Scientists analyzed more than 650 dam removal projects over 55 years in the United States totaling $1.52 billion inflation-adjusted dollars to develop a tool to better estimate the cost of future dam removals.
When drought-stricken rivers and reservoirs run low across the American West, hydropower dries up and utilities fire up hundreds of power plants that burn coal, oil, or natural gas to keep up with demand for electricity. The timing couldn’t be worse, as accompanying heat waves drive up energy use, often to power air conditioners.
Alaska is warming faster than any other state. Pumped storage hydropower has the potential to integrate more wind and solar into the energy grid to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change in the state.
The Fisheries Biologist II provides support in planning, budgeting, implementation, management, and reporting for the District's natural resource programs.
Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries, held a field hearing Monday in Richland, Washington titled “The Northwest at risk: the environmentalist’s effort to destroy navigation, transportation, and access to reliable power.”
More than $25 million was approved last week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council for non-recurring maintenance at hatcheries and for fish screen maintenance throughout the Columbia River basin in fiscal year 2024. The cost of maintenance projects at 13 hatcheries that totals $23,356,074 will be paid by excess revenue funds from the Bonneville Power Administration’s reserves distribution clause.
In a January letter, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council invited Oregon and Washington transportation agencies to meet jointly to discuss their mutual problem of double-crested cormorants on the Astoria-Megler Bridge that spans the Columbia River estuary at Astoria, OR.
Wildfires have become increasingly frequent due to climate change, with record occurrences in areas not historically prone to them. In California, wildfires and regional power shutoffs have cost billions and taken lives. For some 46 million Americans living next to forests – at what scientists call the “wildland-urban interface” (WUI) – the risks of wildfire can be especially acute.
Representatives of Columbia and Snake river ports and grain shippers, as well as Oregon, Idaho and Washington public utilities, lined up to oppose breaching the four lower Snake River dams last week in the fourth and, perhaps, the last listening session sponsored by the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
The Washington Department of Ecology has issued a Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification for the proposed Goldendale Energy Storage Project.
Spending on maintenance of Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead hatcheries, as well as fish screens, could see a significant bump in fiscal year 2024 if the full Northwest Power and Conservation Council approves a plan endorsed this week by the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee. That approval could come as early as the body’s June meeting.
The Bonneville Power Administration’s Columbia Generating Station is shutting down this spring, as it does every two years, to replace about a third of the fuel from the nuclear plant’s core.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has appointed Thomas L. (Les) Purce to serve on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
About 200 sea lions were counted last week in the Columbia River between the I-205 Bridge and Bonneville Dam, a 36-mile stretch of river, spurring states and tribes to begin trapping and euthanizing the pinnipeds at Bonneville Dam.
The amount of sediment carried by Columbia River waters to the Pacific Ocean has declined by about half since Bonneville Dam was built in 1935. Much of the sediment no longer moved by the river has found a home at the mouths of tributaries, creating shallow sediment fans or deltas where warm water and predators impact juvenile salmon and steelhead, some listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The 16th round of Canada-U.S. negotiations to modernize the Columbia River Treaty took place on March 22 and 23, in Washington, D.C.
U.S. House Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) have introduced the “Northwest Energy Security Act” aimed at prohibiting the breaching of the four Lower Snake river dams to restore salmon and steelhead runs.
A massive 2,000 page draft environmental impact statement on how Willamette River Valley dams impact threatened salmon, steelhead and bull trout is flawed and does not address one of its own primary goals, which is meeting obligations under the Endangered Species Act to avoid jeopardizing the existence of listed species, according to several groups and agencies that submitted comments to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in late February.
The Bonneville Power Administration says it will spend each year more than five times the amount it has spent in recent years for non-recurring maintenance needs at existing hatcheries beginning next year.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little has appointed Ed Schriever, retired executive director of Idaho Fish and Game, to a seat on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, replacing longtime Council member Jim Yost.
A panel of scientists put their stamp of approval on four fish response models the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used when developing a draft environmental impact statement to assess the effects of operating its Willamette Valley System of 13 dams on threatened Chinook salmon and winter steelhead.
Oregon and Washington fishery agencies announced they will not propose commercial or recreational white sturgeon fishing this year downstream of Bonneville Dam due to a projected low abundance of legal-sized fish, according to a joint status report released this week by the states.
Sea lions continue taking a big bite out of spring fish runs at Bonneville Dam. More than 8 percent of winter steelhead and more than 3 percent of spring Chinook salmon were picked off by Steller and California sea lions that prey on the fish below the dam, according to a draft report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Talk to people who knew Larry Cassidy and the accolades run as thick as the Columbia River’s famed salmon and steelhead runs in the days before hydroelectric dams forever changed the system.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has asked the owner of the Astoria-Megler Bridge in Astoria to meet with them to talk about the double-crested cormorant problem in the Columbia River estuary.
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