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Leaders of four Pacific Northwest tribal nations indigenous to the region on Friday inked a historic agreement with the U.S. that lays out the future of the operations of hydropower dams in the Columbia River Basin, including the dams on the Lower Snake River. At the White House on Friday, the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama tribes, and the states of Washington and Oregon, signed a memorandum of understanding, outlining a series of commitments from the federal government. It’s not an agreement for dam removal; in fact, removal of the Lower Snake dams, a long-running and controversial goal of tribes and other groups, is put off for years. But it’s the end of an era.
“We need a lot more clean energy, but we need to develop it in a way that’s socially just,” Yakama Nation Chair Gerald Lewis said at the White House. “The last time energy was developed in the Columbia Basin it was done on the backs of tribal communities and tribal resources.”
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Tribal nations helped draw up a road map for the future of the region’s energy and salmon. Under the $1 billion-plus agreement announced in December and approved by a federal judge this month,tribes will help restore wild fish and lead in the construction of at least 1 to 3 gigawatts of clean-energy production. The agreement stems from years of mediated negotiations in a decadeslong court battle over dam operations. A stay of litigation is in place for up to five years and could continue for as long as 10. In a key compromise, the agreement also reduces water spilled over the dams for summer and fall run fish, including fall Chinook, one of the more robust salmon runs on the river, and a mainstay of tribal and sport fisheries. That allows the Bonneville Power Administration to sell more power from the dams into the lucrative California power market. However, spring spill would be boosted, to help spring Chinook by providing something more like a spring freshet for young fish migrating to the sea.
It comes as climate change turns more mountain snow to rain, throwing imperiled salmon and steelhead into hot water, and straining access to a steady stream of hydropower.
