The US Army Corps of Engineers says they can make hydroelectric dams on Oregon’s Willamette River safe for endangered salmon by building large mechanical traps and hauling baby fish downstream. in tanker trucks. The Corps began to face 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 legislation ordering the Corps to halt its plans and consider a simpler solution: Stop using the dams for electricity.

The new law, which expires on January 4, follows reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica in 2023 which highlights the risks and costs associated with the Corps’ plan. The agency is expected to lose $700 million over 30 years of hydropower production, and a scientific review found that the type of fix the Corps is proposing won’t prevent the extinction of threatened salmon.

The mandate says the Corps must shelve designs for its fish collectors — essentially large floating vacuums expected to cost $170 million to $450 million each — until the study what the river system would look like without hydropower. The Corps should incorporate that scenario into its long-term designs for the river.

The new direction from Congress has the potential to change the river that sustains Oregon’s famously lush Willamette Valley. This is a step towards draining the reservoirs behind the dams and bringing the water level closer to an undreamed of river.

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

George credited OPB and ProPublica’s reporting, and said he believes that without more public pressure, the Corps would have continued to stop the overdue studies.

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

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

The 13 dams on the Willamette and its tributaries were built for the primary purpose of flood control in Oregon’s most populous valley, which includes the city of Portland. With high concrete walls, they have no dedicated channels for salmon migration.

Emptying the reservoirs into the river channel allows salmon to pass through as they did before the dams. This will leave less water for recreational boating and irrigation during normal rain and snow, but it will open up more water holding capacity when a major flood occurs. And the power industry says running hydropower turbines at Willamette dams, unlike the money-making hydroelectric dams on the Northwest’s larger Columbia and Snake rivers, doesn’t make financial sense.

The dams generate less than 1% of the Northwest’s power, enough for about 100,000 homes. But powering a home with electricity from dams on the Willamette costs about five times as much as dams on the great rivers of the Northwest.

Congress asked the Corps in 2020 and 2022 to study the possibility of closing its hydroelectric turbines on the Willamette. The agency has missed deadlines for studies as it continues its 30-year plan for river operations that include hydropower.

Oregon Rep. Val Hoyle, a Democrat whose district includes much of the Willamette River Valley, said in an emailed statement that it was “unacceptable” for the Corps to proceed without first conducting a full review of the hydropower termination request. to the legislators.

“Congress should 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 reduce problems that could cause reservoirs to drain downstream.

Because of a 2021 court order to protect endangered salmon, the Corps is trying to make the river more free-flowing by draining the reservoirs behind the two dams each fall. The first time the reservoirs drop, in 2023, they released a lot of mud trapped behind the dams. Rivers turned brown and drinking water plants in small cities worked around the clock to purify the supply.

Congress wants the Corps to study how to avoid causing the problems below. That could include engineering new drinking water systems for cities below the dams.

The Corps has the authority to engineer infrastructure for local communities and cover 75% of the cost for such improvements, but it has not used this provision in Oregon.

A week before Biden signed the new bill, biologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published their own 673-page report says the Corps’ preferred solution for the Willamette — the one involving fish traps — would harm threatened salmon and steelhead.

NOAA has proposed more than two dozen changes for the Corps, from better monitoring of species to altering 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 is encouraged that the latest developments in the Willamette point to a future where salmon and people can coexist.

“In those darkest days of our families living here on the Grand Ronde reservation, it was really going back to the Willamette to get salmon that helped keep our people alive,” George said. “It’s our time and our job to speak to our relatives and say that the future of people and Willamette salmon is important.”