By Kurt Miller
I had a boss once tell me, “I like that you know when to raise your hand.” She appreciated I flagged the big issues for her and asked for help when needed. This is one of those issues.
Northwest RiverPartners is actively participating in the Federal Columbia River Power System litigation mediation talks. These talks are led by the Biden Administration’s White House Council on Environmental Quality and the overtly biased process to date has not been good.
Mediation Talks – Brief Background
In early 2021, plaintiff groups, led by the State of Oregon, filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking immediate injunctive relief against FCRPS operations.
This motion was in response to U.S. government studies, which concluded that planned FCRPS hydropower operations were aligned with the social, environmental, and economic well-being of the region. They also found these operations did not pose a threat to endangered salmon and steelhead populations.
Oregon’s motion for injunctive relief had potentially dire implications for the region’s grid reliability and ratepayer costs. Ultimately, Oregon and other plaintiff groups are trying to force the beneficiaries of the FCRPS to acquiesce to some plaintiffs’ long-held desire to remove dams on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers.
On Oct. 21, 2021, plaintiff groups agreed to a pause in litigation through July 31, 2021. That stay was extended though last-minute negotiations on Aug. 4, 2022, and is set to expire by Aug. 31, 2023.
A One-Sided Negotiation
The concerning part—the part I’m raising my hand about—is CEQ’s approach to the negotiation process. Northwest RiverPartners has legal standing as an intervener defendant. That standing gives us a right to be included in mediation negotiations.
However, despite this legal standing, Northwest RiverPartners and other defendant intervener groups representing millions of ratepayers and residents throughout the West have not been granted a meaningful say in the negotiations from their outset, which I’ll demonstrate below.
Unfortunately, due to confidentiality requirements, I am only allowed to share information from publicly available documents, but even within these limited parameters, one can see a very troubling pattern emerge.
The Three-Legged Stool
In a highly orchestrated effort, CEQ has constructed a proverbial three-legged stool that is being used as a barrier to prevent meaningful input from public power interests.
Leg 1: NOAA Report Reverses Decades of NOAA Science
On July 12, 2022, CEQ released a draft report entitled “Rebuilding Interior Columbia Basin Salmon and Steelhead” produced by NOAA Fisheries. The report was disappointing for numerous reasons. First, the report was co-written by two long-standing plaintiff groups in the ongoing litigation against the dams—the State of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe.
Second, the report inexplicably reverses decades of NOAA Fisheries’ own scientific research showing that breaching (i.e., removing) the lower Snake River dams may provide minimal benefits to salmon.
Third, NOAA Fisheries would only allow feedback on its draft report from states and tribes, purposely leaving out the public and organizations like Northwest RiverPartners and the millions of public power customers we represent.
Unsurprisingly, when the final report was released on Sept. 30, 2022, its conclusions remained largely intact. Most importantly, the report calls breaching the lower Snake River dams a “centerpiece action” for achieving “healthy and harvestable” levels of salmon.
The non-scientific underpinnings of these recommendations are exposed in the report when NOAA and their plaintiff co-authors admit to a “lack of precise measures or quantitative estimates of the magnitude of biological benefit expected from large-scale management actions,” and that, “not all restoration actions will achieve their intended benefit.”
Leg 2: New Unscientific Salmon Recovery Standard Adopted
The Biden administration, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior, released an announcement on Aug. 4, 2022. That announcement, like the draft NOAA report, adopted a new, non-scientific standard for salmon recovery in the region.
The announcement stated, “The Administration is committed to supporting development of a durable long-term strategy to restore salmon and other native fish populations to healthy and abundant levels.” As noted above, the NOAA report translates this description into a new “healthy and harvestable” standard.
While having “harvestable” salmon populations is an admirable goal, the Biden administration’s statement shifted salmon recovery from a scientifically quantifiable goal that has been used as the legal standard for decades to one that is ill-defined, not scientifically based. The new standard also lies outside the scope of the legal proceedings the mitigation is addressing.
This change also provides cover for a shift from NOAA’s prior statements warning of the limited benefits of dam breaching for salmon. The new narrative is that dams must be breached because the administration has a new, higher standard for salmon recovery.
Leg 3: Stay Agreement Excludes Input from Public Power Groups
Also on Aug. 4, 2022, the U.S. government released Exhibit 2 of the extended stay agreement with the plaintiffs. Importantly, even though Northwest RiverPartners and other intervener defendants have legal standing in the case, we were purposely excluded from negotiating the terms of the stay.
Unsurprisingly, the terms of the Exhibit 2 commit the U.S. government to the following condition, “The Administration commits to exploring lower Snake River habitat restoration opportunities, including but not limited to migration corridor restoration through breaching the four lower Snake River dams.”
This stay stipulation runs against the desire of a clear majority of the residents of the Greater Pacific Northwest and could only have been arrived at in closed-door negotiations.
While Northwest RiverPartners remains committed to salmon recovery and meaningful dialogue with people and organizations with diverse views, we are quickly losing faith in this CEQ-led process.
We know from independent analyses that dam removal will raise rates, cost ratepayers billions of dollars, and set us back years in our effort to decarbonize our economy. While the administration officials have also committed to ensuring the existing hydropower system can still function in “delivering affordable and reliable clean power,” every action taken in the CEQ-led mediation has been at odds with achieving that objective in the Pacific Northwest.
Clearly, it’s time to raise our hand. We believe we can recover salmon while preserving the hydropower system’s many needed benefits. Those benefits include clean, reliable, and affordable energy and critical infrastructure for agriculture, like irrigation and barging. If you believe as we do, please raise your hands with us.
Kurt Miller is the executive director of Northwest
RiverPartners. He can be contacted at kurt@nwriverpartners.org.
