Trump stops Snake River dam removals, says Biden plan elevated fish over citizens
Farmers and rural communities in the Pacific Northwest are celebrating the move as a win for citizen interests.
Last week President Trump ordered a halt on Biden-era plans to remove four hydroelectric dams along the Snake River.
Trump’s memorandum says the Biden-Harris agenda to breach the Washington state dams elevates fish and climate change concerns above “the needs of American citizens,” including energy production. The lower Snake River dams generate over 3,000 megawatts of “secure, reliable, and affordable hydroelectric generating capacity”—enough to power 2.5 million homes.
While farmers and rural communities in the Pacific Northwest celebrate the move as a win for citizen interests, environmental groups say they are ready to renew their decades-long push for dam removal.
Dam breaching has become a growing issue in the American West, as Democrat politicians, government agencies, and environmental NGOs continue to push deconstruction projects in the name of fish conservation.
Farm and industry groups celebrate halt of Snake River dam removals
The controversy over the four lower Snake River dams—Ice Harbor Dam, Lower Monumental Dam, Little Goose Dam, and Lower Granite Dam—goes back decades. Green groups, tribes, the state of Oregon, and other plaintiffs have filed repeated lawsuits claiming the dams violate the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because they harm salmon and steelhead populations.
Following Trump’s announcement, operations on the Snake River will continue as usual—for now. Pro-dam advocates say the move protects farmers, rural communities, and power users.
“We have long stood against dam breaching because of the devastating economic consequences it would impose on communities throughout the Pacific Northwest and the threat it poses to U.S. wheat’s global competitiveness,” said Pat Clements, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG). “We look forward to working with the Trump Administration to preserve this critical infrastructure for generations to come.”
Beyond slashing irrigation water and energy, dam breaching would make the Columbia-Snake River System—a key pathway for U.S. wheat exports—unnavigable. The dams allow wheat barges to travel through locks and reach inland ports, forming a vital transportation route for exporting wheat to over 20 countries across the Pacific Rim.
One four-barge tow can ship the equivalent of 144 railcars or 538 semi-trucks, according to NAWG. Shifting to rail and truck transport would be expensive, increase carbon emissions, and congest road traffic.
“As harvest approaches, it is reassuring to know that barging, one of the most environmentally friendly, safest ways to transport our wheat to market, will remain a viable option,” said Jeff Malone, president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers.
Upstream states in the Columbia River Basin like Montana and Idaho would be impacted. Two of the dams, Ice Harbor and Lower Granite, provide water for about 55,000 acres of farmland in Idaho.
“The Snake River Dams support agriculture production, provide a reliable energy source, and provide critical transportation,” Montana Senator Steve Daines told Northern Ag Network. “Biden’s Columbia River Memorandum was an attempt to breach the dams and appease radical environmentalist groups, with Montana communities left to pay the price.”
The 2023 Lower Snake River Water Supply Replacement Study estimated that replacing dam functions would cost $11-$19 billion. Ratepayers and taxpayers would almost certainly be left with the bill.
Decades of litigation led to planned Snake River dam removals
The Columbia River Basin is about the size of the state of Texas. It was once the largest salmon-producing river system in the world.
Beginning in the early 1990s, special interest groups began suing the government and federal agencies under the ESA for alleged harm to salmon and steelhead populations. Plaintiffs included regional Indian tribes, the state of Oregon, the Sierra Club, and National Wildlife Federation, often represented by the non-profit environmental law firm Earthjustice.
In 2020, during his first term, Trump’s team conducted an environmental review and recommended keeping the Snake River dams. Then Biden took office, and his administration chose to prioritize salmon recovery over water supply and hydropower.
Farm groups say they were kept out of discussions.
“As a result of the secrecy of this process, agriculture voices were largely excluded from discussion of impacts and any commitments for funding and mitigation,” Michelle Hennings, executive director of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, said in a 2023 letter to then-President Biden.
In 2023, tribes, federal agencies, and the states of Oregon and Washington signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) called the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative (CBRI), formalizing plans to pursue dam removal.
With last week’s order, Trump is instructing federal agencies to rescind all agreements related to Biden’s policy and work to revise environmental review processes.
Environmental NGOs promise to continue the fight in court
Green groups oppose Trump’s decision and signal they are ready to renew their efforts in court.
“The Trump administration is turning its back on an unprecedented opportunity to support a thriving Columbia Basin—and ignoring the extinction crisis facing our salmon,” said Amanda Goodin, senior attorney for Earthjustice. “Unfortunately, this short-sighted decision to renege on this important agreement is just the latest in a series of anti-government and anti-science actions coming from the Trump administration.”
She warned that ending the Biden-era agreement meant more lawsuits could be coming.
“The agreement formed the basis for the stay of litigation,” Goodin told OPB, “so without the agreement there is no longer any basis for a stay.”
Dam removals on Northern California’s Klamath River a cautionary tale
Proponents of the dams point to a dam removal project completed last year on the Klamath River in Northern California, where locals say the impact on salmon has been disastrous.
79% of Siskiyou County residents voted against dam removal in 2022, but officials moved ahead. California Governor Gavin Newsom heavily lobbied for the project, positioning dam removals as one of his highlight achievements as governor.
Journalist and rancher Theodora Johnson wrote for UNWON that pulling the Klamath dams released some 7 million cubic yards of sediment into the Klamath River, devastating salmon populations and destroying the food web in the entire river system.
For several months, suspended sediment levels in the river varied from 2,000 to 16,000 milligrams per liter over a stretch of at least 60 miles—levels that are approximately four to 30 times what juvenile salmon can survive. Dissolved oxygen hit zero twice. Millions of native species were killed in and along the river; the entire food web has been destroyed. Wildlife were bogging down and dying in the footprints of the reservoirs, as well.
Locals were shocked and dismayed. Many began calling the river, which reeked of dead animals and toxic sludge, the “River of Death.”
She quotes a local salmon fishing guide who says these impacts are far from temporary; the Klamath’s historic spawning grounds have been ruined for the foreseeable future.
“All the gravels are covered in mud, and we have no idea when it will go away,” says Albert Kutzkey, a third-generation Klamath fishing guide and the spokesman for Klamath River fishing guides. “Sediment will keep coming down for years.”
Officials have not released a salmon recovery plan, ignoring repeated requests from Siskiyou County.
“My business is totally gone,” Kutzkey says. “I might have a few more years of fishing if the water will clear up. But after the next two years, we don’t know if any fish will be coming back. We have a three-to-four year cycle for the salmon, and we just don’t know how those young salmon could have survived all this.”
Johnson says the impact to the Klamath basin’s rural, agricultural community has been severe.
“Our region now faces physical and political threats because of dam removal. If not headed off, these threats will destroy our agrarian economy and culture,” she writes.
She says the Department of the Interior could step in to mitigate damage by auditing funding, monitoring the true effects and dam removal and publicizing their findings, and building more water storage for the Klamath Basin.
Dam removals still planned on California’s Eel River; 600,000 residents stand to lose water
A similar dam removal project is still planned for Northern California’s Eel River in Mendocino and Lake counties. The Potter Valley Project supplies water to 600,000 North State residents. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), a major donor to Newsom, is planning to remove two dams, stating that their operation has become unprofitable after years of government-mandated water cuts and lawsuits from green NGOs including Friends of the Eel River and Cal Trout.
An internal report by Sonoma Water found that the only option for securing water for the drought- and fire-prone region is to keep the dams in place. This option was scrapped because it conflicts with unspecified government and NGO “goals.”
According to a statement from Rep. Jared Huffman’s (D-California) office, PG&E will be allowed to pass on the costs of destroying the dam system to California ratepayers. The cost of removing the Potter Valley Project dams is estimated at $500 million.
In April, UNWON reported that the Trump administration has said they are reviewing funding for the Potter Valley Project dam removals to “ensure consistency” with the president’s directives on unleashing American energy production.
To date, there has been no official update on the future of the Potter Valley Project.
Having run small hydro, 50 megawatts and down here in America and in British Columbia, the issue of dam removal is always very high on a small subset of the environmental justice community. Mind you it has nothing to do with species preservation or revitalization. It has to with harnessing overwhelming financial support from groups like Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, USFW, US Forestry Service, NGO’s to achieve their ends, and the clowns at the state and federal who listen to the notion that dams once put in place for flood control, water management and hydroelectric power are no longer necessary, go right along. Nothing could be further from the truth, but facts are a funny thing. As experience with the species migration and restoration and the various methods used to achieve the goals set forth, (usually arbitrary in nature) it is very very dam and water shed specific as the AI response indicates. On the Sebasticook River a small tributary to the Kennebec River in central Maine, two small hydro stations placed fish lifts into service some 10 plus years ago. Both have had robust alewife or herring runs restored (Lobstermen like the free bait) but shad and salmon, especially salmon have not seen appreciable returns. What the dam removal people NEVER mention is the fact that local communities through their tax dollars must maintain the dam removal site. Surrendering a FERC hydro dam license is a long and expensive process and the requirements post dam removal are strict and in terms of remediation and maintenance of the project boundaries. They never tell the cities and towns that they are going to be on the hook forever and will bear the costs associated with much of the dam removal. They cynically use the indigenous First Nations and Native American Nations to further their goals, but in reality the indigenous peoples were low impact prior to the rivers being dammed, and when they had over stayed and played out one location, they simply moved up or downstream to a better location. The population numbers were very small and so easy to move. They were not “good stewards” rather low impact users of the natural resources the rivers provided.
Now these watermelons, (green on the outside, red on the inside) want to rip out major engineering projects that were and are marvels of engineering prowess. Think on it, some were engineered using long division and slide rules, and many built by hand and very hard labor. Without the Bonneville system and the electric power the system produced, the manufacturing juggernaut of WWII would have been a lot less capable.
This crowd of dam removal zealots leave a trailing wake of loss and destruction behind them every where they show up, when finished with one dam, or forest, or saved subspecies, they move on to their next project. Don’t think so, check the stewardship of the Pacific Northwest forests. Want to see how it is done head to Finland. The watermelons live the high life in gated communities, and sequester themselves in cocoons of self righteousness, and never see or care to see the damage that they do once they get their way. What should they? Uber delivers to the upper east side of Manhattan.
Having grown up in that area of the country (although my family did apples and cherries not wheat) the dam issue is very present and often spoken about. However, it wasn't that long ago when my dad, grandpa and even great-grandpa remembered when the snake was undammed and the environment along the river was drastically different. There is a great movie at the achieves of WSU that talk to farmers before and right after the first dams went in and the impact. The effects are night and day difference on the shoreline and the animals that inhabited that area natively.
However the part that most farmers struggle with in Washington and North and West Idaho is transportation of goods, the cost have only skyrocketed and if you can find a trucking company that will haul your goods from year to year your solid since most go under within 8 months of themselves. Famers have existed in that area of the world for generations without the dams and water is an issue regardless of where you go in the farming community.
As it stands now I work for the government and work in fish restoration (late spring into summer if the budget is there) and we have had far better success by changing out culverts and reducing the ejection pressure of water in areas that are fish bearing streams. However the fish ladder system is shoddy at best. Often the dams are dumping to much water for the fish to simply reach the accessways. We often recover migratory fish carcasses miles down from the main dam often in huge piles.
I am trying to get on for the work down on the two Columbia River dams that are trying to improve the fish passage system because Pacific Lamprey are unable to enter in sufficient numbers. Try fishing the Columbia up around Orondo or Stayman, you wont find much in the way of native run. The dams drastically effect the overall rate and availability of species to enter and access more of the river system. If the dams are to remain in place we need to do a better job of getting the fish into the accessways and letting them migrate up further. Also if your an angler go out and help kill Pikeminnow on the Columbia and other inland rivers. It does help the Salmon.