Sent: June 13, 2023
Brenda Mallory
Chair, Council on Environmental Quality
730 Jackson Place NW
Washington, DC 20503
RE: Docket Number: CEQ-2023-0002
Dear Chair Mallory,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Request for Information published on May 5 regarding Snake and Columbia River salmon recovery. I submit these comments on behalf of the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has over 2.3 million members and supporters nationally with nearly 200,000 members and supporters in the four Northwest States.
The urgency to create a durable solution that works for salmon and steelhead, orca, communities, and tribes has never been greater. The need to address our nation’s responsibilities to honor our treaties and commitments to Northwest tribes has been neglected for far too long.
The Sierra Club has been involved in efforts to recover Snake/Columbia River salmon, steelhead, and lamprey for well over forty years. We testified and worked on development and passage of the Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act that was enacted by congress in 1980. This legislation required that the salmon and steelhead of the Snake/Columbia River system receive “equitable treatment” with the power supplied by the federal dams.
The Sierra Club supported the petitions to list Snake and Columbia River salmon and steelhead runs under the Endangered Species Act. We have participated in all legal challenges to the failed and failing salmon recovery plans developed by the regional federal agencies – Bonneville Power Administration, Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation. These plans have been rejected as inadequate and illegal five times by three different judges over twenty years. These legal challenges are the longest sustained litigation in Sierra Club’s history.
Yet one of the largest salmon systems in the world still finds itself at the brink of extinction. While multiple things have contributed to this, the single biggest impact that led to the rapid demise of Snake River salmon and steelhead, and continue to do so, was the construction of the four lower Snake River dams (LSRD’s). The loss of chinook salmon from the Snake River system also imperils the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales (orca) that depend on salmon from the Snake and Columbia Rivers at key times of the year.
The regional federal agencies have done everything possible to avoid dealing with this fundamental problem and have continued to develop plans that are inadequate, illegal and have failed the fish, the tribes, and the region, including the Columbia River System Operation (CRSO) Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and Record of Decision of 2020. Indeed, the federal agencies have never even attempted to recover the listed populations as the Endangered Species Act requires. The most the Bi-Ops have promised is they will attempt avoid extinction – and they are failing to meet even this diminished goal.
We are encouraged by the engagement and leadership by CEQ and the senior levels of the Biden administration. This is why we agreed, along with other plaintiffs, to pause the current litigation to pursue development of a comprehensive plan to recover Snake and Columbia River salmon. We are equally appreciative that key members of the Northwest political leadership are stepping up. The Federal-State process, led by Senator Murray and Governor Inslee, is the first time that senior regional political leadership have stepped forward and said it is time to take a hard look at the lower Snake River dams and forge a comprehensive solution that works for salmon, tribes, and communities. Their final report and recommendations stated that the “status quo is not a responsible option; extinction of salmon is categorically unacceptable”. They made clear that “action is needed now to make breaching a viable future option”. Governor Inslee’s press release stated that “The state and federal governments should implement a plan to replace the benefits of the Lower Snake River Dams to enable breaching to move forward.”
Their leadership builds on an earlier proposal put forward by Rep. Mike Simpson which was supported by former Governor Brown of Oregon. Governor Kotek of Oregon has continued to embrace these initiatives supporting the need to breach the lower Snake River dams and make investments to replace the services they currently provide. The Murray/Inslee report demonstrated that we could responsibly and affordably replace those services. Governor Inslee and the Washington State Legislature followed up on these recommendations by providing $7 million to develop the next steps for replacing the services of the lower Snake River dams. We believe the Biden administration should build on the foundation laid by Senator Murray and Governor Inslee moving forward.
In September 2022 as part of the commitments made under the terms of the litigation pause NOAA Fisheries finalized the “Rebuilding Interior Columbia Basin Salmon and Steelhead” report. The Rebuilding Report strongly confirmed the importance of breaching the four LSRD’s as part of a comprehensive plan identifying breaching as an “essential” and “centerpiece” action for restoring Snake River salmon. Earlier this year the American Fisheries Society issued yet another statement supporting breaching of the four LSRD’s as necessary to avoid extinction and achieve recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Snake River Basin. The Nez Perce Tribe produced a Quasi-Extinction analysis that showed that key salmon populations are at the threshold of functional extinction due to numbers being so low that fish can’t find each other to spawn.
The Hanford Reach of the Columbia River shows that salmon can thrive if they don’t have to navigate eight dams. The Hanford Reach chinook salmon swim in the same ocean and travel past the same predators to reach the confluence with the Snake and Columbia rivers before heading up the Columbia. What these fish don’t have to do is navigate four additional dams. The smolt-to-adult return (SAR) provides clear evidence of the role these multiple dams play in salmon survival. The SAR rates for salmon vary drastically for salmon who live in the same ocean and return to different areas of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. The fish that only need to pass two to four dams have return rates that consistently reach levels adequate to sustain and even grow their numbers, while Spring/summer Chinook that return to the Snake Rivers (and thus pass eight dams) have return rates that barely reach one percent assuring a continued decline toward extinction. Indeed, even the badly flawed CRSO FEIS itself recognized that of the options they evaluated, the breaching option provided the best chance for to achieve population increases.
The Sierra Club supports a comprehensive plan for Snake/Columbia River salmon recovery that includes the following elements:
- Any successful strategy to avoid extinction and achieve abundance of Snake/Columbia River salmon and steelhead must include breaching the four lower Snake River dams. Science has long been clear on this and the NOAA Rebuilding Report established breaching as a “central” action for Snake River salmon recovery. Even the federal agencies EIS’s, both in 2001 and in 2020, recognized that dam removal was the most impactful action for the salmon and surest path to recovery.
- We have abundant, high elevation, cold water habit in Southeastern Washington, Northeastern Oregon, and the motherlode of habitat in Central Idaho. We have excellent habitat to restore salmon to abundance, but we can’t get enough fish through the lethal corridor of dams on the lower Snake River to utilize it. Breaching the dams is also essential to address the increasing temperatures in the reservoirs that are being made worse by climate change.
- We must honor our commitments and treaties with Tribal Nations. For far too long we have avoided taking the necessary actions and providing sufficient funds to meet our responsibilities. The Tribes have developed a comprehensive set of actions for habitat restoration and other actions. It is past time to meet these commitments. We strongly support the proposal by Tribal Nations to reintroduce salmon in the Upper Columbia River and other blocked areas.
- We support investments to replace the services currently provided by the four LSRD’s. We recognize that the dams provide services that are important to the region, including power, irrigation, and barging of grain. As the Murray/Inslee report showed these services can be successfully provided by alternative means.
- There will need to be ongoing use of spill at the lower Columbia River dams to assist with downstream migration of smolts and continued investments in habitat restoration in various parts of the Columbia Basin. Ongoing and increased spill at lower Snake and Columbia River dams will be necessary as part of any interim plan.
The services of the four lower Snake River dams can be replaced, and we fully support the investments needed to accomplish this. The region has abundant wind and solar resources, and their costs continue to rapidly decline along with continued major opportunities to expand energy efficiency and demand response. Indeed, we can create a more resilient Northwest electricity system free from greenhouse gas emissions even as power demand grows, and we breach the LSRD’s. A 2022 Energy Strategies LLC study commissioned by the Northwest Energy Coalition showed that a diverse portfolio of wind, solar, demand response, storage and market purchases was more than sufficient to replace the energy, capacity, and ramping benefits of the LSRD’s. And, because the replacement portfolio will generate power at times when the region most needs it, this replacement portfolio would create $69-143 million per year of energy value above what the LSRD’s provide.
It is important to note that the Energy Strategies study only selected about 12% of the total proposed projects in BPA’s transmission queue. Additionally, the requests for proposals (RFP’s) by some of the region’s largest utilities demonstrate that the region has abundant amounts of clean energy projects. Bids submitted to the RFPs from PacifiCorp, Puget Sound Energy and Portland General Electric garnered five to eight times the amount of energy and capacity requested. For example, PacifiCorp RFP was for 4300 MW of energy and capacity, and they received bids of 36,000 MW. The funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act will further aid the region’s ability to support expanded renewable energy development, storage and transmission.
We can similarly replace and/or mitigate the services for other sectors such as irrigation and transportation. For irrigators we must reposition pumps to river level, extend the depths of wells and make other adjustments as needed, to assure irrigation continues to be available. The barging of grain down the Snake River has declined by over 40% over the past twenty years and 70% overall. Most grain already moves by rail. We must make investments to restore rail, upgrade roads and terminals and ensure grain continues to reach markets. It is also worth noting that the current barging operations are heavily subsidized by taxpayers. We support making appropriate investments to roads, expanding, and improving rail services, and investing in upgrading port facilities. The funding included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill that passed last fall includes funding that can be applied now to start the process of upgrading our infrastructure.
A couple of final thoughts:
- This issue is the longest running, biggest, unresolved natural resource issue in the Northwest. The forty years of failure to develop a solution has brought our salmon and steelhead to the brink of extinction and cost taxpayers and ratepayers over $20 billion. We are out of time. There is urgency that is punctuated by the effects of climate change we are already seeing and the impacts on reservoirs and fish.
- Climate change demands that we both decarbonize our economy and energy systems as rapidly as we can AND that we restore resiliency to our ecosystems where possible. Restoring the Snake River is the single biggest action we can take to recover salmon, restore ecosystem resilience, and address overheating of the waters in the lower Snake and Columbia Rivers. The modeling from EPA show that breaching the lower Snake River dams is key to addressing the increasing temperatures in the reservoirs. The Snake River basin with its abundant high-elevation, cold water habitat is a Noah’s Ark for salmon in a climate change world.
- We can replace the power from the dams with smart investments in carbon free wind, solar, storage, energy efficiency and demand response. Indeed, we can improve our overall power system and be better positioned for the future.
- Restoring abundant salmon runs in the Snake River is not only essential for meeting our commitments and responsibilities to Tribal Nations, but it will also benefit sport, commercial and tribal fishing communities and economies from Idaho to the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. It is not just keeping a legacy we inherited, it benefits our economy and secures a rich heritage to pass on to our children and grandchildren.
We are at a critical moment in time. We know what must be done. We have solutions that will work for salmon and communities and keep faith with our treaty rights responsibilities. We have senior leadership in the Northwest that has stepped forward and are working to replace the services from the dams and provide the foundation for a comprehensive salmon plan that includes dam removal. The Biden administration is the essential partner that must seize the moment and forge a comprehensive solution that moves us all forward. The Sierra Club is committed to solutions that work for all and we are eager to work with you to develop a durable solution to restore the Snake River as part of comprehensive salmon recovery plan.
Sincerely,
Bill Arthur, Chair
Snake/Columbia River Salmon Campaign
Sierra Club
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