President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday revoking an executive action taken by former President Joe Biden related to the lower Snake River dams in Washington state, a move that has drawn praise from those advocating for their continued operations while criticized by environmentalists. [emphasis, links added]
Located in Eastern Washington, the four lower Snake River dams were built in the 1960s and 1970s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which also operates them.
Combined, the dams produce about 1,000 megawatts of electricity on average.
For years, there have been political debates in Washington as to whether or not the lower Snake River dams should be breached or demolished to help the endangered salmon subspecies recover.
Opponents of breaching the dams have argued that improvements to the fish passages have increased their survival rates moving through the dams, while advocates believe those rates are not sufficient to help the subspecies regain healthy population levels.
In 2023, Biden signed a memo that ordered the dam operations to be conducted “in a manner that provides equitable treatment for fish and wildlife with the other purposes for which the Federal dams are managed and operated.”
The memo revoking Biden’s order claims that this “placed concerns about climate change above the Nation’s interests in reliable energy resources,” adding that it required “the Federal government to spend millions of dollars and comply with 36 pages of onerous commitments to dam operations on the Lower Snake River.”
In a statement, Washington Policy Center’s Vice President of Research Todd Myers, wrote that “this is very good news not just for Washington’s economy and energy, but also for salmon. The memorandum is consistent with the science-based conclusions of the largest-ever environmental analysis released in 2020 by the federal scientific agencies that recommended keeping the dams in place.”
“Dam opponents have consistently claimed that Snake River salmon are on the verge of extinction,” Myers added.
“They have been wrong consistently. Most recently, in 2021, dam opponents claimed that wild Spring Chinook on the Snake River would be ‘functionally extinct’ this year. Returns this year are slightly above the 10-year average. Early estimates are that returns will be even higher next year.”
Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash, wrote in a statement that Trump’s memo “reverses the efforts by the Biden administration and extreme environmental activists to remove the dams, which would have threatened the reliability of our power grid, raised energy prices, and decimated our ability to export grain to foreign markets.”
Top photo of Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River in Washington State via U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
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