of BPA and its public power customers about whether the EDAM can operate fairly and independently of California politics.

Still, the senators stopped short of recommending a move toward either market.

"Given the critical importance of this decision for the region, we want to be crystal clear: this letter should not be construed as favoring one market over the other," they wrote. "We share a strong belief that any decision of this magnitude warrants thorough evaluation of all options, including joining neither market at this time."

Asked for comment on the letter, a BPA spokesperson provided this written statement:

"BPA understands the magnitude of this decision and is committed to ensuring we do the right thing for our customers and the region through the deliberative process we have engaged in so far. BPA is committed to fully evaluating the benefits and mechanics of day-ahead markets to accomplish this objective."

Portland Business Journal: 'OR, WA senators question Bonneville Power Administration on 'monumental' decision' article link

Sockeye salmon with lesions dying © Conrad Gowell

By Courtney Flatt
July 31, 2024

On the banks of the Snake River in far eastern Washington, sockeye salmon have had a rough summer. The water behind the last major concrete dam they have to swim past is way too hot.

“It’s running 74 degrees. That’s getting up to lethal temperatures for sockeye,” said David Venditti, a biologist with Idaho Fish and Game.

To keep the fish out of potentially deadly waters, this team is giving salmon some wheels. They’re hauling sockeye from Lower Granite Dam to the Eagle Creek Hatchery in central Idaho. The whole endeavor costs thousands of dollars.

At a holding pool, technicians scoop a fish at a time into a white tank on the back of a green pickup truck. Technician Tara Beckman stands in the truck bed. She dumps the salmon from the net into the tank.

“They are wily,” Beckman said, as the fish thrashed in the net.

These fish need that energy to make their journey inland. Snake River sockeye are born in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. The young salmon swim out to the ocean, where they live for up to three years.

When they’re ready to spawn, they make what sounds like an impossible journey.

“These salmon, they travel like 900 miles. It’s insane,” said Elizabeth Holdren, a supervisory biologist with the Army Corps of Engineers.

The salmon also climb roughly 6,500 feet in elevation until they reach the stream where they were born, Holdren said. Then, they spawn and die.

This is the third summer biologists have trucked these endangered fish to cooler waters. The biologists first transported them in 2015, and then in 2021.

Scientists say it’s a peek into the future of a changing climate. Jay Hesse, with the Nez Perce Tribe, said less snowpack in the mountains means less water in Northwest rivers.

“Low stream flows result in elevated water temperatures because of reservoir habitats that tend to heat up faster and retain that heat,” Hesse said.

Climate change is one of the compounding problems for salmon, he said.

David Johnson manages the fisheries department for the Nez Perce Tribe. He said many tribal members rely on salmon for their primary food, nutrition and livelihoods.

“Salmon and these tribes are hand-in-glove. Quite honestly, they’ve supported each other for countless years,” Johnson said.

Now, Snake River sockeye are on the brink of extinction, said Joseph Bogaard, the executive director of the fish advocacy group Save Our Wild Salmon. These salmon are some of the most endangered fish in the Northwest, he said.

“They’re giving us a message. Our ecosystems, our climate, our waters aren’t healthy. And they’re also telling us we’ve gotta do things differently and quickly or things are going to continue to unravel,” Bogaard said.

Trapping and hauling salmon for hundreds of miles is just a stopgap measure, he said.

“It’s really important right now. It is not a long-term strategy,” Bogaard said.

A long-term strategy to save salmon, he said, would be to breach the four dams on the lower Snake River.

However, the dams provide energy, transportation and irrigation for many communities across the region.

Some who rely on the dams say they aren’t the main reason the salmon aren’t doing well. They point to changing temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, the need for new culverts or better habitats to help salmon make it upstream.

Michelle Hennings, the executive director of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, said there isn’t a silver bullet to protect these endangered fish.

“The dams aren’t one issue,” she said. “There are multiple issues that happen within why salmon could be at lower levels.”

Back at the Snake River, biologists add a few more fish to fill up the truck’s tank, and hop in the cab to start their drive.

“We’re taking fish from as early in the run as we can,” Venditti said.

To gather the sockeye, technicians gently guide fish into what’s called a salmon sock. The sock is a slender, blue bag and it’s about 4 feet long. It keeps the fish’s gills wet while a technician carries it to a tank on the back of a truck.

“You get an arm and a leg workout,” said Rebekah Windover, one of the technicians.

She plops the fish into the tank for its long ride to Idaho.

“They all look happy in there,” Beckman said, peering into the tank.

The truck is packed with 800 pounds of ice split between several coolers. Keeping the fish cool between the occasional traffic jam or road work project are the biggest challenges for the team.

“It’s nerve wracking. These aren’t just fish. It makes a long day even longer,” Venditti said.

This month, Venditti says they transported six truckloads of salmon. Although they’ve stopped trucking sockeye for the season, he said, temperatures in Washington are expected to creep back into the 100s.

NWPB: 'Biologists truck Snake River sockeye to cooler Idaho waters' article link

Farmers and transportation experts are figuring out how to transport goods if the lower Snake River dams are removed.

By Kim Cross
July 29, 2024

Last fall, on a tour of his grain farm on Idaho’s rippling Camas Prairie, Bill Flory stood in a buzz-cut field of recently harvested wheat. A sturdy man with a whitening mustache, the 70-year-old farmer grows wheat, barley, chickpeas, lentils and other rotating crops on land his great-grandfather first tilled in 1904 with a horse-drawn plow. Today, farm trucks haul the wheat about 40 miles to the Port of Lewiston, where it’s funneled onto barges. At peak harvest season, four wheat-filled barges a day leave the port and travel through the locks of eight dams — four on the Lower Snake River, four on the Columbia — on their 465-mile journey to the Port of Portland. There, the grain is loaded on ocean-going ships bound for international markets.

Soon, though, all that could change.

Scientists, tribes and environmentalists see removing the four Lower Snake River dams — a last resort, after decades of other options have failed — may be the best and only chance to prevent the extinction of salmon in the Pacific Northwest. But many local farmers and businesses rely on the dams, locks and reservoirs for transportation, irrigation, recreation and electricity, and they say they cannot afford to lose them.

“It would be like taking out the 405 freeway in Los Angeles. Sure, you could do it. But there’d be consequences.”

Flory isn’t necessarily opposed to dam removal, but he argues that it’s a lot more complicated than proponents suggest. As one of the stakeholders, he has been having tough conversations about transportation logistics and how they would have to change if the dams come down.

“It would be like taking out the 405 freeway in Los Angeles,” Flory said. “Sure, you could do it. But there’d be consequences.”

Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe, says dam removal is necessary to restore salmon, a species integral to the tribe’s diet, culture and economy for tens of thousands of years.

As part of the Treaty of 1855, the Nez Perce were promised the right to hunt and fish in all “usual and accustomed places.” “We signed up to have fish in perpetuity, not fish on life support,” Wheeler said. “The question we need to pose is how we change the way we do business to ensure the impacts of transportation aren’t contributing to the declining population of a keystone species.”

Flory and Wheeler both participated in a panel discussion about salmon and dams hosted by the Society of Environmental Journalists last spring. They have a cordial business relationship: Flory, who previously served as the chairman of the Idaho Wheat Commission, leases farmland from the tribe and also owns land within reservation boundaries that his grandfather purchased from a homesteader. They represent two of many stakeholder groups that have spent years debating the future of the lower Snake River dams.

“We signed up to have fish in perpetuity, not fish on life support.”

The dam debate — which was basically gridlocked for two decades — is finally evolving from a binary battle into a more collaborative conversation about how to solve an extremely complex puzzle. The driving question has largely shifted from whether or not to remove the dams to how best to mitigate the economic impacts of removal.

The pivot toward collaboration began in April 2019, when Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson, R, announced his intention to restore salmon populations by coming up with a plan that keeps all stakeholders whole. Simpson and his staff then embarked on a three-year fact-finding mission that included 300 meetings with tribes, farmers, officials and other stakeholders. Those meetings informed the proposal Simpson announced in February 2021: a $33.5 billion framework for recovering salmon by breaching the lower Snake River dams and finding other ways to satisfy the needs they serve, including transportation and hydropower.

Simpson proposed allocating $3.6 billion for Snake River transportation, including improvements to the grain transportation network and subsidies to farmers to offset the increased transportation costs. For farmers like Flory on Idaho’s Camas, Simpson envisioned new spur rail lines connecting existing tracks with the Port of Lewiston, where wheat could continue to the Tri-Cities on the BNSF railway, which runs alongside the Snake River.

When Flory imagines a future without the dams — and the shipping they provide — he worries about volume and timing. Each year, around 2.4 million tons of freight travels down the river. About 90% of it is wheat, and most of it is barged downriver to international ports. In the absence of barging, that load — about 10% of the nation’s wheat exports — would transition to trains and trucks. But Flory is uncertain whether the existing railways and roads can handle the extra freight.

Washington’s Department of Transportation is currently engaged in a transportation impact analysis regarding that very issue. Jim Mahugh, lead engineer on the study, said that economic factors complicate what might otherwise be a straightforward engineering question. Infrastructure needs will depend on what percentage of the 2.4 million tons of freight is shipped by train versus truck. It’s hard to predict how that will parse out, because it will be driven by economic factors — international markets, fluctuations in supply and demand, and the price of grain.

Farmers in Washington’s Palouse have an advantage: The state owns a short-line rail system that moves 25% of the wheat grown in Washington. But farmers like Flory, on Idaho’s Camas, would likely have to rely on the stretch of the BNSF railway that connects the Port of Lewiston to Washington’s Tri-Cities, where wheat and other products could be loaded onto barges traveling down the Columbia River or continue by train to Portland.

Flory said he’s open to that idea, though he wonders if the BNSF railroad — a single unidirectional track — has the capacity to handle the four barges’ worth of grain a day that leave Lewiston during peak season.

Plus, there’s the extra time it will require: Railroad hopper cars take longer to load than barges. “In three and a half days, my grain can be on an ocean vessel and heading toward export customers,” he says. That speed and efficiency enables him to respond quickly to volatile export markets. If frozen railroads in Canada derail a shipment of wheat from a competing farm, could Flory Farms fill that void as quickly by rail? Would shipping delays cost him business with foreign customers?

The effect of increased volume on railroad infrastructure is also a concern. During a 1992 test drawdown of the reservoirs, the loss of water pressure against the shore caused the ground to shift and slump, threatening the structural integrity of the railroad tracks built on top of it. Any necessary repairs could cause even more shipping delays.

“If we are working toward equitable business in this country, we must consider all impacted parties and the true cost associated with doing business.”

But Flory’s biggest worries are economic: If barging is removed as an option, he expects his costs to go up and his margins to shrink. According to the 2022 Lower Snake River Dams Benefit Replacement Report, shipping by rail is considerably more expensive: 50 to 75 cents per bushel, compared 30 to 45 cents per bushel by barge.

Flory said he would find it challenging to keep his prices low and market share high in Asia, where his club wheat — a soft, low-gluten variety grown almost exclusively in the Pacific Northwest — is used to make Japanese sponge cakes, and his hard red winter wheat becomes high-end ramen noodles. If his prices were no longer competitive overseas, he would have to find markets closer to home, or else grow other crops.

Some point out that barging prices are artificially low because the federal government and regional ratepayers fund the annual $83 million cost of maintaining and operating the Lower Snake River dams. Environmental activist Lin Laughy, who has looked closely at the economics, calculated a subsidy of $40,000 per barge.“It’s an implicit subsidy,” said Eric Crawford, strategic partners coordinator for Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit conservation group involved in many of the conversations about salmon and dams. “What about reimagining how we spend that money?”

“If we are working toward equitable business in this country, we must consider all impacted parties and the true cost associated with doing business,” Wheeler said. “That includes considering the needs of the salmon, because they can’t change their ways. We can.”

“Let’s continue the conversation,” Flory said. “Let’s force some people to come to the table, not sit in the corner and yell, ‘No!’”

HCN: When the dams come down, what happens to barge traffic? article link

Aging structures dubbed “deadbeat dams” choke off habitat and threaten human life in some instances. Native nations are at the forefront of the effort to address these lingering dams.

Kwoneesum Dam once had a purpose. It created a lake for girls attending a summer camp to swim, canoe and sail. But just two decades after the dam was built in the mid-1960s, the camp closed, and the land was sold to a timber company.

Ever since, it has obstructed this tributary of the Washougal River east of Vancouver, blocking 6.5 miles of habitat for coho salmon and summer steelhead — fish that have nourished citizens of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and other Native nations in the region for generations.

Kwoneesum is just one example of the dams that have outlived their usefulness. These aging structures, dubbed “deadbeat dams” by some working toward their removal, choke off habitat, and threaten human life in some instances. It’s a problem gaining more recognition across the country.

“Most dams are built for a community need. Big ones serve a state or a region,” said Cowlitz Indian Tribe spiritual leader Tanna Engdahl, as sunlight filtered through her woven cedar basket hat while she faced a crowd at the Kwoneesum Dam site last month. “I call this a vanity lake — created for a very small segment of the population. And its use is long past its privileged date.”

Many of the smaller old dams blocking watersheds throughout the Pacific Northwest were built for hydropower but no longer churn out electricity because they became too costly to operate. Others were used for irrigation or drinking water — or for recreation or aesthetics.

Removal is often expensive and difficult. Typically it’s unclear or debated who is responsible for restoring the rivers and ecosystem damaged by the dams.

Larger dam removals are even more difficult. For example, breaching the four Lower Snake River dams in the Columbia Basin is off the table as Native nations, states and the federal government work to develop clean energy alternatives as part of a historic agreement reached late last year.

These smaller projects are rising in importance. Impounded rivers are warming, growing toxic algae and locking up some of the last best habitats for salmon. While each presents unique challenges, there is more federal funding available than ever before for these projects — and momentum is building to take action.

Since 1912, 2,119 dams have been demolished in the U.S., according to data provided by American Rivers. Of those, more than 150 dams were in the Pacific Northwest, including 39 in Washington.

“The culture and the awareness of especially fisheries issues in the Northwest is greater than anywhere else in the country,” said Brian Graber, senior director of river restoration at American Rivers. “That means the [ability of] people to get together to do projects in the Northwest, it’s stronger than elsewhere.”

Just this year, fish passage projects like dam removals across Washington state received $75 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. Nearly $40 million of it will go to nine projects led by tribal nations.

This builds on the nearly $40 million awarded for Washington projects — including Kwoneesum — in the first round of funding in 2022, and one more round of funding for federal fish passage barrier removal projects is coming under the infrastructure law.

As Engdahl looked around the land near the Kwoneesum dam, she told a story of what its removal means for the Cowlitz people.

“It’s going to be years before the growing Earth can come back from the depth of violations against it,” Engdahl said. “But that doesn’t stop us from enjoying the victory of reparations.”

Leaning on Native nations
Native nations are at the forefront of the effort to address these lingering dams.

The area near the Kwoneesum dam and its reservoir holds ancestral and historical significance to the Cowlitz tribe.

So in 2017, the tribe called on the Columbia Land Trust to buy the property, which it did in 2020, and now the tribe is leading the dam removal this summer.

The work when completed will immediately provide fish, including coho salmon and summer steelhead, with more space to rear and spawn.

“I don’t know how to explain what it means to us because it means centuries,” Engdahl said. “To bring it back in my lifetime? I’m here to see it return to what it should be so there’s no words to explain that.”

In fact, Native nations across the Pacific Northwest have led the largest dam removals on the continent.

Condit Dam came down in 2011. The Lower Elwha Klallam people saw through the removal of two dams on the Elwha River near Port Angeles. And the Native nations of the Klamath fought for decades for the river to be freed this year from its Oregon headwaters to the sea in Northern California. These rivers are roaring back to life.

Though Kwoneesum Dam is small compared to these, Cowlitz and Columbia Land Trust leaders believe the removal will benefit species throughout the Washougal River and beyond.

Building partnerships with state and federal agencies, private and nonprofit organizations is the key to addressing dam removals or other fish passage issues, said Jason Gobin, Tulalip Tribes executive director of natural and cultural resources. The tribes, he said, have taken the lead to bring all of these people together who might not otherwise be in the same room.

In Snohomish County, the Tulalip Tribes – descendants of the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish and other allied bands – secured $2 million in funding to rescue the Pilchuck River from an aging drinking water diversion dam. Removal was finished in 2020.

Just two years later, nearly 200 Chinook salmon returned above the old dam site to spawn a new generation in the gravel substrates of the river. That’s up from just 50 — the worst year on record — returning in 2019. The tribes expect it will take more than a decade to restore an abundant run, but it’s a start.

“It’s just so tangible – people see it. All you have to do is remove a dam,” said Brett Shattuck, senior scientist for the Tulalip Tribes, “those fish come back immediately.”

The tribes have replicated this work across the region, using laser-assisted mapping technology to pinpoint the best available habitat and any existing barriers like dams and culverts.

Tulalip has restored an estimated 100 stream miles through this work, with funding possible for another 150 miles.

“We want to make sure that there are salmon for our people and for all of Washington as we go forward. The salmon has been instrumental and an important cultural species to the tribes; it was our sustenance that allowed our people to survive in this environment,” Gobin said.

“But salmon isn’t always the biggest dollar maker for a developer, or the state, or the county. We would be in a much more dire situation without the tribes being involved.”

Competing values
Cost is often the biggest barrier to dam removal. But sometimes, for these dams serving no or little purpose, debate can stymie restoration efforts.

On the mighty Skagit River, settlers built a series of dams to power Seattle and other cities around Puget Sound more than 100 miles away. Salmon and steelhead were severed from these pristine reaches of the river.

The dam on Newhalem Creek is believed to be the first.

It powered up the company town for people who constructed Seattle City Light’s Gorge, Diablo and Ross dams impounding the river as it flows south from British Columbia. But the tiny dam on Newhalem Creek hasn’t been fully operational since 2010 when it was damaged by a landslide.

A federal license to operate the project expires in just a couple of years, and City Light has decided it’s not worth saving.

As the Upper Skagit Tribe’s creation story goes, the transformer Docubuth came to the Upper Skagit River to make the conditions right for Upper Skagit people, where life began.

Upper Skagit leaders would like to see the canyon restored to a natural condition, returned to the Indigenous landscape it once was – before the river was dried up and diverted through a pipe for power generation, said Scott Schuyler, the tribe’s natural and cultural resources policy representative. Removing the Newhalem Creek dam would be the first step in healing the place from Seattle City Light’s scars on the landscape.

But Seattle City Light, which has agreed to remove the dam, contends the powerhouse and other pieces could offer historical value to visitors, and would like to keep it.

“100 years ago, there was this effort to electrify Seattle and the Newhalem facility did make that possible,” said Chris Townsend, director of Natural Resources and Hydro Licensing for Seattle City Light.

City Light is working with tribes and other interested parties to determine what comes next.

Schuyler said he and others are concerned that a partial removal might set a precedent of other organizations not feeling the need to restore the environment back to the way they found it.

“There are costs associated with removal, but from our perspective, if you can build it, you can remove it,” Schuyler said. “It is man-made and nothing lasts forever that we build.”

Who steps in to help small utilities
Many of these dams are owned by rural public utilities with few resources for removal. They can become a burden for both the utilities and their ratepayers.

For nearly half a century the Mill Pond dam on a tributary of the Pend Oreille River in the northeast corner of Washington sat idle. It left behind a 64-acre pond, blocking the passage of threatened species of trout, heating up stream temperatures and starving the downstream gorge of sediment.

Dam removal was the only clear option to address these impacts, but it was controversial. After Pend Oreille PUD realized reviving the dam wasn’t in the cards, a federal commission agreed to allow the more than 9,000 customer utility to abandon its dam and the struggling creek it impounded.

American Whitewater, a nonprofit that advocates to protect and restore rivers and streams in the U.S. and launched the “Deadbeat Dam Law Project” earlier this year, was concerned about the precedent it would set and successfully appealed the decision. The Kalispel Tribe, federal and state agencies would later map out a path for removal, with responsibility for landing on Seattle City Light, who saw an opportunity in the project.

In this case, Seattle City Light, which operates its largest hydroelectric project on the Pend Oreille River, inherited the $16 million dam removal as part of work to offset its impacts on endangered bull trout in the river system.

In 2019, the creek began flowing freely for the first time in a century, reconnecting nearly 50 stream miles. In many places, it found its historical channel.

It’s what Thomas O’Keefe of American Whitewater calls a win-win, for the utility and the river.

But this approach doesn’t work on every impounded stream.

The Enloe dam on the Similkameen River was built in the 1920s and hasn’t produced electricity in over half a century.

It was constructed to light up nearby mining camps and today holds back an estimated half a million cubic yards of sediment, maybe including contaminants from a century of mining activity. While Okanogan PUD acknowledges there is interest in removing Enloe, there is no requirement to do so.

Taking out Enloe would open up an additional 1,520 miles of habitat for endangered steelhead, most of which is on the Canadian side of the border.

The Similkameen runs from its western headwaters in Manning Park across the border to spill into the Okanogan River, which feeds the robust agricultural lands of the river valley along the way. Water from the tributaries have been diverted for agriculture, leading to reduced streamflows or, in extreme cases, dry creekbeds.

Today, water temperatures in the mainstem Okanogan often exceed the lethal heat tolerance for steelhead and spring chinook. Salmon often are relegated to the cooler tributaries.

Climate-change models predict in 20 years much of the habitat currently used by salmon and steelhead will become near or exceed the fish’s lethal tolerance.

Meanwhile, the reaches of the system in higher elevations, are forecasted to be cooler, and much more habitable for fish and other critters amid a warming climate. But they’re locked behind Enloe.

With a boost from federal funding, project partners from Trout Unlimited, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and Similkameen First Nations have stepped in to evaluate options for removing the dam, and the years of contaminated sediment held behind it.

“The major barriers are simply inertia. It’s been here for 100 years so it’s hard to instigate a sense of urgency,” O’Keefe said. “It’s a very real factor on Enloe. The structure has been there for 100 years and we’ve been talking about removing it since the ’70s. What’s another five years?”

“Should every one of these take 20 plus years, like it did on the Elwha, like it did on Condit, like it has on Klamath?”