Court grants emergency measures to protect Columbia/Snake River salmon and steelhead
Little Goose Dam, Steven Pavlov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Earlier this fall, IRU, represented by Earthjustice, returned to court seeking immediate emergency action to protect endangered salmon and steelhead from the harms caused by the lower Snake and Columbia River dam operations. Our request was successful!
The court boldly and unequivocally addressed the concerns that IRU, our Tribal partners, and fisheries managers have been saying for years. In his decision, the Honorable Michael H. Simon, who heard this case and proceeded over previous litigations, acknowledged “one of the foundational symbols of the West, a critical recreational, cultural, and economic driver for Western states, and the beating heart and guaranteed resource protected by treaties with several Native American tribes is disappearing from the landscape.”
In granting our request for immediate relief to aid endangered salmon and steelhead, the Court ordered the agencies responsible for operations to increase “spill” over eight dams on the lower Columbia and Snake Rivers. By sending more water over the dams, and not through the turbines, juvenile out-migrating fish are more likely to spill over the dams and not face the gauntlet of power-generating turbine blades. The additional amount of flow is aimed to make the series of dams and reservoirs act more like a river for migrating juvenile salmon, critically boosting their survival through this system.
The Court also acknowledged that the majority of the actions we sought have been implemented in the past, but were scrapped when the current Administration walked away from the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative. The CBRI was a comprehensive energy, infrastructure, and fish recovery plan that would have replaced necessary services in the lead up to future removal of the Lower Snake River Dams. Despite arguments from the defendants that increased spill and operational changes would hurt ratepayers, Judge Simon found “the majority of the spill has been implemented over the years without such negative repercussions, and the Court does not anticipate such calamities will ensure from the current spill order.”
While we are incredibly pleased to see these emergency actions granted, they must be viewed for what they are—emergency stopgap measures that optimize salmon survival in the near term. This system still needs transformative change in the form of Lower Snake River dam removal and river restoration. We can ensure continuity, and improvement of services in place of these four aging dams; and also ensure salmon runs can recover to healthy and harvestable numbers capable of providing stability for Idaho communities.
