For the previous two years, the chair of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce has come from the Pacific Northwest.
That’s vital as a result of the committee has a broad jurisdiction encompassing vitality, the atmosphere and extra. This contains approving laws earlier than any motion might be taken to breach or take away 4 contested dams alongside the Lower Snake River.
But earlier this month, Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, introduced she received’t run for reelection this 12 months. (Ore. Republican Greg Walden has beforehand served because the committee’s chair or rating minority member.)
Vice Chair Kelly Armstrong R-N.D., can be leaving the House to run for governor of his home state.
This leaves management for the committee — which can play a key function in the way forward for the dams that many enviros need to see breached — up within the air.
The Hill reviews two Republicans are vying for the highest spot: Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Bob Latta, R-Ohio.
If the Democrats win again the House in November, Frank Pallone, D-N.J., may turn out to be the chair because the committee’s rating Democrat.
The solely remaining committee member from the Pacific Northwest is Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., who can be the minority’s vice rating member.
Schrier’s function within the dams drama may turn out to be significantly essential if the Democrats win again the House in 2024.
So the place does she stand on the dams? Hard to say. In 2022, Schrier, whose district stretches from Wenatchee to the Seattle suburbs and contains all 4 of the dams, despatched a letter to President Biden expressing her “disappointment” over the discharge of draft reviews associated to the dams.
“I continue to support policies that are grounded in the best available science, honor tribal treaty rights and reflect the cultural and economic values of our region,” she wrote in 2022. “Washingtonians know that the question of the four Lower Snake River Dams is a complex one and that it’s a decision that should be made in consultation with all affected stakeholders, not by an agency in Washington, DC, 3,000 miles away.”
Last month, Schrier struck a equally cautious tone.
“I’ve long said that the issue of the Lower Snake River dams is incredibly complex,” she mentioned. “And because of that, all constituents who have a stake need to have a seat at the table.”
Any dam breaching would require congressional authorization and sure must get previous the Energy and Commerce committee earlier than being accepted.
McMorris Rodgers has fiercely opposed the thought of breaching the dams, arguing that to take action would jeopardize grid reliability within the area and “permanently harm our way of life in Washington.”
Republicans usually opposed potential breaching of the dams throughout the handful of congressional hearings held on the topic final 12 months.
But Greg Reynolds, Snake River marketing campaign director on the conservation nonprofit Trout Unlimited, factors out that the primary person to convey the thought to Congress was Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson.
“He brought it forth with the idea that we need a bipartisan solution that works for everybody in the region,” McReynolds advised Columbia Insight. “The subject stays bipartisan, and the answer needs to be bipartisan. That is how we get this completed, by wanting ahead to what the area wants.
“My hope is that the next chair will be focused on looking forward and not looking back, so that we can move the region forward to a future that has salmon and abundant energy, as opposed to where we are now, where we don’t have an abundance of either.”
Columbia Insight, based mostly in Hood River, Oregon, is nonprofit information website centered on environmental problems with the Pacific Northwest.
