Federal agencies consider additional Columbia River environmental guidelines amid political uncertainty

A trio of federal agencies are considering whether to pursue additional environmental guidelines for the Columbia River.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation are conducting the review to comply with an agreement reached late last year after litigation by regional Native nations and environmental groups.

Environmental groups and tribes are holding out hope the agencies will recommend the removal of Snake River dams, which seemed likely only a few years ago. But, with Republicans set to control Congress and the White House in less than two months, it’s unclear what will happen.

The guidelines at the center of the debate are collectively called the Columbia River System Operations Environmental Impact Statement.

Despite the dense, bureaucratic name, the document is important because it shapes many crucial aspects of the Columbia River’s management — including how much water is used by dams to generate hydroelectricity versus how much passes over their spillways to help young salmon safely make it to the ocean.

The federal agencies began work on the current environmental impact statement in 2016 and finalized it in 2020.

Groups had anticipated the 2020 environmental impact statement to finally settle the conflict over four dams on the Lower Snake River. They produce about 5 percent of the region’s electricity but contribute to salmon’s struggles by preventing endangered fish from reaching historic spawning grounds.

However, the 2020 document did not recommend their removal. Native nations and environmental groups sued.

The recent litigation came after more than three decades of legal battles over the government’s efforts to save endangered salmon runs, which environmental groups argue are inadequate.

Following the 2020 litigation, the Biden administration in 2021 stepped in, halting this most recent round to give parties time to negotiate an agreement.

The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, reached in 2023, paused litigation for five to 10 years. It also mandated the government review the recent environmental impact statement, conduct new research and potentially produce a supplement to the document that would change the government’s stance on issues like Snake River dam removal.

“To get a stay in that litigation, we agreed to some things,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Tom Conning said. “And one of those things is environmental compliance.”

That compliance could lead to a supplemental environmental impact statement or the slightly less significant step of a supplemental environmental assessment. Or it could lead to nothing at all.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a supplemental environmental impact statement is required when an agency “makes substantial changes to the proposed action that are relevant to its environmental concerns” or when “there are substantial new circumstances or information about the significance of adverse effects that bear on the analysis.”

In a follow up email, Conning said the agency is looking at things that have changed since 2020, specifically citing:

• changes to the Columbia River system’s 14 federal dam and reservoir projects;

• species that have since been listed by the Endangered Species Act;

• changes in Columbia River flows from the pending Columbia River Treaty with Canada; and

• newly published research.

When asked if the agencies are considering Snake River dam removal, Conning said the dams are a part of the Columbia River system, but the agencies are “looking at the system as a whole and not necessarily individual projects.”

Earth Justice lawyer Amanda Goodin said her organization expects to find out what approach the agencies are taking through a notice of intent from the trio by the end of this fall.

It’s currently unclear how the January transition from the Biden administration to another Trump presidency will impact the agencies’ decision-making.

Goodin said it’s likely it will have some effect, but the specifics remain to be seen.

She noted removing the Snake River dams — when combined with significant investment in areas like Lewiston, Idaho, that would lose local revenue — would be a win for environmentalists, Native nations and the region’s economy.

But Goodin added that “decision documents that came out of the last Trump administration showed no interest in that kind of win-win solution. And, in fact, (they) were pretty fine condemning salmon to extinction.”

The Corps’ Conning said the coming change in administrations will not change anything the agency is doing.

“Right now, we don’t (expect) basically any impact,” he said. “It’s not like we can really speculate at this point what the incoming administration or the next Congress might do.”

Republicans, who will control the presidency and both the chambers of Congress after January 2025, have opposed Snake River dam removal.

During his first term, President-elect Donald Trump showed a clear preference for cutting environmental protections for fish and ecosystems, instead increasing the amount of river water available across the West for farming.

That’s a stance he doubled down on while campaigning this summer, The Columbian reported last month.

To Goodin, the stakes of the federal agencies’ potential action could not be higher — or more time sensitive.

“The science has made clear that we are in an extinction crisis and that we really have to act with urgency here if we don’t want to lose some of these (salmon) runs,” she said. “We don’t really have time for half measures. We don’t really have time for inaction.”

“And if the federal government decides to not live up to its obligation and not to keep moving forward with the agreement,” she continued, “then anything’s on the table — anything that we can do to buy the fish more time, anything that we can do to keep this moving forward.”

Whatever the agencies decide on Snake River dam removal, Goodin acknowledged that issue will ultimately have to be decided by Congress.

About the project: The Murrow News Fellowship is a state-funded journalism project managed by Washington State University. Local partners are The Columbian and The Daily News. For more information, visit news-fellowship.murrow.wsu.edu.