Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson’s Northwest in Transition Plan is expected to impact the greater Northwest region, including the Palouse, according to panelists at a webinar hosted by the University of Idaho Sustainability Center’s Leadership Program.
The goal of Simpson’s proposal is to restore the steelhead and salmon populations that have been on the decline for decades. To properly remedy this ecological issue, the proposal involves a variety of initiatives that will significantly alter the wider northwestern landscape, including a plan to breach four dams on the Lower Snake River.
According to Simpson’s proposal, the breaching process for Lower Granite Dam and Little Goose Dam would begin in summer 2030, while the breaching process for Lower Monumental Dam and Ice Harbor Dam would begin in summer 2031.
The proposal places an immediate focus on constructing a modern energy system to accommodate for the dams’ removal and the subsequent loss of hydropower.
A staff member for the Idaho Conservation League, Mitch Cutter, said Simpson’s proposal is estimated to cost over $33 billion, with half of the cost assigned to building infrastructure for non-carbon energy.
“This proposal goes beyond replacing the services provided by those Lower Snake River dams and keeping the grid more or less where it’s at now by actually improving that grid,” Cutter said. “Moving the energy system of the Northwest into the middle of the 21st century and moving away from these aging, more centralized generation systems we rely on now.”
Among the alternative energy sources proposed, is manure. Grants to various universities in the Northwest, including UI, would go towards researching how manure can be used as a source of biofuel and bioenergy, efforts that would mitigate the amount of potential waste reaching the water supply.
Another major area of focus for the proposal will be determining how to construct alternative systems for the transportation of agricultural goods. For the Palouse, this means grain transportation will shift away from barges and towards automobile and rail-based transport.
“The removal of the dams won’t necessarily impact production, but it will certainly impact transportation of the wheat grown on the Palouse,” Mark McGuire, Director of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station, said. “Those barges are an efficient system for delivering the wheat that’s exported,”
The current proposal will have wheat transported to the Tri-Cities and then put on barges to be moved down the Colombia River, resulting in an environmental trade-off. The dams would be removed for the salmon and steelheads at the cost of increased carbon dioxide inputs from the transportation of agricultural goods, McGuire said.
Some of the effects will be felt in a way that is markedly different from the typical concerns with sweeping infrastructure proposals. Among the groups directly impacted by Simpson’s proposal are the various native tribes throughout the Northwest region.
“This is going to have an impact on our people and our tribes in ways beyond just economics, beyond what some industries might find offensive to breaching those lower dams,” Caj Matheson, Natural Resources Director of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, said.
Many tribes in the Northwest have culturally significant ties to the region’s salmon, which have impacted tribal culture throughout history and into the present, according to Matheson.
“We were taught to consider salmon as sacred, as a life-giver,” Matheson said. “Many tribes have stories about how humans almost couldn’t survive, but salmon gave itself and his life up for the people.”
While the restoration of salmon populations would be of particular significance to tribes on a cultural level, the economic impacts the dam removals bring are still of concern to natives living on reservations. To accommodate this, Simpson’s proposal would give native tribes a say in what projects receive funding, a notable departure from a history of legislation which has often excluded native voices, Matheson said.
The intricacies and implications of Simpson’s proposal continue to be debated amongst members of the Northwest Delegation and is yet to have a proposed date for its implementation at the legislative level. Simpson highlighted the Biden Administration’s announcement of a clean energy bill later this year with a proposed cost of $2-3 trillion.
“As part of that $2-3 trillion infrastructure package, this $33.5 billion would fit quite nicely as infrastructure funding for the Northwest,” Cutter said.
It is unclear whether the proposal will receive the necessary support to be drafted into legislation in time for the Democrats’ expected infrastructure bill.
Royce McCandless can be reached at [email protected]