The Trump Administration’s recent decision to step back from an agreement designed to speed the march toward breaching the Lower Snake River dams has the Pacific Northwest farming community breathing a guarded sigh of relief.
But while it’s a move in the right direction to step back from the brink and include more voices in the process, other threats remain for the dams and the farming communities they support, said John Stuhlmiller, Executive Director of the Washington State Water Resources Association.
Stuhlmiller agreed with legal experts who have said it’s possible that dam opponents could leverage lawsuits and judges friendly to their cause to seize control of river management and even to push toward dam breaching, rather than looking for a decision from the federal administration or Congress.
“It’s very possible you could get into that litigation mode, and have judges run it,” Stuhlmiller said on a recent episode of The Farming Show Podcast. “We’d like to see a good solution, rather than just, ‘remove the dams’ or run it by a judge.”
While the dams are most often associated with the carbon-free, renewable hydropower they generate, they’re also critical infrastructure for farming that allows farmers to water their crops as well as ship the food they grow to seaports on the Pacific coast, giving them vital access to international markets.
“We have [hydropower] production, we have irrigation directly from the river, and we have this river highway system, so to speak, where the barges can get all the way up to Lewiston,” said Stuhlmiller. “You take those dams, you lose that.”
“If you think about it from a carbon standpoint, all the trucks or trains that would have to run to carry that barge traffic from the Pacific Ocean all the way up to Lewiston, that’s monumental,” he said. “So that’s an ag support network, plus other things. But we ship a lot of commodities down the river.”
At the same time, decades of efforts to improve fish passage past the dams mean that salmon fatality rates are approaching zero, Stuhlmiller said, calling into question the potential positive impact of dam breaching its proponents tout.
“I would argue, we are making adjustments to the system,” he said. “The inertia is in the direction of all of these adjustments that make it more fish friendly and more environmentally friendly. And it’s better than the alternative of removal, because of so many benefits that would be lost, and so much stability in the region.”
Related:
The Farming Show: Snake River Dams Remain Threatened, Despite Trump Move Back From Brink of Breaching