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Water flows through the fish ladder at the Bonneville Lock and Dam on the Columbia River Wednesday June 12, 2024. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times, 2024)

By Isabella Breda
Seattle Times climate reporter

The Bonneville Power Administration, the regional wholesaler of federal hydropower, wants to raise its electricity rates 6.3%, which would trickle down to Northwest residents’ utility bills.

In a filing this month, Bonneville attributed the proposed increase to anticipated costs from court-ordered measures intended to help imperiled salmon in the Columbia River Basin. The measures include spilling more water over hydropower dams instead of through turbines, a practice that has long been employed to help salmon migration. Bonneville is seeking to recover $250 million through fiscal year 2028.

Last June, President Donald Trump killed a landmark agreement intended to provide a road map for the future of salmon recovery and energy supply in the Columbia Basin. The decision to pull out of the agreement with tribal nations, the states of Washington and Oregon and conservation groups restarted decades of litigation and resulted in a court this February ordering these measures intended to help salmon. Had the agreement still been in place, the rate hike wouldn’t be on the table.

Bonneville markets about one-third of the electricity generated in the Northwest, primarily from federal hydroelectric projects. It operates almost 75% of the high-voltage transmission in its service area.

Its biggest customer is the Snohomish County Public Utility District, which serves more than 880,000 residents in Snohomish County and Camano Island. Though customers would not see an immediate impact on their bills, the rate increase could impact customers in future years, said Kellie Stickney, a Snohomish County PUD spokesperson.

The utility and other entities will assess the details of the proposed rate increase and advocate for their customers, Stickney said.

Seattle City Light, which purchases about 30% of its energy from Bonneville, said the increases would not show up on utility bills in the next few years. The costs would be absorbed through the utility’s “rate stabilization account,” a cash reserve, said spokesperson Kate Jacobs.

What Northwest residents ultimately see on their electricity bills would vary by utility, but the rate hike would certainly add to the pressures utilities are feeling across the board, said Scott Simms, the CEO and executive director of the Public Power Council, which represents Northwest public utilities. “We just continue to see heightened demands and pressures on the region’s hydro system,” Simms said, describing drought and extreme weather, such as heat domes, straining the system.

The now-defunct Biden-era agreement over Columbia Basin dams provided much more advantageous hydropower operations, primarily in August when Northwest residents are running their air conditioners and river levels are lower, Simms said. The council is a defendant-intervenor in the litigation. He said he hopes these operations are a starting point for discussions outside the courtroom.

Conservation groups say Bonneville is scapegoating salmon to deflect from the agency’s poor planning in a decision that would ultimately burden the region’s ratepayers.

“It’s peculiar from a business standpoint to tease out this one factor when there are a multitude of variables that go into where Bonneville ends up at the end of the fiscal year,” said Michael Mayer, an attorney for Earthjustice, which represents energy, conservation and fishing groups in the litigation. “It’s premature to say right now that salmon are going to be this sole cause and effect. We think it’s early and it’s potentially wrong.”

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, in a letter to a hydropower advocacy group, stated that the proposed rate increase is a “direct consequence of the Trump Administration’s failure to follow the law.”

A Bonneville spokesperson said the agency couldn’t comment due to rules prohibiting communication during the rate proceedings.

The federal hydropower system has been increasingly strained by climate change and growing energy demand, and there’s uncertainty on the horizon as proposals for electricity-hungry data centers crop up around the region. Cold snaps and heat waves have fueled peaks in demand. In January 2024, for example, a cold snap forced Bonneville to spend $300 million to buy power from outside the region.

At issue in the long-running litigation is the impending extinction of salmon, central to the health, culture and religion of tribes and Northwest economies. Climate change is turning up the heat on existing fish-passage troubles, as salmon navigate a gantlet of 325 miles of slack water, passage over or through eight dams (both ways), predators, low flows and hot water.

Four of the 16 Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead stocks that historically returned to spawn above the present-day location of Bonneville Dam, about 40 miles east of Portland, are extinct. Seven are listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Of the historical populations of Snake River Basin fall Chinook, spring-summer Chinook, sockeye and steelhead, half have already been lost, Nez Perce Tribe director of biological services Jay Hesse described in a declaration.

As a snapshot, this year saw the lowest number of adult steelhead returning to the basin since the dams were built, and just eight endangered Snake River sockeye have returned to the Stanley Basin as of last week.

For more than 30 years, dam operations on the Columbia and Snake rivers have been the subject of these court battles.

After years of mediated negotiations, the federal government entered the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement in 2023 with the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, Yakama Nation, the states of Washington and Oregon and conservation groups. It was intended in part to help restore salmon runs by opening a pathway to dam removal.

The litigation resumed after Trump axed the agreement, with a federal judge this spring ordering dam operators to increase spill at eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Conservation, energy and fishing groups represented by Earthjustice, as well as Oregon, Washington state and several tribal nations, were seeking emergency stopgaps to help the chances of salmon survival in lieu of the agreement.

The spill that was ordered is largely in line with what has been in place over the past few years, said Tom Iverson, a biologist and regional coordinator with Yakama Nation Fisheries. Iverson is among those who are skeptical of Bonneville’s math and eager to see what is presented in the rate proceedings.

Spill at moderate levels is now required through the entire month of August. That was not in place under the 2023 agreement but is not unprecedented. It was ordered in 2005 and most recently implemented in 2019 as well. A 2020 biological opinion requires spill at these levels for the first half of August.

Bonneville has previously overstated the impacts of fish on costs, said Mayer, of Earthjustice. In 2018, it claimed it needed to raise rates due to a similar court order but ended the year with a $123 million surplus.

Meanwhile, Bonneville’s revenue forecast exceeds projections by $38 million, according to Earthjustice.

Bonneville aims to wrap up the process by Dec. 18.

Seattle Times: After failed Columbia dam deal, BPA seeks electricity rate hike

Idaho Rivers United says breaching would not hurt the local economy and would reshape region

August 6, 2026
By Eric Barker, Outdoor and Environmental Editor

Leaders of Idaho Rivers United received a mixed reaction Wednesday to their presentation of an economic study that found breaching the four lower Snake River dams to save salmon and steelhead would not drag down the local economy.

Some audience members at the Red Wolf Golf Course in Clarkston spoke in favor of the idea during a friendly discussion following the presentation and said it could reshape the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley for the better. But others called the study flawed and said other actions should be used to recover threatened and endangered spring chinook, sockeye, steelhead and fall chinook that spawn in the Snake River and its tributaries.

“I believe it’s biased because pro dam breachers hired pro dam breachers to conduct a study and amazingly when they paid them, they came up with the data they wanted,” said Rick Hanks of Clarkston.

The study commissioned by the group and performed by Headwaters Economics of Bozeman, Mont., reasons that because the economy in Nez Perce and Asotin counties is largely driven by industries unrelated to the dams, removing them would not be economically disruptive.

It names government, health care and manufacturing as accounting for 42% of the jobs in the two counties. In contrast, agriculture, utilities and transportation — sectors the study names as closely tied to the dams, account for about 7.4% of regional jobs and have shown little growth in recent decades.

The same goes for the economy in both counties. According to the study, Asotin and Nez Perce counties have not kept pace with the economic growth of northern Idaho and eastern Washington as a whole and they lag behind in key categories like population growth, employment, per-capita income and poverty reduction in addition to having an aging population when compared to the larger region.

The study even says dam breaching might provide an economic boost to the valley. To back that up, it points to other dam removal projects in the Pacific Northwest where it says communities have seen per-capita income and nonlabor income growth and projects the same would happen here.

Stephen Pfeiffer, wild fish and hydropower policy manager for Idaho Rivers United, said dam breaching combined with robust investments from the federal government on par with the vision outlined by Rep. Mike Simpson who authored a $34 billion plan that would breach the dams and fund renewable energy, transportation and recreation infrastructure while mitigating affected industries and communities would be a chance for the communities to redefine themselves.

“The vision that I see for this region is one in which we have more fish, we have more energy generation, and we have more infrastructure to maintain this region’s exports to the world,” he said.

Nez Perce County Commissioner Joe Gish said the study left out hospitality which he said includes cruise ship visits, as a contributor to the economy and said that losing barge transportation would close the door to at least one company he said is looking to relocate to the area. That move is contingent on the availability of container shipping from the Port of Lewiston, something that has not been available for many years but port advocates believe may return contingent on developments at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 6.

Gish said a return of container shipping would benefit the manufacturing sector.

“I think that that would explode if we got containers moving out of the port again,” he said.

Gish welcomed the discussion and said he could support dam breaching contingent on completed investments in transportation infrastructure.

“If they released those funds, repaired the track from here through the different ports down the river system to Terminal 6 so that the track was smooth and they invested in smooth ride cargo train cars and they got that in place and it was economical to ship on that, I think everybody would be like ‘yeah let’s do it.’ But we need to see that investment before the dams go out.”

Richard Skully of Lewiston said most people don’t remember what the Snake River was like before the dams. He said there were five privately owned beaches and river recreation was robust. But he lamented that people who never got to see the river before the dams, don’t know what they are missing.

“It was great. We loved the beaches, we loved the rapids, we loved everything fun.”

Greg McReynolds, executive director of the group, said breaching dams and making the investments to replace their services and keep communities whole is an act of faith akin to what drives salmon to make their perilous journey to return from the ocean and spawn in their natal streams.

“They are not doing it for themselves. They are doing it for what comes next. They are doing it for another generation and we are in that same moment if we want to have abundant electricity, if we want to have abundant salmon, if we want to have abundant jobs and opportunities, we have to start building something that a lot of us are not going to live to see.”

Marvin Dugger, an active member of the pro-dam group Citizens for the Preservation of Fish and Dams said even though he disagrees with Pfeiffer and McReynolds, he appreciates the discussion.

“We don’t agree with them on this situation but I like them,” he said. “This is what we need to do to figure this out and that’s what makes our country great is that we as a people can come together and talk things out.”

Moscow-Pullman Daily News: Friendly discussion follows breaching presentation

L130, a one to three month old calf, is spotted traveling alongside female L91 near East Sooke on June 14. The image was taken under NMFS/NOAA permit number 27038. (Mark Malleson / Center for Whale Research)
June 19, 2026 at 6:00 am
By Greg Kim/Seattle Times climate reporter

Biologists spotted a new calf among the endangered southern resident orca pods this week, a hopeful sign tempered by the apparent disappearance of another calf born earlier this year.

Calf L130 was seen for the first time Sunday traveling with the female L91 near East Sooke, B.C., by Center for Whale Research biologists, who estimated the young whale was between 1 and 3 months old. Michael Weiss, research director for the center, described L130 as appearing well-fed, with visible fat reserves, and behaving energetically and socially with other whales, all good signs.

“It’s always exciting to find a new calf,” said Weiss. “In such a small population, having a new calf is a significant boost to the overall population size, but there’s always also a feeling of cautious optimism.”

The encouraging discovery was paired with a troubling absence, underscoring the challenges these whales face. Biologists could not locate L129, an L pod calf that was first spotted in February.

“We don’t expect a small calf like that to just wander off, so our current worry is that the calf did die,” Weiss said. “Given the condition it was in when we first saw it, that’s not entirely surprising.”

Only about half of the calves born into the southern residents, a critically endangered group of killer whales that travel between central California and southeast Alaska, make it through their first year, Weiss said, due to intertwined threats.

Southern resident orca census
The July 2025 census found only 74 members in the J, K, and L pods combined, nearly as few as when the counts started in 1976 with 71.

Sources: Esri; Center for Whale Research; Orca Survey 2025; Canadian Geographic; NOAA (Graphic by Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)

The biggest reason is a scarcity of Chinook salmon, their primary food source. Weiss said the southern residents evolved to specialize on Chinook, which provide “the biggest bang for your buck” in terms of size and fat content among fish in the area.

Even as the population of Chinook plummeted, this group of orcas has remained heavily reliant on that food source through most of the year, Weiss said, because “killer whales are very culturally driven, especially by what they learn from their moms and grandmas.”

A shortage of food can also amplify the health effects of contaminants on the mammals.

Southern residents carry high levels of pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, chemicals that have been banned internationally but still persist in the environment, Weiss said. When Chinook are scarce and the whales fall into a caloric deficit, they burn blubber for energy. Because many toxic contaminants are stored there, that process releases them into the bloodstream and increases the risk they will be passed from mother to calf. The chemicals can interfere with development, hormones and immune function.

As of the Center for Whale Research’s latest census, 74 southern resident orcas remain, down from their historical population estimated at between 100 and 150 whales.

“If nothing changes, the population is going to continue to decline,” Weiss said.

Seattle Times: New southern resident orca calf spotted as another vanishes 

Salmon, energy plans and cultural identity are all being impacted by the corporate drive for AI

By K.C. Mehaffey/Video by Deborah Bloom.
May 28, 2026.

Hundreds of people are gathered on a windy plateau near Goldendale, Wash. Almost 2,000 feet below, the John Day River flows into the Columbia River. With the snow-covered prominence of Mount Adams looming in the distance, wildflowers, native grasses, junipers and the blades of the Tuolumne Wind Farm dot the landscape.

Members of the Rock Creek Band, one of 14 American Indian Tribes and Bands that make up the Yakama Nation, convened here in April to hold a ceremony, dance and pray for the land.

On May 8, they invited others to the area—a site of deep ancestral significance—to bring awareness to a proposed pumped hydroelectricity storage project on this land that is in the final stages of permitting.

“Pumped hydro” refers to a system that generates and stores electricity by moving large amounts of water between reservoirs located at different elevations. If completed, the Goldendale Energy Storage Project would release 2.3 billion gallons of water from a man-made reservoir downhill almost 2,000 feet through a tunnel drilled into the mountainside, spinning power turbines near the bottom. Collected in a reservoir at the bottom of the slope, the water would then be pumped back uphill, and released again.

The Yakama call this site Pushpum. About 110 miles east of Portland, it overlooks a stretch of river where their ancestors lost fishing sites to the inundating waters of John Day Dam, which was completed in 1971.

Proposed pumped-hydro project location. Image: Wash. Dept. of Ecology

Despite the disruptions of industrial modernity, the Yakama continued to gather roots and medicines here. The site remains sacred, its importance passed through generations.

“Why would you want to desecrate this piece of property? Why?” Yakama Tribal Council member Jeremy Takala asks the crowd.

On Jan. 22, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a 40-year license to construct the $2-3 billion Goldendale project near Pushpum. The license was issued to Rye Development, a Florida-based company with 12 employees (according to one independent profile) that describes itself as a “partnership” between French utility giant EDF Group and San Francisco private equity firm Climate Adaptive Infrastructure.

Owned by businessman and investor Scott Tillman’s NSC Smelter LLC, the land on which the lower reservoir would be built was once occupied by an aluminum smelter operated by Lockheed Martin Aluminum. In a 2022 declaration to the State of Washington and Klickitat County regarding public and tribal access to the land, Tillman listed a Goldendale business address and said that since 2007 he had been president of NSC Smelter, LLC.

According to Rye Development, its new energy project “will store electricity for up to 12 hours and generate 1,200 megawatts of on-demand electricity—enough to power about 500,000 homes.” That’s more than 10% of all of the households in Oregon and Washington combined, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. [A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the electricity generated would be enough to power all of the households in Oregon and Washington combined. —Editor]

By way of succoring public opinion, energy companies often equate the capacity of industrial-scale projects with cozy images of kith and kin in the soothing confines of home.

But will electricity generated by the Goldendale project be used for homes or by private citizens?

According to documents from Washington’s Department of Ecology, Colorado-based data center developer STACK Infrastructure is proposing to build a 1,100-megawatt data center campus next to the new energy facility.

New gold rush

As it has across the country, the data center construction boom has come to the Pacific Northwest. Many data centers are found along the Columbia River, which can supply the comparatively cheap hydroelectricity needed to power the facilities and the massive amounts of water needed to cool many of them.

New data centers in Oregon and Washington are being planned in 12 counties along the river. In those counties, Portland-based Columbia Riverkeeper has identified more than 100 existing or planned campuses that could require 4 gigawatts of power.

Mounting public outrage over everything from rising utility rates to detrimental environment impacts has eroded the reputation of data centers and the growing AI machine they feed.

Around tribal lands, however, the effects of the proliferation of water- and energy-sucking data centers take on a unique dimension—the desecration of cultural sites, potential harm to traditional food sources and a painful continuation of government policies that ignore the needs and voices of Tribes.

Jeremy FiveCrows, communications director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (and a Columbia Insight board member), says the data center boom is reminiscent of the California Gold Rush.

“Any kind of moderation was out the window,” says FiveCrows, who was born and raised on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho.

Nineteenth-century prospectors and settlers in gold-rich areas decimated rivers and streams. They fought—and often killed—Americans Indians who got in their way.

“It’s like this frenzy that is making people not see these big consequences of such fast, frenetic choices,” he says.

Regardless of what electricity from the proposed Goldendale facility will be used for, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and other Northwest Tribes have opposed the pumped hydro project from the start.

“I know we’re in a time when we need renewable energy, but why on our root grounds? Why on critical deer winter habitat? Or critical migratory corridors for hawks?” asked Elaine Harvey at the Pushpum event.

Harvey is a member of the Yakama Nation and manager of the Watershed Department for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

“Today, every one of our traditional foods is under threat. Our salmon, our suckers, our sturgeon, our lamprey, our deer and elk, all the different roots that we gather and our berries,” she said. “And I say, ‘For who?’ We’re going green now for data centers. We’re not going green for Washington and Oregon state mandates.”

This depiction of the two reservoirs associated with the proposed Goldendale Energy Storage Project shows the locations of the John Day Dam (lower left) and defunct aluminum smelter (lower center). Illustration: Rye Development

The Yakama Nation says the Goldendale project will cause irreparable damage to Pushpum, “a site of religious, ceremonial, and cultural importance to the Yakama People since time immemorial,” per a July 2024 letter from the Yakama Nation to FERC, asking the federal agency to deny the permit.

“Repeating history by approving the Goldendale permit application without free, prior, and informed consent from impacted Tribes is an environmental injustice,” said the letter.

Under the Yakama Nation’s 1855 treaty with the United States, the site is part of the Yakama Nation’s ancestral or ceded lands—part of the 12 million acres that the Tribes and Bands gave up to the U.S. government, but where tribal members reserved rights to fish at all their “usual and accustomed places” and to hunt and gather foods and medicines and pasture horses and cattle “upon open and unclaimed land.”

“The project respects the vital role of Tribal consultation in the FERC licensing process, which is among the most rigorous for all energy projects,” a Rye Development spokesperson wrote in an email to Columbia Insight. “The FERC license includes numerous environmental protections and operating conditions developed through years of independent review by federal and state agencies, Tribes, and input from the public. We remain committed to working with affected Tribes to finalize a Historic Properties Management Plan that safeguards cultural and historic resources.”

“This is a project that’s been looked at by the Goldendale community since the 1990s as part of their overall economic development plan for renewable electricity, primarily wind, then solar and pump storage, all part of the energy overlay zone,” Erik Steimle, Rye Development director of development, told Columbia Insight in January.

But as companies doing business in the Northwest race to develop data centers and the plants that provide them with power, some Columbia River Basin tribal leaders say they’re being left out of the planning that will determine the future of their ancestral lands. Again.

Tribal opinions accommodated or ignored?

In 2025, Wash. Gov. Bob Ferguson created the state’s first Data Center Workgroup to develop recommendations for handling the huge power needs of data centers.

Tribal representatives didn’t make the initial cut.

“We found out there was this working group and really felt like we should be part of that because of all the different energy projects and energy activities that are occurring within our very large ‘usual and accustomed’ area,” says Kate Valdez, environmental coordinator for Yakama Nation Fisheries.

Tribal councilman Jeremy Takala at Pushpum with Tuolumne Wind Project towers. Photo: Paloma Ayala/Columbia RiverkeeperIt took some convincing, but eventually the Yakama Nation was able to insert itself into the group. Valdez became the only tribal representative with a voice and a vote on the group’s recommendations.

Valdez says after agreeing to include the Yakama Nation, the state’s Department of Commerce decided that, as a sovereign nation with treaty rights, Yakama recommendations that did not make it into the group’s final draft report should nevertheless be heard. The Yakama Nation’s recommendations were included as a separate appendix to the draft report.

The work group’s draft report led Washington state lawmakers to craft H.B. 2515—the state’s first attempt to impose guardrails on data center development.

Jeremy Takala, the Yakama Council member who introduced speakers at Pushpum, spoke before the Washington Legislature in favor of the bill, which addressed some but not all of the Tribes’ concerns.

Among concerns the bill did not address: a requirement for data centers to “provide evidence that the facility would not affect watershed conditions, including stream flows for anadromous species, temperature, and pollution; would not affect local municipal water sources; and account for existing over-allocation, climate change projections showing reduced snowpack and earlier runoff, and the cumulative impact of all water uses on treaty-protected fisheries.”

The bill wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.

“Then Microsoft came out from the shadows and opposed the bill in the Senate Ways and Means Committee and then released their markup for their proposal,” says Ed Sheets, a former executive director of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and a consultant for CRITFC and the Yakama Nation.

The revision had 18 amendments, most of which the Tribes opposed, he told Columbia Insight.

The bill ultimately died.

In March, the bill’s sponsor, Dem. Rep. Beth Doglio, chair of the Washington House Energy & Environment Committee, told Columbia Insight that behind-the-scenes lobbying by Microsoft and Amazon convinced a number of Senate Democrats to back away from supporting the bill.

Valdez says tribal efforts to reign in new data centers remind her of how little Columbia River Tribes were able to change the course of hydroelectric development in the twentieth century.

“We weren’t significant enough to be considered during that time, and sometimes it still feels a little bit like that,” she says. “The difference now might be that people feel like the Tribes have an opportunity to have a say. But do we really?”

As with the data center bill, the Yakama Nation has weighed in on several renewable energy projects on ceded lands, a process that includes government-to-government consultations.

“That consultation may be initiated, but at the end of the day we’re still seeing that these projects are being permitted, and they are impactful to resources that we rely on, that are the very identity of who we are as a people,” says Valdez.

Another threat to salmon

For more than a century, Indigenous peoples up and down the Columbia River and its tributaries have disproportionately suffered the environmental consequences of energy development in the Pacific Northwest.

“The devastation of once-abundant salmon, steelhead, and other species in the Columbia River Basin adversely and inequitably impacted Tribes’ spiritual, cultural, physical, and economic health,” according to a 2024 U.S. Department of the Interior report on the impact of the Basin’s federal dams on Tribes.

The hydroelectric system that gives the Pacific Northwest some of the cheapest, most reliable and cleanest energy in the country changed an entire way of life for people who had for centuries depended on the Columbia River for their livelihoods.

“First it was dams on the Columbia and the loss of our fishing and village sites,” Harvey told Columbia Insight last year. “Then it was construction of the highway, then Hanford nuclear facility. Now we’re in another energy transition, and it feels like the burden is again being put on us.”

Dams wiped out tribal villages and gathering spots (most notoriously at Celilo Falls in 1957), displaced families for years and inundated burial sites.

The monolithic concrete barriers created by dams have nearly stripped Tribes of a primary food source and cultural totem they’re committed to protecting—salmon.

In 2001, a combination of energy problems—including under-investment in new energy resources, a flawed electricity market in California and the lowest Columbia River runoff since 1929—led to what the energy industry knows as the Western Energy Crisis.

Columbia River Basin Tribes call it the salmon crisis.

Federal agencies that operate Columbia River dams declared an electric power emergency, enabling them to suspend mandated operations that protect salmon.

Elijah Cetas, CRITFC’s energy analyst, says tens of millions of juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating downstream died that year. In one example, only 6% of juvenile Snake River steelhead migrating downstream from Lower Granite Dam to Bonneville Dam survived. Most years, the survival rate is between 40% and 60%.

The emergency measures devastated adult salmon and steelhead returns in subsequent years—in some cases just 10% of previous runs came back, says Cetas.

The catastrophe led CRITFC to develop an “energy vision,” a plan for energy resilience that also protects salmon and other natural resources.

The most recent Energy Vision document updated in 2022 focuses on the need to move away from fossil fuels and prepare for a surge in renewable energy projects. Data centers aren’t even mentioned.

The rise of data centers has become a dominating concern in less time than it takes for a healthy Pacific salmon to complete its life cycle.

“It’s been difficult for us to wrap our heads around,” Cetas says of the rapid change.

CRITFC is worried about the huge amounts of uninterrupted energy data centers need, and about connecting those new resources to the hydropower system. That connection could lead to the next energy emergency; the next suspension of spilling water over dams to keep baby fish away from the turbines, and all the other measures in place to protect more than a dozen threatened or endangered runs.

“When our energy vision came out, where we were at then, it was going to work,” Christine Golightly, CRITFC policy analyst, tells Columbia Insight. “Data centers have come in and kind of thrown a monkey wrench into that.”

Utilities in the Pacific Northwest are required to provide electricity to customers who request it. But Golightly believes data centers should be treated differently than other electric consumers.

“They’re a new creature. They’re not just any customer,” she says.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s most recent power supply adequacy assessment for 2029 finds that the chance of blackouts in the region increases from 2.2% per year to 13.3% per year under a scenario with high data center build-out.

As the risk of an energy emergency increases, so does the chance of suspending salmon protections, and repeating the devastating impacts from 2001.

Transparency, jobs, nukes

Unlike many environmental groups that favor accelerating the siting and permitting of clean energy generation and transmission, the Yakama Nation wants a slower approach.

“Any time you get into any sort of streamlining, what that really means at the end of the day is that you’re not going to have meaningful consultation with the Tribes,” says Valdez of Yakama Nation Fisheries.

Valdez says renewable energy projects have spread “like wildfire across Yakama Nation’s usual and accustomed” hunting, fishing and gathering sites.

“All we’re saying is, ‘Let’s not put it on our backs again, just like the hydro dams,” she says.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) also has sighting concerns, especially with respect to hyper-scale data centers. Amazon has built several data centers on CTUIR ceded lands.

These data centers are not on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, but on the Tribes’ aboriginal title lands, where tribal members retain treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather foods and medicine.

Amazon Web Services data center in Umatilla County by Susan Woodward / American Rivers scaled

According to various reports, Amazon operates at least 13 data center campuses across Umatilla and Morrow counties with a combined 1,770 megawatts of capacity. The CTUIR’s ceded lands include all of Umatilla County and most of Morrow County.

“Amazon does not release the energy use of any of its facilities, however Umatilla Electric Cooperative delivered 8.4 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2024, of which only 3.7% was delivered to residential customers,” according to a report by Columbia Riverkeeper.

In an email to Columbia Insight, a CTUIR spokesperson said the Tribes would like to see cooperative agreements for siting hyper-scale data centers on its ceded lands along the Columbia River, or co-management agreements when there might be impacts on water, salmon, big game and gathering resources.

The Tribes also want waste heat to be reused by other industries; assurances that the data center workforce comes from nearby communities; and government-to-government consultation if data centers are being powered by small modular nuclear reactors.

Along with concerns about water use and the potential for heating and contaminating water sources, the Umatilla are worried about noise pollution from continuous fans, and how fenced areas prevent wildlife from grazing where they normally would feed.

For what?

Tribal leaders question the benefits of AI.

“I say it’s the companies that will profit off this. It’s their race for their gold,” says Golightly. “If it takes your question two more minutes to generate an answer (to an internet search), I don’t know what the benefit really is.”

“People are creating weird, exotic animals (online). That’s what we’re having to give up our resources for? For people to be able to do those types of things?” asks Valdez.

Compared with their elders, young people from the Yakama Nation who attended the May 8 Pushpum event have a more nuanced relationship with AI and the data centers needed to support them.

“It helps me when I’m struggling in school,” said Chance Wesley, a 15-year-old Goldendale High School student. “AI explains it to me in simple steps.”

Wesley thinks AI will lead to breakthroughs in science and other disciplines, but he doesn’t like that some students use it to “cheat” or the vast amounts of water and energy data centers require.

“If (the Goldendale project) goes through, we’ll lose most of our natural foods that we eat and gather. It will affect a lot of people,” he said. “I see the use for AI, but I also see the damage it would cause to our community.”

“It’s your main source of information,” said Tyler Takala, 14, noting that a simple Google search now involves AI.

Students repeatedly voiced particular concerns about how data centers use water from the Columbia River.

“I’ve noticed the water changing color,” said Annie Payer, 16. “And it’s not just our part of the river. It’s affecting all the other people along the river.”

Takala says the toxic algae that’s becoming more common in the Columbia River—blooms are caused by warm, calm waters and excessive nutrients, and exacerbated by climate change—is hurting tribal drift net, scaffold and pole fishing.

“If AI takes over the world, we’ll have to rely on our native foods. But the way it’s going, we won’t have any left,” said Payer.

Still, she said, events like Protect Pushpum give her hope. It’s not just her Tribe standing up to save this place. Other Tribes, nonprofit organizations and non-tribal individuals came to give support.

“People all across the country are standing up and opposing data centers being built in their communities,” said FiveCrows. “It’s strengthening communities to exercise their collective voice, and that’s regardless of whether it’s tribal communities or non-tribal communities.”

Columbia Insight: SPECIAL REPORT: How data centers pose a unique threat to Pac NW Tribes

Feb. 26, 2026

By Michael Wright 

A federal judge in Oregon has ordered changes to dam operations on the Columbia and Snake rivers to help salmon runs.

In a ruling released Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon toldfederal agencies that run eight dams on the two rivers to spill more water over the top of the dams and maintain reservoir levels at the height they were last year.

Increasing spill is meant to help young salmon on their way to the ocean pass over the top of the dams rather than swim through a gauntlet of turbines that are known to kill them. Reservoir levels affect the speed of salmon migration.

The decision marks the latest turn in a decades-long legal fight over the dams and their impact on the salmon and steelhead that migrate between the ocean and their natal streams in Washington, Oregon and central Idaho.

In 2023, under the Biden Administration, the plaintiffs agreed to halt the litigation in exchange for $1 billion in federal money for fish habitat and energy projects. The Trump administration canceled that deal, prompting the plaintiffs to resume their legal fight.

Last year, Tribes, fishing groups and conservationists, represented by the environmental law firm Earthjustice, requested the changes to dam operations as part of a preliminary injunction request. The state of Washington filed an amicus brief supporting the injunction.

Simon’s ruling didn’t give the plaintiffs everything they wanted, but he wrote that action is needed due to the “dire situation” facing the 14 endangered and threatened salmon and smelt species in the Pacific Northwest.

He wrote that there’s a “disappointing history of government avoidance and manipulation instead of sincere efforts at solving the problem and genuinely remediating the harm.”

“One of the foundational symbols of the West, a critical recreational, cultural, and economic driver for Western states, and the beating heart and guaranteed resource protected by treaties with several Native American tribes is disappearing from the landscape,” Simon wrote.

Amanda Goodin, the Earthjustice attorney who represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the changes the court ordered “are immediate and reasonable steps to prevent salmon extinction.”

Abbie Abramovich, the Idaho Conservation League’s salmon program senior associate, said in an interview that the changes at the dams are doable and will help fish get to prime habitat in places like the Clearwater and Salmon rivers and their tributaries.

“Idaho holds some of the best habitat in the Lower 48, which includes cold mountain streams,” Abramovich said. “We just have to give these fish an opportunity to reach it.”

Still, she said, the ruling isn’t a permanent solution.

“This is basically life support that we’re offering these fish,” she said. “It’s entirely possible for the northwest to have clean energy and recover salmon populations, and this ruling is an important step in that direction.”

Republican politicians, agriculture groups and others criticized the decision. They raised doubts that it would help fish and characterized the ruling as a threat to the system’s dams.

“These vital pieces of infrastructure allow irrigation and navigation for farmers, their commodities, and many other products that move on the rivers,” U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Washington, said in a statement. “The dams and salmon can, and do, coexist, and I remain committed to ensure the system has the resources needed to improve fish passage at lower spill levels.”

Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little said in a statement that the decision is a “direct attack on agriculture and Idaho’s energy security.”

“Idaho will not stand by while decisions made outside our borders put our public safety and economy at risk,” Little said. “… Our people depend on the Columbia River System, and we will fight to ensure Idaho meets the real-world energy demands of today and tomorrow.”

Wednesday’s ruling affects operations at four dams on the lower Columbia – Bonneville, the Dalles, McNary and John Day – and four on the lower Snake – Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite.

The plaintiffs’ injunction request sought a suite of emergency conservation measures, such as ordering the defendants to remove salmon-eating predators, in addition to the operational changes at the dams. Simon declined to order the conservation measures, instead narrowing the decision’s mandates down to reservoir levels and spill operations.

The plaintiffs had asked the judge to order dam operators to keep reservoirs at their minimum operating levels, arguing that doing so helps fish migrate to the ocean faster. The defendants argued that operating reservoirs at the minimum level could harm dam operations.

Simon ordered the levels be maintained where they were in 2025 – a level higher than plaintiffs wanted but lower than what is allowed. He wrote that the dams operated successfully at those levels last year, meaning “all parties can be assured of the viability of the operations for power generation, transportation, and irrigation.”

The spill increases direct dam operators to spill water over the top of the eight dams 24 hours a day from spring to mid-November, with a winter shutdown period between mid-November and late February.

At Little Goose Dam, spring spill hours will shorten based on the number of adult chinook salmon that cross the dam.

The volume of spill required changes by seasons. The highest spill amounts are set for the spring, starting in April. Spill will be reduced some in mid-June, and then reduced to their lowest level on Sept. 1.

In the past, summer spill levels were reduced at the end of July.

K.C. Mehaffey
Feb 26, 2026

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon has ordered higher spill at eight dams on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers beginning next month, but did not require lower reservoir levels compared to the last two years, or add nonoperational conservation measures, in a preliminary injunction issued Feb. 25.

Finding that the threats to Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead are “dire and immediate,” Simon also indicated that he will—in a forthcoming decision—deny a motion by federal agencies to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction due to the involvement of the Bonneville Power Administration (Clearing Up No. 2244).

“For decades, the battle for the life of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead has not been fought at the end of a hook and line, nor in the woven threads of a fishing net, nor even based on the appetites of sea lions, avian predators, or killer whales. Instead, the greatest battle has been waged in the courts,” Simon lamented in his Feb. 25 opinion and order in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.

“It is reasonable to conclude that the listed species' prognosis is as bad as---or worse than it has ever been,” he wrote.

Plaintiffs in National Wildlife Federation et al. v. National Marine Fisheries Service et al. [01-640] filed the request for a preliminary injunction in October 2025, ending a five- to 10-year stay in the case. After the Trump administration withdrew from the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement (RCBA), 10 conservation groups and the State of Oregon resumed the case by seeking a request for injunctive relief that would bring higher spill levels, lower reservoir elevations and require several nonoperational measures.

The preliminary injunction—if it stands—will dictate interim operations in the lower Snake and Columbia rivers until a final decision over the legality of the 2020 Columbia River System Operations record of decision and biological opinion is made.

Simon was careful to ensure that the injunction will not impact emergency protocols or prohibit the use of precoordinated operations and variances in the Fish Operations Plan.

Except for spill, Simon determined that many of the measures requested by plaintiffs were “outside of this Court's equitable authority to grant.”

Whether the order goes into effect this year may be up to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, as federal defendants indicated in prior filings that they will likely appeal Simon’s ruling.

With respect to spill, Simon said he was convinced that a draft 2026 Fish Operations Plan proposed by federal defendants would significantly change operations “in the wrong direction,” with spill levels below those proposed in the 2020 biological opinion.

“The Court agrees that doing nothing during the pendency of this litigation would not effectuate the congressional purpose behind the [Endangered Species Act],” he added.

With respect to reservoir levels, Simon ordered that this year, and until otherwise ordered by the court, reservoir forebay elevations will be operated under the same ranges used in 2025.

He noted that the plaintiffs’ request for nonoperational measures for steelhead kelt reconditioning, reduction of avian and nonnative fish predation, and Snake River Sockeye transportation are already included in the 2020 BiOp, so he “did not grant this requested relief, even though it would provide immediate benefit to the listed species.” He instead directed the federal defendants to file quarterly reports on the status of implementing those measures.

The decision is a temporary win for plaintiffs, and to some extent irrigators and other river users, but generally a loss for federal defendants and the hydropower industry, which will see reduced generation due to increased spill.

“The changes to the hydropower system ordered by the court today are immediate and reasonable steps to prevent salmon extinction,” said Amanda Goodin, senior supervising attorney for Earthjustice, which is representing the 10 conservation groups that sued. “Salmon need help now, and we’re encouraged the court has granted immediate, commonsense relief that will help protected imperiled Northwest salmon and steelhead,” she added.

Mike Leahy, senior director of wildlife, hunting and fishing policy for the National Wildlife Federation, added that returning to court was the only tool left to prevent the collapse of salmon populations after the Trump administration withdrew from the RCBA.

He added, “While these emergency measures are implemented, we’ll keep our eye on our long-term goal of helping the Tribes and the states restore Snake River salmon for the generations to come.”

Public-power advocates were disappointed by the ruling.

Scott Simms, CEO and executive director of the Public Power Council, said the Columbia River dams already operate under some of the most protective fish measures in the nation, supported by billions of dollars from public-power utilities over the decades.

“PPC is disappointed that the court adopted a sweeping operational injunction that will materially affect the region’s clean hydropower system and the millions of people who depend on it,” he said in a news release.

Simms also said PPC appreciates that the court declined to impose other measures included in the plaintiffs’ request and accepted PPC’s proposal to adopt the 2025 Fish Operations Plan spill regime at Ice Harbor and John Day dams during the summer.

“Our focus now is ensuring that the region can implement this order in a way that protects electric reliability and affordability while continuing to support fish recovery,” Simms said, adding, “Public power utilities will remain engaged in the legal process and in regional collaboration to pursue solutions that work for salmon, communities, and the Northwest economy.”

“Today’s order is both entirely unwelcome and entirely unsurprising,” Northwest Requirements Utilities Executive Director Zabyn Towner said in a news release.

Towner said NRU is pleased that the court included some moderating suggestions from intervenor-defendants as part of the preliminary injunction. However, he added, NRU “is continuing our review to analyze the financial and operational impacts of this decision, and to determine if it is appropriate to appeal all or part of it to a higher court.”

Darryll Olsen, Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association board representative, told Clearing Up in an email that the renewed litigation has been intense, but Simon seemed convinced that the CSRIA “brought a moderate, thoughtful tone to the lawsuit.”

Referring to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the RCBA, Olsen said, “The Administration actions, encouraged by some of the regional industry groups, was a self-inflicted wound. Unwise.”

Olsen predicts that breaching the four lower Snake River dams will be back on the table soon.

“Whatever goodwill existed between the Plaintiffs and Defendants under the 2024 litigation Settlement Agreement had been trampled. The Judge’s ruling invokes more costs on the federal hydro system, and now a reinvigorated fight will recommence over dam breaching on the Lower Snake River,” he said.

The Inland Ports and Navigation Group said increasing spill will have systemwide implications across the 465-mile navigation channel, affecting navigation safety, commerce, energy reliability and irrigation.

In an email to Clearing Up, IPNG said it will continue to advocate modeling operational changes ordered by the courts prior to implementation to ensure changes will be safe for navigation and benefit fish.

“Adjustments to spill levels, flow regimes, or reservoir elevations can have significant safety implications for barge and passenger vessels transiting locks and dams. Real-time operational flexibility is essential to protecting river users and the communities that depend on this critical infrastructure,” IPNG Co-Chair Leslie Druffel said.

Simon’s order for spill involved some compromises as proposed by the Defendant-Intervenor Group, a joint defendant-intervenor coalition consisting of the Public Power Council; the states of Idaho and Montana; Inland Ports and Navigation Group; and Northwest Requirements Utilities.

For spring spill, Simon agreed to the levels requested by plaintiffs, which are the same levels implemented in 2024 and 2025, except at John Day Dam, where spill will be implemented for 24 hours a day.

For summer spill, the court adopted the 2025 Fish Operations Plan spill level for Ice Harbor and John Day dams—a change proposed by the Defendant-Intervenor Group.

For fall and winter spill, Simon approved the plaintiffs’ request to spill more water for longer hours and for more days, in various combinations at the dams, finding it “will provide immediate benefit to the listed species.”

With respect to the increased spill, Simon wrote, “The Court is unpersuaded by arguments that spill will create various catastrophic results. Defendants have raised these concerns each time spill is litigated without them coming to fruition. The majority of the spill has been implemented over the years without such negative repercussions, and the Court does not anticipate such calamities will ensue from the current spill order.