Ag stakeholders lead dam tour as federal mediation deadline nears

Published 8:45 am Thursday, August 24, 2023

: Tom Kammerzell, Pacific Northwest Waterways Association president, Port of Whitman County commissioner and Colfax, Wash., cattle rancher, takes a picture inside the Lower Granite Dam navigation lock Aug. 23, in Almota, Wash.

LEWISTON, Idaho — Agricultural stakeholders talked with congressional staffers about the importance of the lower Snake River dams Aug. 23 even as they awaited the outcome of federal mediation.

A coalition of environmental and fishing groups in 2020 sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration over their operation plan for the dams.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service are continuing mediation during a stay of the litigation. The stay was to end Aug. 31.

Anthony Pena, government relations manager of the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, said a short-term extension of the stay is likely.

“Aug. 31 is around the corner and there’s still a lot of work to be done,” Pena said. “I don’t know any specifics about any plans. We’ve been left out of a lot of these conversations.”

The association’s Inland Ports and Navigation Group is an intervenor defendant in the federal mediation.

Leslie Druffel, co-chair of the navigation group, and Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, an association that advocates for hydropower, told the Capital Press the previous week that they had for months been shut out of negotiations as intervenor defendants.

“There was an update, but I’m not bound by confidentiality to say there was nothing meaningful shared,” Miller said.

“Still waiting,” Druffel agreed.

“In my mind, it’s not really a mediation if you only bring one side,” said Tom Kammerzell, president of the waterways association, a Port of Whitman County commissioner and rancher in Colfax, Wash. “It’s very frustrating for agriculture and all the interests that the Snake-Columbia river system have, to have what appears to be an agenda moving forth without being a part of it.”

Legislative tourThe Washington Association of Wheat Growers led an all-day tour of 15 congressional staffers and five national agricultural organization reps Aug. 23, touring Lower Granite Dam in Almota, Wash., and visiting the Port of Lewiston, Idaho.

In an Aug. 22 letter to U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Richard W. Spinrad, the House Committee on Natural Resources said it continues to investigate NOAA Fisheries’ reversal of its position regarding continued operation of the four lower Snake River dams.

“Your unresponsiveness to the Committee’s document requests suggests that NOAA and NMFS are deliberately engaging in obstruction to frustrate the oversight power of Congress,” the letter states. “This is unacceptable. The American public deserves transparency, and the Committee will not hesitate to utilize the tools at its disposal to administer effective oversight and fulfill the Committee’s responsibility to the American public.”

“It’s very important to educate those that could potentially be decision-makers on our infrastructure,” said Michelle Hennings, executive director of the association. “It’s very valuable to bring people out to actually see in person the dams and our river system, and how important it is to keep our infrastructure in place.”

Pre-dam declineDuring a presentation at the Lower Granite Dam, Miller told the group that the decline in salmon populations began in 1915 to 1922 — before any dams were built. The lower Snake River dams were built in the 1960s and 1970s.

Estimates for early salmon runs range from 6 million to 16 million, although Miller noted that there weren’t any official salmon counts back then.

“Years before the first dam was built, we only were averaging less than 1 million salmon a year,” he said. “It’s very important to understand dams are not the reason salmon declined and they very well may not be the reason salmon aren’t returning.”

European settlers over-fished the river with canneries, and sought to stock bodies of water with other fishing options, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during the tour.

“Now some of the people who would like to see the dams gone feel like maybe salmon could do better if the dams weren’t there,” Miller said. “The dams did not cause this decline … and if they were removed, they’re very unlikely to result in salmon returning to pre-European numbers.”

Miller pointed to ocean warming and similarly low salmon return rates elsewhere along the the Pacific coast.

NOAA Fisheries has estimated that if the dams were breached, a 25% mortality rate would be cut in half. Miller used a figure from a NOAA study suggesting an 11% improvement.

“Eleven percent might sound like a lot, but doesn’t make the difference people think it will make,” he said. “(The impact of the dams) is a very small fraction of what’s going on.”

Marine highwayKammerzell stressed to tour participants the importance of the river system, known as Marine Highway 84, or M-84.

“That is as important as Interstate 60, 70, 80 or 90 for transportation,” Kammerzell said. “Nobody could imagine taking out any of those freeways.”

M-84 is the most efficient and cost-effective way to move agricultural products, Kammerzell said.

The industry estimates one grain barge traveling on the river system equates to 25 hopper rail cars and 134 trucks. One barge tow equals 1.4 100 unit-car trains and 538.4 trucks.

One Panamax grain vessel, which transports the grain out of the Columbia River to overseas customers, equals 2,400 trucks, said Capt. Jeremy Nielsen, president of Columbia River Pilots.

About 1,500 Panamax ships move out of the Pacific Northwest a year, down from 4,500 ships per year historically, he said.

“It’s not really a decline in cargo because these ships are getting so much bigger,” Nielsen said.

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