We’ve been hearing a lot lately from public utilities calling on Gov. Tina Kotek and others challenging the Trump Administration’s inadequate and illegal salmon recovery plan to choose “collaboration” over litigation (“Readers respond: Hydropower lawsuit hurts affordability,” July 13). The problem is this: Fruitful collaboration must be built on a foundation of trust; defenders of the failed status quo have given salmon advocates little reason to trust their good faith. Just look at the record.

Beginning in 2023, we had a credible plan that balanced the salmon and dams equation: the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. The agreement resulted from a collaborative process involving Washington and Oregon, Northwest tribes, non-governmental advocacy organizations and the Biden Administration. Input from other stakeholders, like these utilities, was welcomed, but they brought nothing to the table other than a defense of the Trump salmon plan.

In June 2025, the Trump Administration, cheered on by many public utilities, unilaterally abrogated that agreement. The agreement had allowed salmon advocates to pause litigation challenging the Trump salmon recovery plan. With collaboration tossed aside, advocates had no choice but to return to court.

This was just the latest chapter in a decades-long saga of bad faith plans for recovery of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin. Over three decades of litigation, federal courts have declared six different federal plans illegal, including every one since 2000.

Why should salmon advocates, given that history, believe that these agencies, and their public utility allies, are now ready to engage in good faith collaborative efforts to have both salmon and clean, affordable energy?

Marc Sullivan, Sequim
Sullivan is a contract consultant for the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition.

Oregon Live: Readers respond: Utilities’ disingenuous call for ‘collaboration’