The Trump administration’s action forces a return of litigation, but pact’s partners can still act.

Endangered sockeye salmon in Redfish Lake 900 miles inland and 6500 feet above sea level. © Emily Nuchols/SOS

Saturday, October 18, 2025
By Joseph Bogaard / For The Herald

Imagine a win-win-win solution to linked challenges that have dogged our Northwest home for decades: endangered salmon and steelhead, aging and inadequate energy infrastructure and broken promises to Tribal nations.

Our region was on the cusp of making real progress toward a comprehensive and collaborative solution to these intertwined challenges with the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, the historic accord announced in 2023 by the Biden administration and an alliance of four Columbia Basin Tribes and the states of Washington and Oregon. The region was finally on course to restore imperiled native fish, invest in a clean energy transition and make good on our nation’s treaty promises to Northwest Tribes.

Then in June, the Trump administration abruptly axed the agreement, leaving the Northwest with no plan and no path as we face a rapidly escalating crisis.

Fish biologists continue to sound the alarm: Columbia and Snake River salmon and steelhead runs are collapsing, and if we lose them, we lose so much more than a fish. Salmon swim through the heart of our Northwest identity. They are foundational to countless communities, people’s livelihoods and the ecosystem we all depend on. Rebuilding salmon abundance is central to making good on the promises our nation made long ago to our region’s original stewards. The economic, environmental and moral implications of losing this emblematic fish cannot be overstated.

This is why extinction is not an option. And this is why the Save Our wild Salmon Coalition supports the states, Tribes and conservation and fishing groups that recently restarted litigation to correct the federal government’s illegal dam and reservoir operations.

At the heart of this litigation are four federal dams on Washington state’s lower Snake River, the largest tributary of the Columbia. These dams have choked the river, warming its water to fatal temperatures for cold-water fish and fostering deadly toxic algal-blooms. Meanwhile, the dams produce less than 4 percent of the region’s energy that can be affordably and feasibly replaced.

Those who are pushing hard to keep the dams are also pushing a massive misinformation campaign about soaring salmon numbers and the outsize role these dams play in our region’s energy mix.

Let’s start with the fish. Since these dams were built, four of the 16 fish runs that historically returned to spawn above Bonneville Dam are now extinct, and seven more are officially listed as endangered or threatened, including all four populations that return to the Snake River.

Restarting litigation is our only hope for meeting the immediate survival needs of these imperiled fish. But they need more than emergency measures. Salmon need a healthy, resilient river. As National and Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries department made clear in its 2022 report, recovery efforts will continue to falter as long as the lower Snake River dams remain. These dams are the single largest source of human-caused fish mortality, and we need “bold, science-based action,” as NOAA put it, fast. To delay action any longer will lead us to a future without Columbia River salmon runs.

Now for energy. At the intersection of recovery is the tremendous opportunity to develop truly clean energy; a mix of solar, wind, battery and new technologies that can power our region’s future.

Backward-looking defenders of the status quo would like us to believe that these four Snake River dams are the backbone of our power supply. This is wishful thinking, at best, given the region’s rising energy demand, driven by the proliferation of data centers and expanded electrification of our economy. You might as well hope a flashlight will illuminate the Seattle skyline. From 2023 to 2028, the Pacific Northwest will see a load increase of 20 percent, and then 30 percent in the next decade, triple the prediction of just a few years ago.

We need to be clear-eyed about our region’s real energy needs, and we need to work together and think big.

Let’s also consider the real price tag of keeping these four outdated dams. To date, we’ve spent more than $24 billion on salmon programs in the Columbia Basin, but we have yet to recover even one imperiled population. The Bonneville Power Administration now spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on recovery programs and dam operations that are supposed to protect migrating salmon and steelhead from extinction, and these costs are expected to rise by more than 10 percent over the next three years. But BPA’s programs have consistently failed our fish and our communities. We desperately need a new approach.

This crisis has been decades in the making, but it opens the door today to an historic opportunity and to solutions well within our grasp. While the Trump administration may have turned its back on the Northwest, our region’s Tribes, policymakers and people can continue our work together on shared solutions that both rebuild salmon abundance and invest in our clean and affordable energy future.

Joseph Bogaard is executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition.

Everett Herald: Comment: Scuttling Columbia Basin pact ignores peril to salmon