After 50 years, the Snake River Dams have been a blessing and will continue to be

Note: This is a guest op-ed by Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center.

It has been fifty years since the four dams on the Lower Snake River were completed. Originally built to provide transportation, they now create the equivalent of one-third of the electricity generated in Idaho, helping balance the growing amount of wind and solar energy across the Pacific Northwest.

And for virtually all of those 50 years, those who want to destroy the dams have predicted they would cause the extinction of Snake River salmon.

In the late 1990s, anti-dam activists purchased an ad in the New York Times predicting that unless the dams were destroyed, “wild Snake River Spring Chinook salmon … will be extinct by 2017.”

In the late 1990s, that prediction seemed plausible. Salmon populations had declined dramatically. In 1995, just 1,105 Spring Chinook passed the Lower Granite Dam, the farthest upstream of the four. Thirty years later, returns are much larger. Population improvements have been slow, but positive.

However, some still claim that extinction is right around the corner. In 2021, environmental activists wrote that if the dams weren’t removed, Spring Chinook would be “nearly extinct” in 2025, adding for dramatic flair, “that’s not hyperbole.” Instead, this year returns of Spring Chinook at the Lower Granite Dam were almost twice as large as when the prediction was made.

The Snake River Fall Chinook run has been above Washington state’s recovery goal since 2002.

The largest-ever scientific assessment of the dams, completed by the federal government, recommended keeping the dams because the evidence showed that salmon could recover with them in place and provide the energy that will become even more valuable and critical as electricity demand increases in the upcoming years.

To be sure, those of us who have spent decades working on salmon recovery across the Pacific Northwest understand that Snake River salmon need help. There is understandable frustration with the slow pace of recovery and the Chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe noted that “decades of habitat restoration work and improved fish passage technology at the dams haven’t restored the populations to levels that can be de-listed under the Endangered Species Act.”

That is also the reality for salmon across the Pacific Northwest. Decades of habitat restoration work across the region have not delivered the promised increases. Focusing only on the Snake River misses the larger reality that salmon recovery in general is hard. The good news is that there is progress. Snake River salmon runs are much larger today than in the 1990s. About 98 percent of young salmon successfully pass each dam on their way to the ocean.

Some politicians and activists have resorted to grasping at simplistic and costly silver-bullet solutions for salmon recovery. Such thinking distracts from the more mundane, but critical, efforts to save salmon. There are many things we can do to help the salmon short of wasting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The Washington Academy of Sciences found that the growing population of seals and sea lions at the mouth of the Columbia River is having a significant impact on salmon returns. They recommend reducing the population in order to help more salmon make it back upstream.

As Peter Kareiva, who served as the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, wrote in an analysis opposing the removal of the dams, “The problem is that a complex species and river management issue had been reduced to a simple symbolic battle—a battle invoking a choice between evil dams and the certain loss of an iconic species.” He concluded that “it has become clear that salmon conservation is being used as a ‘means to an end’ (dam removal) as opposed to an ‘end’ of its own accord.”

A lot has changed in the fifty years since the dams were completed. The value of the electricity they generate is more valuable than in 1975. While they are still far from recovery, the number of salmon returning is much larger.

Hopefully, fifty years from now salmon returns will be even larger and the dams will continue to provide the energy that will become even more important for the region’s economic prosperity.

Todd Myers is the Vice-President for Research at the Washington Policy Center, a non-profit think tank that promotes public policy based on free-market solutions. He can be reached at tmyers@washingtonpolicy.org.