Photo by Bob Wick, Bureau of Land Management
You might have missed the news, but we just moved one step closer to the greatest salmon restoration in the history of the West Coast.
For decades, the presence of four dams on the lower Snake River, which flows through Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State, have slowly driven the river’s population of salmon to the brink of extinction. After years of half-measures and failed attempts to restore the salmon without touching the dams, Senator Patty Murray and Governor Jay Inslee released their final “Lower Snake River Dam Benefits Replacement Report” on August 25. That report makes one thing abundantly clear: the salmon population cannot thrive while the dams stand.
As the report lays out, the science is clear that the clearest path towards salmon recovery is to breach the four dams. Moreover, Sen. Murray and Gov. Inslee asserted that salmon extinction is “categorically unacceptable,” and the status quo is not an option.
This next part is what makes the report so exciting. Its key determination was that the services from the four lower Snake River dams could be replaced, and that doing so was the most important action we could take to avert salmon extinction, as it would enable us to finally breach the dams and allow the salmon to navigate the river freely. For the first time, decisionmakers acknowledged that breaching the dams is the only way we can ensure salmon recovery, and laid out the conditions we need to be able to do so. As the report says, breaching the dams “must be an option we strive to make viable.”
Sen. Murray and Gov. Inslee were clear that the dams could not be breached until their services have been replaced or mitigated, but they made it clear that this is achievable. This is a significant conclusion, and it puts the region on a presumptive path to dam removal.
Much remains to be done to replace the current services provided by the dams. Sen. Murray and Gov. Inslee emphasized that this will be a process – not done overnight – but it’s a process focused on the short- and medium-term. In many ways, we control the speed of this process.
And it could begin sooner than you might think. Funds made available from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act provide a substantial down payment for moving this work forward. With these federal funds and the path outlined by Sen. Murray and Gov. Inslee, we are beginning to move down the path to breaching the dams and saving Snake River salmon once and for all.