A move by federal water managers to pause a landmark environmental review of the Columbia River hydropower system has become a Rorschach test that leaves utilities, salmon advocates, commercial shippers and Native nations, as well as Washington and Oregon officials guessing.
The pause could be routine, as officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation insist. Or, it could be the beginning of the end for the review — the clearest path to removal of the lower Snake River dams, which salmon advocates say is the only way to save the prized Northwest fish.
The two federal agencies announced earlier this month an indeterminate pause on the supplemental environmental impact statement for the federal hydropower system. The move marks the second publicly announced delay since the review was started late last year.
The closely watched review came out of a 2023 Biden administration-brokered agreement that stopped litigation between environmentalists, fishing groups and Native nations on one end, and federal power and water managers on the other.
Dam advocates criticize the report and point to NOAA’s 2020 biological opinion for the hydropower system, which does not call for dam removal.
Flood of speculation
According to the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation’s April news release, the two agencies are pausing public scoping meetings that would help decide what issues the environmental review will go on to examine. The release cites recent rollbacks the Trump administration made to national environmental policies, and adds new meeting dates will be announced in “the next several weeks.”
But many stakeholders have focused instead on what it doesn’t say.
Kurt Miller, CEO of the Northwest Public Power Association, which represents regional public utility districts, immediately noticed the most recent pause didn’t contain key details — such as a firm timeline — that were in the first announcement.
“That leads us to (ask), ‘OK, well, what are we hearing behind the scenes?’ ” he said.
The answer, Miller said, was that the Trump administration “does not like” the broader salmon restoration agreement — the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement — that led to the environmental review.
He also pointed to a statement from the D.C.-based National Rural Electric Cooperative Association thanking President Donald Trump for the “indefinite pause,” which amounted to what the association characterized as “meaningful steps to protect lower Snake River dams.”
The association’s president, Jim Matheson, met late last month with Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright.
“Hydroelectric power generated by the Columbia River System is the foundation of the electric grid in the Northwest,” Matheson said in a statement to The Columbian. “President Trump understands this. … We appreciate the administration’s recognition of this critical energy resource and the steps it’s taking to protect it.”
Miller said he was surprised the announcement didn’t declare the end of the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, an outcome he and many others in the utility industry would like to see.
“Everyone’s in a wait-and-see mode at this point,” said Clark Mather, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, a regional association of public and cooperative electric utilities.
Amanda Goodin took a similarly reserved tone but from the other side of the issue. She’s a lawyer for the national environmental law group Earthjustice, which represented the parties in the lawsuits that spawned the Biden-era legal stay.
“It sounds like the agencies are trying to think a little bit about what that regulatory change might mean,” she said. “And, this is nowhere in the press release, but it’s just my guess that part of what is also going on is a new administration coming in and trying to decide where it stands on various issues.”
Some people are theorizing how the uncertain future of the Columbia River Treaty amid political clashes with Canada could impact the environmental review or even if it will be halted altogether, said Neil Maunu, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, an economic development-focused trade association of ports, businesses and public agencies.
“Given the plethora of changes, almost daily, coming from the administration and the agencies, it’s just hard to say,” Maunu said.
Potential outcomes
The Columbian reached out to the six main parties — Oregon, Washington and four Native nations — that signed the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement about their knowledge on where the hydropower system environmental review stands. Only Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek provided a statement.
“The state of Oregon is committed to full implementation of our agreement over the next decade,” she said.
What that will look like, and if there will still be an agreement to implement in the future, however, remains to be seen. Privately, even well-connected people on all sides of the issue acknowledge no one in the region seems to know what the Trump administration has planned.
Meanwhile, this year’s endangered Snake River spring chinook are heading upriver to traverse the dams at the heart of this debate. That run, along with 11 other salmon and steelhead runs, is listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. It’s also considered “in crisis” by the state of Washington.
“While the (Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement) may not be perfect, it’s a big step forward to better meet the needs of endangered salmon and the needs of communities,” said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon. “This is a huge opportunity for our region, and I hope that we can all work together to move it forward quickly and successfully.”
But back in D.C., the Associated Press reported last week the Trump administration plans to eliminate habitat protections for endangered and threatened species.
