In litigation over Columbia Basin salmon, federal agencies began spilling more water last month to comply with a federal court order, sending more water over spillways rather than through power-generating turbines. According to court filings, the order will cost Bonneville Power Administration customers over $100 million a year and cut hydropower output by 1,000 megawatts in August and 500 in September.
That’s enough clean energy to power a sizable city. That’s on top of the hundreds of millions BPA customers fund each year for salmon and wildlife. Despite all this, spill supporters share a familiar message: the system can absorb it, costs are manageable, and reliability will hold. The case largely rests on a 2018 Northwest Energy Coalition study arguing the four lower Snake River dams could be replaced for a dollar a month per household, a figure that quietly depended on continued natural-gas generation to stabilize the grid.
The organizations responsible for keeping the lights on tell a much different story.
Late last year, NERC President Jim Robb described grid risks as a “five-alarm fire,” citing dwindling reliable power supply, extreme weather, and permitting delays outpacing demand growth. Recent studies, including the WECC’s 2025 assessment and a two-phase study by E3, put the Northwest at high blackout risk. Even in a best-case scenario, blackout risk appears across the decade, and one study projects a shortfall in dependable electricity of 9 gigawatts by 2030.
Every megawatt of hydropower lost, whether to dam removal or spill, must be replaced by something else at a time the region is already facing shortages.
Retail rates are projected to exceed inflation by 36% to 47% from rising demand and insufficient supply. Meeting Washington’s 2045 mandate without emerging technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors, nuclear fusion, hydrogen, or carbon capture, would nearly triple today’s retail rate. E3 calls the pathway infeasible without at least one clean, firm, and dispatchable technology at commercial scale. To weather a cold snap, it must be one capable of sustained output over many hours.
Only one such resource exists in the region today. It’s hydropower, and the court just ordered us to use less of it.
Meanwhile, E3’s own least-cost pathway depends on new natural gas peaking plants — the very resources Washington’s climate law phases out. Citing the same findings, The Seattle Times editorial board warned the study “should alarm every Washingtonian,” and urged Gov. Bob Ferguson and state lawmakers to build reliability backstops into the clean energy transition. They are right, and if Washington policymakers don’t want natural gas, we’ll need every megawatt of hydropower we’ve got.
None of this makes salmon less important. They are woven into Northwest identity and are profoundly important to Native American tribes’ heritage, culture, and economy. But we can’t have an honest discussion about tradeoffs if we aren’t honest about what the tradeoffs are. The evidence is clear. The region is running out of dependable electricity, and the dollar-a-month story cannot survive modern scrutiny.
by Kurt Miller, Washington State Standard, read the full article.