Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., testified he’ll work to maintain any language that may promote breaching the 4 decrease Snake River dams in Eastern Washington out of a key House water infrastructure invoice.
He spoke to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure at a recent listening to on the Water Resources Development Act of 2024.
He opposes any language that may enable not solely the bodily breaching of the dam, however what he referred to as operational breaching of the 4 dams in Washington and Idaho.
He additionally would oppose any assist to federal businesses implementing the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative, an settlement reached in federal courtroom between the United States and 6 different governments — the states of Washington and Oregon and 4 tribes.
The initiative will spend greater than $1 billion over a decade to arrange for breaching the 4 hydroelectric dams on the Snake River, however stops in need of bodily breaching or tearing them down to advertise endangered fish populations.
It’s been referred to as a “roadmap” to breaching the Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams alongside the Snake River between the Tri-Cities in Washington and Lewiston, Idaho.
However, Newhouse stated the commitments of the Biden administration within the settlement will “operationally and functionally breach the lower Snake River dams, spur exorbitant (electric) ratepayer increases and cause harm to the salmon population.”
The settlement spells out how a lot water should be spilled over dams to profit juvenile salmon moderately than getting used to supply electrical energy. But supporters of the dams have argued that spilling an excessive amount of water can hurt fish.
If gases within the water — together with oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen — are elevated an excessive amount of by way of spilling massive quantities of water over the dam, they are often deadly to young fish.
The Columbia River System Operations, together with the decrease Snake River dams present advantages to thousands and thousands throughout the Pacific Northwest, together with flood management, irrigation, transportation of agricultural and different good and dependable and constant renewable power, Newhouse stated.
“Recreationists, farmers, river-dependent ports and communities, transportation stakeholders, and electrical energy prospects can be irreparably broken within the decrease Snake River dams are breached, he stated in his testimony to the Congressional committee.
Supporters of breaching the dams see it as a method to rebuild dwindling salmon populations and by extension save the endangered southern resident orca whale inhabitants that feeds totally on chinook salmon alongside the Washington coast.
The settlement reached in federal courtroom relied on “Rebuilding Interior Columbia Basin Salmon and Steelhead,” a 2022 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration. The report discovered that science helps dam elimination, amongst different actions, and “overwhelmingly supports acting and acting now.”
However, a 2021 peer-reviewed NOAA research revealed in “Communications Biology” discovered that the dominant driver towards extinction in Chinook salmon was rising ocean temperatures, supporters of preserving the dam have countered.
