In a long-overdue course correction, President Trump has pulled the plug on one of the Biden administration’s more outlandish energy-environment stunts—the so-called Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. Heralded by green activists and their political patrons as a bold step for salmon recovery and “climate justice,” the agreement was, in fact, a $1 billion bureaucratic boondoggle that prioritized speculative ecological fears over the concrete energy, economic, and strategic needs of millions of Americans.
“I have worked for more than 30 years to protect the irreplaceable Columbia River hydropower electrical system. The Biden Administration did its best to initiate the destruction of that system through improper manipulation of environmental laws and policies. This manipulation was reflected in a memorandum of understanding. Thankfully, President Trump has revoked the Biden Administration’s “Restoring Healthy and Abundant Salmon, Steelhead, and Other Native Fish Populations in the Columbia River Basin” Memorandum. This was exactly the right thing to do and provides a foundation for protection of the Four Lower Snake River dams. The President’s order is totally consistent with our nation’s fight to win the race for artificial intelligence, superiority, and energy dominance. The people of nation and especially the rate payers of the Northwest are incredibly grateful for this action.”
U.S. Representative Cliff Bentz (OR-02)
The plan’s centerpiece? The eventual removal of four major hydroelectric dams on the Snake River—Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Lower Granite. These aren’t rickety relics of a bygone era. These are robust energy producers churning out more than 3,000 megawatts of clean, reliable hydroelectric power—enough to electrify 2.5 million homes. They also underpin irrigation systems, enable low-cost grain shipments to global markets, and provide flood control. But in Biden’s reality, all of that was apparently disposable if it meant pleasing a few vocal environmental lobbies and checking another box on the Net Zero checklist.
To sell this demolition job, the administration leaned heavily on emotional appeals about salmon runs and tribal rights, while offering precious little in terms of clear, causal science. As usual, the numbers tell a less convenient story. Salmon populations in the Columbia Basin have been under pressure from numerous factors for over a century: overfishing, ocean conditions, predation, and pollution—not just dams. Yet in the media spin cycle, four hydroelectric facilities became scapegoats for a problem that is far more complex than activists care to admit.
That didn’t stop Biden’s team from pressing forward with a top-down, $1 billion effort, framed as a multi-stakeholder “consensus.” In truth, it was little more than the latest chapter in the green technocrat playbook: make sweeping promises, ignore economic consequences, and paper over objections from the majority who would be stuck with the bill.
President Trump’s June 12 memorandum brought long-overdue sanity back into the picture. As the White House explained, the move “revokes radical environmental orders that could risk energy security and agriculture for the sake of speculative climate change concerns.” That’s not hyperbole. It’s a concise summary of the cost-benefit imbalance plaguing most modern climate policy.
Environmental groups immediately cried foul, decrying the revocation as a betrayal of salmon and tribal rights. But one must ask: since when did dam demolition become a prerequisite for honoring treaty obligations? The federal government has ample tools at its disposal to support tribal communities and ecological restoration—none of which require gutting the energy backbone of the Pacific Northwest.
“The Snake River Dams have been tremendous assets to the Pacific Northwest for decades, providing high-value electricity to millions of American families and businesses. With this action, President Trump is bringing back common sense, reversing the dangerous and costly energy subtraction policies pursued by the last administration. American taxpayer dollars will not be spent dismantling critical infrastructure, reducing our energy-generating capacity or on radical nonsense policies that dramatically raise prices on the American people.”
Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright
What the climate policy evangelists routinely ignore—perhaps willfully—is the indispensable role these dams play in stabilizing the very electric grid they so desperately want to “decarbonize.” While their eyes remain glued to spreadsheets full of levelized cost of energy figures and computer-modeled salmon migrations, the laws of physics quietly keep the lights on.
Hydroelectric dams don’t just generate electricity; they provide inertia—a foundational property of any stable power grid. Inertia refers to the resistance of the grid to sudden changes in frequency. When a major load drops off or generation falters, it’s the spinning mass of turbines in hydro plants that helps absorb the shock and prevent cascading blackouts. Without inertia, you don’t just lose power—you risk catastrophic grid failure.
Unlike intermittent sources such as wind and solar—which must be propped up by batteries, peaker plants, or magical thinking—hydro dams supply electricity with near-instantaneous responsiveness. When demand spikes or a transmission line falters, hydro units can ramp up or down within seconds. They act as the grid’s shock absorbers and throttle controls. Remove them, and you’re not just reducing capacity; you’re gutting the system’s operational backbone.
Consider the Pacific Northwest, where these dams serve as the beating heart of a regional power grid that spans multiple states and interties with California and Canada. Take those dams offline, and suddenly every renewable energy forecast in the region becomes a high-stakes gamble. You can’t balance a modern grid on spreadsheets and solar panels alone. Someone, somewhere, has to keep the electrons flowing now—not ten minutes from now when the wind decides to pick up.
“President Trump’s announcement smartly helps preserve affordable, reliable electricity for families and businesses across the Pacific Northwest,” Matheson said. “Hydroelectric power is the reason the lights stay on in the region. And as demand for electricity surges across the nation, preserving access to always-available energy resources like hydropower is absolutely crucial. We appreciate the administration’s continuing commitment to smart energy policies and unleashing American energy.”
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Jim Matheson, CEO
The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement had no credible plan for replacing this critical function. It offered vague gestures at new clean energy investments, which is shorthand for more subsidies to solar developers and consultants who’ve never had to keep a grid stable through an ice storm. The idea that we can simply swap out inertia-rich hydro plants for battery banks and hope for the best is not just naive—it’s reckless.
Yet this kind of reckless planning is endemic in climate policy circles, where energy is treated as a public relations problem instead of a complex, physical system. Politicians promise transformation without understanding thermodynamics. Activists chant slogans about “saving the salmon” while remaining blissfully unaware of how real-time balancing works in a high-voltage network.
President Trump’s decision to preserve these dams isn’t just a win for common sense—it’s a defense of operational integrity in our power systems. It reflects an understanding that energy policy cannot be governed by sentimentality, nor dictated by activist coalitions that mistake complexity for conspiracy.
The Columbia River Basin remains a vital artery for America’s energy and agricultural future. To gamble that away on the basis of activist pressure and incomplete science would be not just foolish, but dangerous. For once, a president has drawn a line—and the country will be stronger for it.
I would suspect illegal Chinese fishing having an effect on salmon stocks more than a few dams.
And a lack of inertia was the likely cause of the Iberian power outage.
In the 19th century salmon runs in the Columbia River averaged 10-16 million fish, but construction of the Federal dams starting in the 1930s greatly reduced those runs by the 1990s – long before Chinese fishing fleets ever operated in the east Pacific Ocean – to about 1 million fish. The Grand Coulee Dam alone completely eliminated all of the salmon runs in the upper Columbia. As did Dworshak Dam in Idaho completely eliminated all salmon runs in the North Fork Clearwater River. Other factors also affect the salmon runs, but by far the single biggest impact was the lower Columbia River dams.
The Columbia dams clearly crashed the salmon runs.
Now, one can take the position that the power produced by those dams is more important than crashing the salmon runs. That is a subject for debate. But there is no debate whatsoever that the dams did in fact crash the Columbia River salmon runs.
Using the 1800’s baseline for assuming what the salmon runs should be is, or how the dams impacted the runs is lazy.
Predation changes, human and otherwise, are neglected variables with respect to comparing today’s runs with 1800’s runs.
The plan’s centerpiece? The eventual removal of four major hydroelectric dams on the Snake River…churning out more than 3,000 megawatts of clean, reliable hydroelectric power—enough to electrify 2.5 million homes. They also underpin irrigation systems, enable low-cost grain shipments to global markets, and provide flood control.
The perverse priorities of the Biden administration and environmentalists is incomprehensible to sane people: salmon over people. Thanks to their militant hatred of anything humans create—that blinds them to any creative solutions because their brains are locked up—they only see a binary choice: tear down the dams or watch salmon and steelhead dwindle.
A decade ago, Whooshh Innovations demonstrated their first “salmon cannon” to safely and quickly boost fish over dams that are too steep for fish ladders. The fish had to be loaded by hand, though. They improved it so now the fish swim into it themselves. Cameras take pictures of the fish and machine recognition triggers a gate to divert invasive species so they aren’t sent up over the dam. Win win.
The greens want to forcefully return all of mankind, except themselves to an idyllic pastural time, that never existed.
you spelled ‘red’ incorrectly.
🙂
Green on the outside, red on the inside. Like a watermelon.
And Spotted Owls? We have allowed that to fade too much.
25 years ago a guy named Chip Westbrook was trying to convince me, and others, that this was what we should be doing with dam retrofits. (but he hadn’t incorporated the invasive species recognition part).
Hmmmm, no mention in this article about Fish Ladders:
“Yes, there are fish ladders on the Snake River. Specifically, the four lower Snake River dams (Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Lower Granite) were all built with fish ladders to allow adult salmon and steelhead to migrate upstream past the dams. These ladders are a key component of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers‘ salmon recovery program.”
“Recovery” from crashing the runs, you mean.
The salmon runs by the beginning of 1990s – long after the fish ladders were constructed on those dams in the 1950s through 1970s – had crashed to around 1 million fish per year, as compared to 10-16 million fish prior to construction of the dams beginning in the 1930s.
There’s no sugar coating the fact that the dams crashed the salmon runs. The fish ladders were an after the fact attempt to undo the damage already done, but they have by no means recovered the runs. Everybody in the Pacific Northwest knows that.
Whether the salmon runs outweigh the other benefits provided by the dams (electrical power, flood control, bulk transportation of grains, etc.) , that can be argued by both sides, and has been continuously argued for the last 60 years or more.
While there is no doubt that dams have effects and select for different species, salmon are a complex of fishes that successfully inhabited freshwater, including lakes, some with our help. It is impressive to drive through that area, correctly named the scablands formed from enormous glacial floods, to the ocean and see how it is difficult to believe they swim that far. There is a place called Dry Falls, a Washington State Parks Heritage area, which is larger than Niagara Falls formed from the floods.
Klamath River dams were also a long way from the ocean. Oviparous fishes produce enormous numbers probably necessary for survival from such enormous events. Salmon survived that.
Funny thing, Duane – I go to the store and there are ample amounts of salmon on offer, both fresh and tinned. Just as always.
There is no shortage of salmon as a commodity – much of it now farm raised these days, but that is not the point. Salmon fishing is part of the culture in the Pacific Northwest, both for the Indian tribes as well as residents and fishing enthusiasts from all over the world who go there, or used to go there, for sport fishing.
Eliminating salmon from the Pacific Northwest rivers is akin to eliminating corn in Iowa, or lobsters in Maine, or elk in Montana or deer in Pennsylvania, or gamefishing in Florida. Each of those regions and many more throughout the US have cultures, ways of life that are based in large part on their local natural resources.
The downvoters here in this thread may think they’re being politically correct by dissing the value of salmon in the Northwest, but they’re just showing how careless they are about losses suffered by other persons.
I lived in the Pacific Northwest for many years, and I can state from personal experience that the dams up there are a huge issue and has been for generations, and it’s not just “greens” vs. “normal people” as assumed in this post and in this thread. Lots of very patriotic, conservative red blooded Americans in that region detest the dams and what they did to their historic way of life. Just as there are persons in that same region who highly value low cost reliable electrical power supplies. Both sides have important values to protect.
The point being, there’s a helluva lot more involved in this very very old ongoing debate than WUWT’s ideology of anti-renewable energy, or in stomping all over greens, which may seem like fun to some but most Americans highly value environmental qualities and nature’s many wonders throughout America.
The other point being, it’s all too easy to dismiss something you don’t use because it’s not you who is the loser.
I live next to the Yakima Nation and they reside along the Yakima river. I never ever see them fishing, they grow fruit. Lots of fruit. I see them hunting all the time. They hunt anywhere they want in the state. Don’t give me the ‘First nations need the fish’ argument because they actually don’t fish much on the dry side of the state and I’m sure they can fish anywhere. Different tribes fish on the mostly dam-less ocean side, on the dry side they hunt, and they hunt everywhere, free, unregulated, and without a tag. Indian tribes are moving into the 21st century and not pursuing antiquated fishing techniques for survival. Also, dam passage of salmon is in the 90+% area. Don’t take us back to the stone age by dismantling hydro power, no one wants that not even the Tribes.
Edit: There don’t appear to be any windmills or solar collectors on the Yakima Reservation. A small tribe with lots of land, I’m thinking they could be energy independent.
I wanted to add that the Yakima fish along the beautiful Klickitat River which runs across their land. It’s not dammed. Yes the Columbia is and has been for years. The frustrating thing is hatcheries have been spending billions on decreasing numbers of fish. Something is going on with the fish and I don’t think it’s the dams. My guess is large scale industrial fishing off the coast is decimating our fish populations. Salmon and ocean fish are being eradicated. This will require a treaty not dismantling dams, and of course it’s not global warming, it’s been hotter and the salmon survived.
The east side guys, back when the govt was trying to figure out how to manage then into reservations, had total disdain for the ‘fish eaters’, and wanted nothing to do with them.
About damned time!
“dammed”
We have a store in town which is across from a dam Motto: “Best store by a dam site!”
Fix the salmon problem? go talk to chap called Russ George !
More good news.
There is a common mistaken notion that salmon runs in the Columbia River are diminishing and headed toward extinction. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Last year (2024) the total salmon and steelhead returns over Bonneville Dam were the fourth highest since the dams were built in 1938. The 1.8 million fish returning were exceeded only by 2.4 million salmon and steelhead in 2014, 2.2 million in 2015, and 1.9 million in 2001.
Not going extinct! Largest runs in history are happening recently, including last year! Whoa!!!!!
It turns out the Great Salmon Crisis is a red herring. The wackos setting their hair on fire over salmon are Hysterical Alarmist Lying Hoaxers. Check the data. See for yourself. Don’t be fooled again.
The Hard Greens get around this inconvenient fact by saying the “wild salmon” are decreasing. Moreover, they pick a remote lake and say that the salmon going there are going extinct, but they are the same salmon as going to the other lakes/creeks/rivers in the region. These species are not going extinct at all.
So many damn things I would like to say about the last administration.
Page 42 of the June 2025 Smithsonian magazine has an article about seals, sea lions, and salmon. It is interesting with some bias – although the photos are prominent.
Seals and sea lions wouldn’t be there if the salmon population was declining.
* Seals and sea lions were decimated by Russians.
*Europeans arrive and note the vast salmon runs.
*Predators numbers remain relatively low.
*Dams are constructed, with bypasses. Hatcheries are constructed.
*Predators are protected (inclusive of birds).
*Hatcheries are discouraged and shut down.
*Dams are proposed to be removed to try to bring salmon back to ‘historic’ levels.
*(those that say that presidents don’t have the ability to impact oil prices are just as wrong about salmon)
Willfully destroying four hydro dams is just about the craziest energy policy I’ve heard of.
A level of lunacy beaten only by the UK blowing up all of its coal fired stations.
Not all. DRAX, the big beautiful coal fired plant located right next to a coal supply; it was, at considerable expense, converted to a wood pellet burning plant. The wood pellets are shipped all the way from North America. So monumentally stupid that it hurts to ponder.
Or allowing immigrants to molest their children and arrest old people who pray in the street.
Winning!
Don’t forget the Klamath Dam Removal environmental disaster and fish kill.
There times I would like to give them what they ask for. Remove all the dams on that system and watch the rivers dry up on a regular basis.
Hydro reservoirs are the only really practical means of grid energy storage. That is why they were built. Yes there is the salmon issue, but these are already built. That removal would restore the salmon is somewhat speculative.
We can live without salmon, not without energy.
Do not ask my wife to live without salmon.
No mention of landlocked salmon.
“concrete energy”
I see what you did there. 🙂
Is Congressman Dan Newhouse who voted to impeach President Trump now on the Trump Train? Aren’t politics fun?
“Throughout my time in Congress, I have stood firm in my support for the Lower Snake River Dams and the critical role they play in our region’s economy. I thank the President for his decisive action to protect our dams, and I look forward to continuing to work with the administration for the benefit of the Fourth District.” -Dan Newhouse