Lower Snake River dams are essential

By Mike Sheetz, Ron Gold and Jack Janda | Mason County PUD 1 Commissioners

For years, our PUD and the Northwest public power community at large have tried to communicate to our public ratepayers that the Lower Snake River dams are an essential source of clean, reliable, renewable and affordable hydropower generation for Mason County and for millions of households in the Northwest.

Mason County PUD 1 receives over 85% of our energy from hydropower. The four lower Snake River dams — Ice Harbor, Lower Monument, Little Goose and Lower Granite — are a part of the Federal Columbia River Power System, the largest source of clean electricity in the region. These dams alone produce well over 2,000 megawatts of sustained, winter-peaking capacity of clean, reliable, carbon-free energy.

A disturbing movement is underway to devalue the dams and undermine their importance in our region. The information that is being pushed out to the public, most recently from a group called NWOpportunity.org, has been less than forthcoming. In fact, the assertions they make about replacing hydropower resources for our region’s power grid are outright incorrect, despite public power and Northwest RiverPartners’ numerous offers to educate them and exchange information with cited references for them to research.

PUD 1 takes exception to the recent Inslee-Murray Dam Breaching Study for many reasons. It’s re-doing a study that experts just concluded after a several-year process with significant public stakeholder input. They bowed to political pressure from special-interest groups and did a poor effort — a biased and unthorough review that attempts to push alternate themes to the public with a lot of soft words like “may” and “could” instead of conclusive scientific and evidentiary data on the impacts of dam breaching. This study was a poor use of taxpayer money that could have been applied at the local level on projects to improve stream flows and salmon habitat, boost our local hatcheries, or support culvert removal projects and water cleanup projects in the Puget Sound and Hood Canal.

Regardless of where you fall on this issue, you elected us as your public utility representatives, and it is our job to do the deep dive on issues that impact your utility services. We are waist-deep in these issues because they impact our ability to keep your lights on, let alone do it in a way that’s affordable for you. We would like you to have all the facts at your disposal before you make a decision on where you stand, and then regardless of that stance, we encourage you to provide public comment and make your voice heard to your state and federal elected leaders.

Here are some facts about the Lower Snake River dams that we want to share with you:

The risks of extreme electricity prices and blackouts are the highest they have been since the Western energy crisis took place 20 years ago — and removing the dams dramatically increases the risk of soaring prices, higher carbon emissions and blackouts. We do not want a California or Texas energy disaster here in Washington.

During power scarcity events, renewable (wind and solar) resources tend to underperform. Northwest wind resources only generated 15.5% of their typical generation output during recent scarcity events. Solar only works when the sun is shining. Battery storage technology is not advanced enough to make renewables reliable enough to replace base-load power like hydro.

Electricity imports can no longer be relied upon. Imports into the Northwest played an important role in maintaining reliability during the extreme events over the past two years. However, these imports principally came from east of the Cascades, regions that will experience significant coal retirements in the coming years and will not have surplus power to sell to us.

Extreme weather events that drive acute electricity shortages will become more common due to climate change. The loss of generation that would result from breaching the dams or increasing the spill requirements would mean a significant loss of reliability when it is needed most — during peak heat and cold periods.

During the extreme events in early 2022 and the summer of 2021, the Lower Snake River dams played an irreplaceable role in avoiding or reducing the magnitude and duration of the blackouts in our region. There was no evident alternative source for the electricity supplied by those dams. Blackouts occur when there is not enough electricity to meet consumer demand. During the recent extreme events, the Lower Snake River dams supplied as much as 6% of total regional electric demand. Without any clear existing sources of replacement power, removal of the dams puts the Northwest at a very high risk in future electricity reliability events, with these disruptions having rippled impacts throughout the West.

Lower Snake River dams reduced the magnitude and duration of blackouts outside the region too. The dams help out the entire West Coast when they’re called upon. During the California blackouts on Aug. 15, 2020, the dams produced 1,944 megawatts of generation and that energy was sent down the transmission lines to California to help keep their grid stable. Their absence would have led to worsening the magnitude and duration of blackouts at that time.

Replacing the Lower Snake River dams will take decades, and available technological options cannot provide the same combination of low cost, reliable and flexible attributes. While the draft Murray-Inslee report suggests breaching might be delayed, the process of identifying and building replacement resources, obtaining federal funding, siting, permitting, securing equipment and constructing transmission is likely to take decades. For example, efforts to build the Boardman to Hemingway transmission line in the Northwest are going on 20 years — without a single shovel turned.

Removing the Lower Snake River dams will make the transition to clean-energy goals more difficult. The current Northwest renewable targets will likely not be met until the 2040s. Natural gas will likely need to replace generation of the dams in the near term, adding 3.5 million metric tons of carbon per year, roughly 8% of Washington’s 2030 carbon emission limit and 13% of the 2040 target. Even if the dams are replaced with wind and solar, there will be no net reduction in carbon emissions.

The information that dam removal groups are sharing about fish survival rates are often inaccurate. Fish mitigation efforts are getting results: survival of both juvenile and adult fish is comparable to survival rates in free-flowing rivers in the region, and adult returns regularly exceed pre-dam levels. The uncomfortable reality is that over-fishing originally decimated fish populations, and climate change poses a persistent and pervasive threat to all West Coast salmon stocks. Ironically, the report calls for removing hydropower projects that fund almost $1 billion for fish mitigation and combat climate change. Dam removal advocates often state that dam breaching is the only thing we haven’t tried in the effort to save salmon. That’s simply not true. What other species listed as “at-risk for extinction” are you aware of that humans are still allowed to take? We keep taking the fish. Natural marine predators keep taking the fish.

Our PUD 1 representatives sat in on a presentation by a marine biologist who had zero stake in the dam removal debate. She was just a scientist on a team that was studying salmon mortality along the West Coast. Her published, peer-reviewed findings showed that salmon populations declined at nearly the same rate all along the Western seaboard in both dammed and free-flowing rivers. There’s an overwhelming combination of morbidity drivers that are causing their decline. It was a fascinating and sobering presentation, and it solidified for us that we can’t afford to support breaching such important and valuable infrastructure that, in the end, won’t have a meaningful impact on fish survival. That study can be found here: http://www.tinyurl.com/c9wufc4y.

As we mentioned earlier, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Environmental Administration already went through a lengthy environmental impact analysis, and that decision of record was ratified in 2020. This study was conducted by engineers, scientists and energy professionals, and they heard from thousands of environmental groups, state agencies, cities and counties, farmers, tribal members, energy sector/utility representatives, fishermen, port districts and citizens. They concluded removing the dams will:

■ Double the risk of regionwide blackouts.

■ Add an additional 3 million metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year from fossil- fueled electricity.

■ Increase the region’s electricity costs by $800 million a year and the Bonneville Power Administration’s power costs by 50%, which could increase monthly energy costs at our homes by up to 25% or more.

■ Result in the loss of $540 million per year in regional economic productivity.

■ Result in the loss of 4,900 jobs as a result of higher electricity costs.

■ Reduce social welfare by $458 million annually from the loss of irrigated land and farm laborers.

■ Add 79,000 more semi-trucks to the road each year.

We all want to see salmon avoid extinction. To do that, we need a holistic approach to combating climate change, improving the health of our oceans and waterways, stop overfishing, and start serious predator control by reducing the explosive population of sea lions on the mouth of the river. These things, along with continued investments in fish passage and fish habitat, will help continue the survival of fish on the Columbia and Snake rivers. It’s possible that one day the infrastructure will have outlived its useful life or that energy resource technology will advance far enough that there will be truly viable ways to replicate the baseload hydropower. Today is not that day. The technologies are not even close to being ready, despite what dam-removal groups claim. They are not experts in the operation of power-generation facilities and electrical grids. They do not understand how these things operate, and worse, they do not seem to care. They just want to win.

Any viable plan for replacing the Lower Snake River dams must have a pathway to replace the other benefits of irrigation that helps feed our nation, flood control for our residents that live in the cities on the waterways, barging our products to ports and international waters and the recreational use along the rivers that drives the local economies. When those items are adequately addressed and a proposal is put forward to replace those benefits as well as maintain grid reliability, we will support a measured and collaborative plan that is endorsed by subject matter experts in the energy and engineering sectors. We cannot support an unrealistic and unreasonable plan developed by special-interest groups who refuse to acknowledge the science and have taken a “win-at-all-costs” position. That’s bad public policy and we won’t support that. Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray should not support it either.

We hope you will submit comments on this issue, no matter whether you agree or disagree with the assessment we’ve provided here. The draft Murray-Inslee report is seeking public comment. Please take a minute to do so in an easy online form that sends your message directly to Murray and Inslee’s offices: bit.ly/3AovIPR. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, we feel it’s important to make your voices heard on issues that impact your lives.

■ Mike Sheetz represents Mason County Public Utility District No. 1 District 1 (Union) and is the board president. Ron Gold represents District 2 (Skokomish Valley and Potlach) and is board vice president. Jack Janda represents District 3 (Hoodsport to Jefferson County) and is the board secretary.