Hydroelectric dams in Oregon are killing salmon. Congress says it’s time to think about shutting them down.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it can make hydroelectric dams safe for endangered salmon by setting giant mechanical traps in Oregon’s Willamette River and transporting the fry downstream in tankers. The Corps began moving forward over objections from fish advocates and power users, who said the plan was expensive and untested.

That was until this month, when President Joe Biden signed a law ordering the Corps to halt its plans and consider a simpler solution: Stop using dams for electricity.

A new law, finalized on January 4, follows A report from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica in 2023 He highlighted the risks and costs associated with the Corps’ plan. The agency is projected to lose $700 million over 30 years generating hydropower, and a scientific study found that the Corps’ proposed fixes would not halt the extinction of endangered salmonids.

Mandate says the Corps’ designs for the fish collectors — giant floating vacuums expected to cost $170 million to $450 million each — are on hold until they finish studying what the river system would look like without hydroelectricity. The Corps should then incorporate this scenario into its long-term plans for the river.

New direction from Congress has the potential to change the river that protects Oregon’s famously lush Willamette Valley. This is a step towards emptying the reservoirs behind the dams and bringing the water level closer to that of the undammed river.

“There is a very real, very real solution, and we need to get it going as soon as possible,” said Kathleen George, council member of the Grand Ronde Confederated Tribes, which has hunted the Willamette for thousands of years. They urged the Corps to return the river to its natural flow.

George credited OPB and ProPublica’s reports and said he believed the Corps would continue to hold off on the overdue studies without additional public pressure.

“Our salmon heritage is literally on the line,” he said.

Asked how the Corps plans to respond to Congress, spokeswoman Kerry Solan said in a statement that the agency is still reviewing it. the language of the bill.

The 13 dams on the Willamette and its tributaries were built primarily to prevent flooding in Oregon’s most populous valley, which includes the city of Portland. With high concrete walls, they have no special way to move the salmon.

Releasing the reservoirs into the river channel would allow salmon to pass, as was the case before the dams. It will leave less water for recreational boating and irrigation during periods of normal rain and snow, but more for storage during a major flood. And the power industry says it doesn’t make financial sense to run hydroelectric turbines at Willamette dams, unlike hydroelectric dams that make money on the larger Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest.

The dams generate less than 1% of the North West’s energy, which is enough for about 100,000 homes. But it costs about five times more to light a house with electricity from Willamette dams than dams on larger rivers in the Northwest.

Congress asked the Corps in 2020 and 2022 to study the feasibility of shutting down hydroelectric turbines on the Willamette. The agency missed deadlines for those studies while pursuing a 30-year plan for river operations, including hydropower.

Oregon Rep. Val Hoyle, a Democrat who covers much of the Willamette River Valley, said in an emailed statement that it is “unacceptable” that the Corps is moving forward without a comprehensive look at the hydropower shutdown that lawmakers have requested.

“Congress needs to have the information it needs to decide the future of hydropower on the Willamette,” Hoyle said.

The bill also requires the Corps to study how it can mitigate problems that could lead to reservoir discharges.

Because of a 2021 court order to protect the endangered salmon, the Corps tried to make the river flow more freely each fall by draining the reservoirs behind the two dams. Reservoirs decreased for the first time in 2023. they released the mud masses left behind the dams. Rivers turned brown and small town drinking water plants worked around the clock to clean up supplies.

Congress wants the Corps to study ways to avoid causing these problems downstream. This could include engineering new drinking water systems for cities below the dams.

The Corps has authority to build infrastructure for local communities and pay 75% of the costs for such improvements, but Oregon has never used that provision.

Biologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration a week before Biden signed the new bill into law published their 673-page report The Corps’ preferred solution for the Willamette — involving fish traps — would endanger endangered salmon and steelhead, he said.

NOAA has proposed more than two dozen changes for the Corps, ranging from better monitoring of species to changing river flows to better accommodate migrating salmon. Solan said the agency is still reviewing NOAA’s opinion and deciding what action to take.

George, who has served on the Grand Ronde tribal council since 2016, said he believes recent developments on the Willamette point to a future where salmon and people can live together.

“Our families living here on the Grand Ronde reservation would actually come back to the Willamette to get the salmon that helped sustain our people in their darkest days,” George said. “It’s our time and our role to speak up for our relatives and say that the future with people and the Willamette salmon is important.”