The Dam Drama Behind Dam Removal: The breakdown of complex legal, political, and literally, concrete
- Tree of Knowledge Research
- Aug 25, 2014
- 5 min read
Roughly a century and a half ago and prior to European settlement, upwards of ten million wild salmon swam up the Columbia River to spawn at the streams and tributaries of their births each year.[1] Today, this remarkable fish run, referred to as the silver tide, has lost its magnetism as less than ten thousand salmon now return to the Columbia River Basin each season.[2] Over the years, wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest of the United States have suffered continuous decline for a variety of reasons -- the greatest contribution to this decline being the construction and maintenance of dams on watersheds that these wild fish rely on for spawning.[3]
Despite the negative environmental impacts of dams, Americans rely on dams to provide indispensable resources – from creating electricity with hydroelectric generators to storing water for drinking and agriculture. In the early twentieth century, public works projects such as the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, helped mitigate damage to the economy caused by the Great Depression.[4] Dam construction also played a major role in the implementation of President Roosevelt’s New Deal Program, creating jobs and hydroelectric power - both of which helped aid the war industry for World War II.[5] Local, state, and federal governments benefitted – and still benefit -- from dams that served as a buffer against cyclical droughts and water shortages.[6] Undoubtedly, dams became more than just a power production and water storage resource – they became a part of an indispensable strategy for pulling the United States out of economic slumps. These facts explain why the United States is home to two million dams of various sizes.[7] Although the benefits dams offer have been, and remain vast, these benefits come at high environmental cost, particularly on river ecosystems and fisheries. A growing movement campaigning Congress to require the removal of dams is sweeping the nation as people are becoming more aware of dams’ harmful attributes.[8]
The debate concerning dam removal is highly complex. Aside from the physical practicalities of engineering safe dam breaches and the expense of restoring surrounding ecosystems, legal and political factors affect the prospect of removal, as interests of hydropower and irrigators consistently take precedence over environmental concerns.[9] Flying in the face of historical norms, progress was made on October 26, 2011, when the Condit Dam in Washington State was breached, restoring natural flows to the White Salmon River.[10] The removal of the Condit Dam was a challenge. Its generators powered thousands of homes for multiple generations.[11] Nevertheless, this dam cut off access to 33 miles of steelhead habitat, 14 miles of salmon habitat, and completely blocked fish passage from the lower 3.3 miles of the White Salmon to the upper sections of the river and tributaries, essentially ending the natural salmon and steelhead migration on the White Salmon River.[12]
Because wild salmon populations have drastically declined from not only the White Salmon River, but also all throughout the Columbia River Basin and other parts of the United States, the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”) classified a number of salmon and steelhead populations as endangered and others as threatened, granting protection under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). Congress passed the ESA in order to protect, and ultimately recover jeopardized species and the ecosystems upon which they depend.[13] The ESA requires the NMFS to create Recovery Plans for the conservation and survival of listed species, such as wild salmon populations.[14] Despite the mandated objective to protect these species of fish, the Recovery Plans created for many wild salmon populations have fallen short of preventing their continual decline and the restoration of their ecosystems. This failure is due in part because the ESA only mandates the creation of Recovery Plans and not the actual implementation of the Plans – thereby making it near impossible to achieve any real recovery results. Still, the main reason the Recovery Plans for these species have yet to succeed is the dams and their damaging impact on fishery ecosystems.
In 1982, out of concern for the ESA-listed salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC), an interstate compact agency charged by Congress with restoring Columbia Basin salmon runs, adopted the position that any relicensing of the Condit Dam should include provisions for fish passage.[15] In 1996, an Environmental Impact Statement was issued, requiring the Condit Dam managers to install fish ladders to restore fish passage to traditional fishing areas.[16] The expense of implementing these permanent fish passage structures on the dam, however, made the continued operation of the dam uneconomical, giving the dam managers no other option than dam removal.[17] For the next twelve years, however, a staggering complexity of federal and state bureaucracies and community opposition delayed the removal of the dam, which did not occur until 2011.[18]
No doubt exists that dams have played a historical role in the United States; however, the record of these massive hydroelectric projects depleting once-abundant salmon fisheries provides an impetus to remove dams. The experiences gained from dam removal – deploying the Condit Dam removal and the restoration projects that followed as a model -- offer other dam managers insight into how to break down the complex legal, political, and concrete barriers, in order to renew ecosystems and reclaim rivers.
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[1] Ken Olsen, Fishing for a Future, 44 Nat’l Wildlife 46, 46 (2006).
[2] Id.
[3] William Dietrich, Salmon: an Environmental Tragedy in Two Acts, 88 Am. Sci. 267, 267 (2000) (106 wild salmon stocks have become extinct since the construction of dams throughout the Columbia River Basin)
[4] Christian McClung, Grand Coulee Dam: Leaving a Legacy, University of Washington (Feb 2010), available at: http://depts.washington.edu/depress/grand_coulee.shtml
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Dam Good News for Fish and Riverside Communities, Nat’l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin. (Oct. 14, 2012, 11:02 A.M.) available at http://www.noaa.gov/features/resources/dam.html.
[8] See Office of Hydropower licensing, Fed. Energy Regulatory Comm’n, Draft Environmental Impact Statement: Glines Canyon and Elwha Hydroelectric Projects, Washington 2-16 to 17 (1991), available at http://ia700507.us.archive.org/29/items/ draftenvironment00fede/draftenvironment00fede.pdf; Michael T. Pyle, Note, Beyond Fish Ladders: Dam Removal as a Strategy for Restoring America’s Rivers, 14 Stan. Envtl. L.J. 97, 98–99 (1995) (discussing Congress’s decision to remove two dams on the Elwha River in Washington and predicting increased future dam removal)
[9] See N. Leroy Poff & David D. Hart, How Dams Vary and Why it Matters for the Emerging Science of Dam Removal, 52 Bioscience 659, 665–66 (2002); Robert A. McFarlane, Note, The Imperiled Klamath River Salmon: A Troubled History and A Hopeful Future Under the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, 1 Hastings W. NW J. of envtl. L., Pol’y, 89, 92–93 (1994) (recognizing that in 1992, the number of salmon returning to spawn in the Klamath Basin reached an all-time low of 25,900).
[10] http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wr/cwp/condit.html
[11] See Pacificorp, History of the Condit Hydroelectric Project 16 (2002), available at http://www.pacificorp.com/content/dam/pacificorp/doc/Energy_Sources/Hydro/Hydro_Licensin g/Condit/HAERReport.pdf.
[12] Upper White Salmon River Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, Pub. L. No. 109-44, § 2, 119 Stat. 443 (2005) (codified as amended at 16 U.S.C. § 1274(a)(167) (2006)). The lower 3.3 miles of river are within the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area Act, Pub. L. No. 99-663, § 13(c), 100 Stat. 427, 44294 (1986) (codified as amended at 16 U.S.C. § 1274(a)(61) (2006)).
[13] Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531(b), 1532(3) (1994).
[14] Id. at 1531(b).
[15] NW Power & Conservation Council, Columbia Rivers Basin Fish & Wildlife Program 7– 11 (1982); see also, David H. Becker, The Challenges of Dam Removal: The History and Lessons of the Condit Dam and Potential Threats from the 2005 Federal Power Act Amendments, 36 ENVTL. L. 811, 824 (2006).
[16] See Becker, supra note 15.
[17] Id. at 824-26.
[18] Order on Rehearing, Denying Stay, and Dismissing Extension of Time Request, PacifiCorp, Project No. 2342-021, 135 FERC ¶ 61,064 (Apr. 21, 2011); Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act of 1899, 33 U.S.C. § 403 (2006); 33 U.S. C. § 1344 (2006).
