Critics cite “shocking” delays to address harmful conditions as a new federal study blames the Corps for jeopardizing fish populations
Carrying on: Environmentalists and tribal representatives say the threat of extinction to Upper Willamette River steelhead is growing as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delays releasing studies on the impact of the river’s dams on fish populations. Photo: NOAA Fisheries
By Melanie Henshaw/InvestigateWest. February 26, 2025. Last June, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates a series of dams in Oregon’s Willamette River Basin, missed a deadline set by Congress to produce a report on how the dams are affecting endangered fish.
Eight months later, the report is nowhere in sight, with the Army Corps stating it remains under “administrative review.”
For tribal nations and others who want to save dwindling salmon and steelhead runs on the Willamette, the missed deadline came as no surprise. It’s the latest example of what they call a “shocking” and “egregious” pattern of delays by the Corps to address the fishes’ condition, and it comes even as a new federal study blames the Corps for jeopardizing the existence of the fish populations.
“It’s do or die for the salmon,” said Grace Brahler, wildlands director at Eugene-based conservation group Cascadia Wildlands.
Conservationists and tribal officials say the Army Corps is dragging its feet on producing realistic, cost-effective solutions for endangered Willamette River salmon and steelhead as their populations move toward extinction. Some endangered runs are predicted to be extinct by 2040.
A series of federal laws called the Water Resources Development Acts have repeatedly called on the Army Corps to study and publicly report on issues related to the Willamette River dams, which they have so far failed to do.
The Army Corps has no timeline for the reports’ release nor does it give a reason why its administrative review process leads to months or years-long delays, leaving critics questioning how a federal agency can flagrantly ignore a congressional mandate. The agency did not agree to an interview with InvestigateWest, and in response to questions about the reports or their release timeline, agency representative Richard Levine said, “Unfortunately there is nothing more to say at this time. The reports are undergoing administration review.”
Advocates are demanding accountability from the Army Corps for the missed deadlines.
“We have no time to waste, our salmon and steelhead in the Willamette are in dire straits,” said Kathleen George, a council member for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
The overdue reports on the Willamette River dams are not an anomaly for the Army Corps. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office highlighted a multitude of overdue reports from the agency, recommending the Corps improve its public transparency around them.
The mounting delays, and the new federal study underscoring the severity of the fish’s plight, are causing frustration and growing urgency among tribal officials and environmentalists, who fear the fish runs will go extinct as bureaucratic delays prevent potential fish-saving measures.
“The chances of extinction for these fish is very high,” Brahler said. “It’s terrifying.”
Push for change
Eight hydroelectric dams in the Willamette River Basin have long been decried by Native American nations and environmentalists as harmful to native fish, particularly populations of endangered salmon and steelhead, whose migratory paths are blocked by the dams.
Affected fish populations continue to crater, with some dropping as much as 70% in the last 50 years. The five-year average for returning salmon populations continues to drop by thousands, according to figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The dams were built in the 1950s by the federal government and are operated by the Army Corps and the Bonneville Power Administration. The Corps is responsible for the maintenance and physical operations of the dams, including managing water flows for multiple purposes, like producing hydropower, flood control, fish and wildlife conservation, and irrigation. The BPA is responsible for marketing and transmitting the electricity produced by the dams, which produce about 1% of the Northwest’s power supply.
Under pressure: Dexter Dam is one of eight hydroelectric dams in the Willamette River Basin imperiling salmon and steelhead runs. Photo: USACE
Migratory fish struggle to traverse the massive dams, which lack fish passages and block their historic spawning grounds. For decades, tribes and conservationists have called attention to the dams’ negative effects on fish populations, pushing for the federal government to consider ceasing production of hydroelectricity at the dams and create more passages for fish migration.
Advocacy groups sued the Corps in 2017 seeking to compel it to make improvements to the fishes’ environment. In 2021, a federal judge placed the Corps under an injunction to take some specified actions to improve conditions for endangered salmon and steelhead, including some increased drawdowns and mandated water levels at several dams in the system. Dam drawdowns are when water levels behind the dam are intentionally lowered, in this case temporarily, which improves fish migration conditions.
Even with those measures, tribes and conservationists say the ongoing operation of the hydroelectric dams threatens the survival of the endangered fish. Spinning hydropower turbines injure and kill salmon and steelhead as they attempt to migrate. They say using the dams solely for flood prevention would allow a more natural flow of water, improve fish migration, and allow for more strategic releases to maintain the ecosystem’s health while supporting downstream communities’ water supplies.
Critics of the Army Corps’ delays say those solutions are out of reach until the agency produces the overdue reports containing information pertinent to that process.
The steep decline of salmon and steelhead populations has deep implications for the region’s Indigenous communities, including Grand Ronde, who rely heavily on the salmon and view their community’s well-being as intertwined with that of the fish and whose citizens rely on the fish for subsistence, cultural and spiritual practices.
Many of the Willamette River dams are situated on ancestral territory of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and treaty rights entitle them to fishing and hunting rights in their usual and accustomed ancestral territories, including these areas. Tribes have argued that the failure to protect endangered and threatened fish from human-caused harms, like dams, are a violation of those rights. Treaties are considered the supreme law of the land in the United States, meaning treaty rights should supersede other legal concerns.
George adds that not only are salmon and steelhead a staple food for tribal citizens, but they hold extreme cultural significance — the passing down of fishing traditions and skills is crucial in Grand Ronde culture.
“We raise our kids on salmon and steelhead,” George said. “Also on the stories about the importance of that ongoing relationship of our fish and our people, and the mutual dependence.”
“Black box”
In a section of the 2020 Water Resources Development Act, Congress ordered the Army Corps to produce a study on the Willamette Valley Project dams, requiring the Army Corps to report within two years on deauthorizing hydropower at Cougar and Detroit dams and on the potential impact that would have on compliance with the Endangered Species Act. The Portland branch of the Army Corps said it sent the completed study to its Washington, D.C., counterparts for review — but the study has never been made public.
In a 2022 update of the law, lawmakers again ordered the Army Corps to act, expanded their mandate and set a deadline — the agency was now to produce by June 2024 an additional, more comprehensive study on deauthorizing hydropower within the Willamette Valley system, including what the potential impacts would be on the Army Corps’ compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
But the deadline came and went with the Army Corps failing to release the report, even though the Portland area office told InvestigateWest that it sent the completed study to the assistant secretary of Army civil works, led by Acting Secretary Jaime Pinkham, for administration review.
“We understand that the report has been with the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works (ASA-CW) while it was undergoing administration review,” Kerry Sloan, a representative for the Portland branch of the Army Corps, wrote in an email.
Advocates aren’t satisfied with that answer.
“This ‘Oh, we sent it to headquarters for approval’ — we were told that about the 2020 report ever since it has been due,” said Jennifer Fairbrother, legislative and policy director for conservation group the Native Fish Society. “But it seems to go in what I like to call the black box, and never emerge.”
Before leaving office in January, former President Biden signed the latest version of the water-resources law, which reiterated a mandate for the Army Corps to produce the overdue report on the Willamette Basin and specified that the Corps must study decommissioning hydropower at all the dams, which the agency has resisted.
Kathleen George. Photo: Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
But despite years of ongoing pressure, the Corps has so far flouted Congress’ deadlines, leaving other stakeholders questioning how a federal agency can ignore multiple congressional mandates.
A July 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office found that the Corps has failed to comply with several components of a 2014 law meant to improve public transparency surrounding feasibility studies, like the Willamette River reports.
“It’s a completely confusing situation,” George said. “To accept this ongoing ‘we don’t know where our own report is,’ as a response to Congress’s repeated request, is unacceptable — at some point, it doesn’t pass the straight face test.”
For advocates of salmon restoration, the reports would provide much-needed information and guidelines for how to proceed in the short term—as well as the cost implications of stopping hydropower.
“By not providing that information, the Corps is really hamstringing everyone on making their decisions,” Fairbrother said.
Tribes and conservation groups are bracing for how the new Trump administration, which represents a marked shift in priorities on the balance between conservation and energy production, will approach the issue. Some hope that the focus on eliminating government inefficiency will draw attention to the high costs of hydroelectricity production on the Willamette River, and others express “grave concern” over how the administration will address environmental issues.
“Jeopardized existence”
A December 2024 study from another federal agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, further underscored the severity of the salmon’s plight. It confirmed that the Corps is in violation of the Endangered Species Act with its current operation of the dams, and that its proposed plan of action would “jeopardize the continued existence” of Upper Willamette River Chinook salmon and steelhead, a specific legal designation requiring the Army Corps to change its course.
The study, a nearly 800-page report called a biological opinion, also explores the downstream effects of declining salmon populations on other animals, like the Southern Resident killer whales, whose population also continues a steady decline, in part due to the poor condition of salmon populations, their primary food source.
Fairbrother, with Nevada Fish Society, says that her group was glad to see NOAA designate the Corps’ proposed plan to improve fish conditions as inadequate and emphasize the need for quicker timelines to address the conditions.
“Time and time again, the Corps creates these long timelines, or completely ignores timelines,” Fairbrother said. “We have this great biological opinion, but now the question is, will the Corps meet the mandates that have been set out in it, or will they again drag their feet, find ways to delay and miss deadlines, and kind of keep doing what they’ve done for the past 20 years, which has led to where these populations are today?”
The NOAA study includes “reasonable and prudent alternatives” to the Army Corps’ plans that would avoid violating the Endangered Species Act. These include improving fish passage for juvenile salmon at several dams and expediting the overdue reports. The Army Corps isn’t legally required to follow these recommendations, but failing to do so leaves it vulnerable to a lawsuit from groups like one filed by the Native Fish Society and other conservation groups in 2017 that resulted in an ongoing injunction.
“The study shows that dams are driving salmon to extinction in the Willamette Valley,” George said in a Jan. 2 press release. “It does not have to be this way. The region deserves a future with vibrant salmon runs, where dams control floods when needed but the rivers flow more freely.”
“Outrageous inefficiency”
Aside from the issues the dams cause for fish populations, the Willamette River dams have been criticized for their lack of efficiency. Critics argue that the overdue reports would further illuminate inefficiency at the dams, likely to increase with additional fish protecting measures, driving up pressure on the Army Corps to move toward deauthorizing hydropower at all or some of the dams.
The Bonneville Power Administration, which markets and sells the power from the dams, states that the Willamette dams operate at a “much higher” cost than other dams within the Federal Columbia River Power System, and contributed less than 4% of power to the system in 2019.
A fact sheet from the Bonneville Power Administration showed that year, it cost $30.83 per megawatt hour to produce electricity in the Willamette Basin, compared with $9.03 at the Mainstream Columbia Dams — far above the $11 per megawatt hour the company says it needs to maintain competitiveness. Additional measures to protect fish at the Willamette Basin dams will drive costs even higher, which the 2024 NOAA study confirms.
The power agency states it is committed to fulfilling its environmental obligations and goals while providing an economical source of power to the region, noting the need for “comprehensive analyses of various options” to improve fish conditions — the same type of analyses the Army Corps has failed to publish.
The Bonneville Power Administration declined a request from InvestigateWest for an interview for this story and did not answer an emailed list of questions.
The shared-operation agreement between the power company and the Army Corps, which is funded through congressional appropriations, means that Bonneville Power, a self-funded agency, shares the costs of operating and maintaining the dams. Should the dams cease to produce hydroelectricity, the Army Corps would need to find alternative funding to cover BPA’s share of operational expenses.
“All citizens paying power bills in the West should care about this — there is an outrageous inefficiency in producing hydropower at the Willamette system dams,” George said.
Controversial proposal
Grande Ronde and conservationists say they aren’t asking for dam removal — instead, they advocate for the dams to cease being used for producing hydroelectricity, shifting their primary function to flood control, and for the Corps to increase the number of dam drawdowns, which trial cases have shown to significantly improve outcomes for migratory fish, as well as improve fish passageways through the dams.
The Army Corps has given some idea of how it wants to address the plight of the fish — including a controversial fish-trapping proposal that would involve using large vacuums to suck up young salmon and truck them downriver to be released. Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica reported that each “fish vacuum” would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Without factoring in the Corps’ proposed solution, analysis has shown that the dams are set to cost the agency nearly $800 million in the next 30 years.
“Why is it that the Army Corps will not move forward with the no-hydropower alternative, when, even if you weren’t even looking at salmon restoration or survival, it is the smart, economical thing to do?” George said.
Tribes and environmentalists have criticized the fish-trapping proposal as a costly, ineffective and unproven temporary solution that does not address the underlying problem.
?“These species and populations need help much sooner than some of these actions would potentially provide,” Fairbrother said.
Advocates for the fish say the Corps needs to meet its congressional obligations before it moves ahead with any proposed changes along the river.
“It’s unacceptable for the Corps to move ahead without these overdue reports,” Brahler said.
Tribal officials say the fate of salmon in the Willamette should be a concern to all who associate salmon with the rushing rivers of the Pacific Northwest.
“All Oregonians have a stake in our salmon heritage in the Willamette,” George said.
This story was originally published by InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org), an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Melanie Henshaw covers Indigenous affairs and communities in the region. Reach her directly at melanie@investigatewest.org or at (971) 258-0891.
