A study commissioned by the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association says the removal of four lower Snake River dams would cost the U.S. over $2.3 billion over the next 30 years.
The Washington Department of Ecology has issued a $1.065 million penalty to the U.S. Department of Energy for restricting access to what the state says is critical data.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has named Laura Watson director of the Washington State Department of Ecology today. She replaces Maia Bellon, who Inslee appointed in 2013.
Is it the obligation of the states of Oregon and Washington? Or is the Environmental Protection Agency responsible for completing Total Maximum Daily Load limits for temperature to protect salmon and steelhead in the Snake and Columbia rivers?
The value of protecting cold water refuges during adult salmon and steelhead migrations is especially important with rising water temperatures in the Columbia River basin caused by climate change, but the draft Cold Water Refuge Plan by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is not expansive enough to protect those fish, many listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, and it lacks a sense of urgency.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation Monday to provide the Spokane Tribe of Indians compensation for the lands taken by the United States as part of building Grand Coulee Dam in the 1930s and 1940s.
A federal judge in Montana signed an order this week requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to review the status of grizzly bears by March 2021.
An aquaculture company in Puget Sound has agreed in a settlement with the Wild Fish Conservancy to pay a $2.75 million penalty for a collapse of one of its net pens near Cypress Island in 2016. More than 260,000 non-native Atlantic salmon escaped due to the collapse.
Idaho Power will soon drop a lawsuit it filed in U.S. District Court in Idaho in June 2018 aimed at forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set a two-week water quality standard for fall chinook that spawn downstream of the utility’s Hells Canyon Complex of three dams on the Snake River.
As a result of a late November settlement, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will reduce inadvertent oil discharges from Chief Joseph Dam, downstream of Grand Coulee Dam, and it also will apply for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In about two months the Trump Administration will tell us what it thinks about breaching the four lower Snake River dams. The news will come in the form of a draft Environmental Impact Statement from federal agencies that is due February 2020.
The way the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to operate its Willamette River dams would likely jeopardize chinook and steelhead in the river, according to NOAA Fisheries. Both species are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
A lawsuit by environmental and public health groups that challenges approvals for a methanol refinery in Kalama, Wash. by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and NOAA Fisheries was filed this week in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Tacoma.
The Environmental Protection Agency has announced a grant offering for projects aimed at reducing toxics in the Columbia River Basin. The agency expects to fund approximately $1 million worth of projects.
Pollution levels at Bradford Island, located between Bonneville Dam powerhouses on the Columbia River, have risen since a 2008 determination the island did not qualify as a superfund site, and are now exceeding that threshold level, according to an Oct. 10 letter by states and the Yakama Nation.
Washington Department of Ecology Director Maia Bellon this week submitted formal objections to what she says is the Environmental Protection Agency’s “attempts to make illegal changes to Section 401 of the Clean Water Act.”
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has ramped up efforts to monitor and curb transboundary water pollution from coal mining operations in southern British Columbia.
A federal court has ordered Oregon and federal pollution regulators to replace the existing water quality plans in many of Oregon’s river basins. The court also set schedules for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to complete the new plans.
A draft report that, among other things, lists Oregon’s water quality impaired waters has been released by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for review until December 2.
Washington and Oregon filed a lawsuit this week challenging Trump Administration rules revising implementation of the Endangered Species Act.
Each year the Northwest Power and Conservation Council delivers a report to Congress on its fiscal year activities and progress for both power and its fish and wildlife program.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership and the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership will share $1.2 million in funding under the EPA National Estuary Program.
Opposing sides argued before a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should complete regulations for temperature, known as Total Maximum Daily Load, for the Snake and Columbia rivers, or whether completing the TMDL is the responsibility of Oregon and Washington.
A new U.S. lawsuit filed Monday seeks to establish a whale protection zone for endangered orcas in the Pacific Northwest.
Seven environmental groups have filed a joint lawsuit challenging recent changes to rules for implementing the Endangered Species Act, declaring the changes amount to “an unprecedented weakening” of protections for endangered and threatened species.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
