Last week, after an Oregon judge directed federal agencies to “spill” more water through  Columbia and Snake river dams, elected officials and utility companies in Montana warned that the order would force electricity prices up and bring grid stability down.  Flathead Valley Electric Coope rative cautioned in a Feb. 26 statement that while its members support environmental stewardship, the ruling has “real economic consequences” for its ratepayers. In a similar vein, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte wrote that the order hampers Montanans’ access to “reliable, affordable hydropower from the Columbia River Power System,” which will be especially noticeable during grid-straining wintertime cold snaps.  But to fishery advocates such as the National Wildlife Federation, the ruling will help prevent the collapse of imperiled salmon and steelhead populations threatened by decades of foot-dragging and delay as federal agencies have prioritized power production over fish conservation. To better understand how this latest chapter in a three decades-long legal battle between fish advocates and federal agencies will play out for Montana dams, rivers and ratepayers, Montana Free Press interviewed experts for their perspectives on the ruling U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon issued Feb. 25. They described a dynamic situation that will have ripple effects for utility bills, reservoir levels and fishery conservation along the 1,200-mile Columbia River basin, from its headwaters in the Canadian Rockies to its mouth west of Astoria, Oregon. Katie Pfennigs, Flathead Electric Cooperative’s community coordination manager, told MTFP in a March 3 conversation that public power utilities like Flathead Electric fully anticipate scarcer, more expensive power as a result of the order. That’s because water “spilled” through a hydropower dam doesn’t go through electricity-generating turbines, and utilities across the region feel the corresponding pinch in power production. While the directive to send more water through spillways only explicitly applies to dams on the lower end of the Columbia and Snake basins, utilities like Flathead Electric will still face power constraints because they purchase power that’s generated by dams throughout the system, which generates about half of the Pacific Northwest’s power. Flathead Electric is heavily reliant on hydropower generated by federal dams and sold at cost by the Bonneville Power Administration, Pfennigs said: Up to 95% of Flathead Electric’s power comes from the federal dams on the Columbia River Power System. While Flathead Electric is still waiting on industry analysts to put numbers to the availability and affordability of power, Pfennigs said fallout is imminent. “What we do know is that there will be impacts to both,” she said, adding that the 31 federal dams along the Columbia River Power System will also have less flexibility to ramp power production up and down as a result of the ruling. Bonneville Power Administration estimates that it will raise the power rates that public utilities like Flathead Electric Cooperative pay by 17% to comply with the ruling. “We need all of the electrical generation we can get and the hydro system provides some of the most affordable, reliable and carbon-free energy in the nation. And the way that the energy landscape looks today, it’s just very disconcerting to see that system constrained any more than it already is,” Pfennigs said. Flathead Electric serves about 77,000 households and businesses across its service territory. It’s one of several cooperatives in the northwestern corner of Montana that are heavily reliant on BPA power. All told, about a quarter of Montana’s electricity consumers will be significantly impacted by the ruling, Pfennigs estimated. The impacts will also be felt, at least peripherally, by Energy Keepers Incorporated, a Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes-owned company that operates the Séliš Ksanka QÍispé Dam at the lower end of Flathead Lake, which sits along the upper reaches of the Columbia basin. Brian Lipscomb, Energy Keepers’ CEO, explained that he anticipates more demand for the electricity his company generates and sells on the power market since the lower dams will produce less. At the same time, Lipscomb said he’s also anticipating a more dynamic situation generally as dam operators at the lower end of the Columbia “tap” upstream reservoirs for water to comply with the judge’s order as part of a coordinated dance that’s existed for decades. There are 31 federally-owned dams along the Columbia River Basin that support Bonneville Power Administration’s power production efforts. BPA power is in turn sold to utility companies in the Pacific NorthWest region, including in Montana. Credit: Courtesy Bonneville Power Administration “What this [order] does, it forces more spill through the month of August and clear through the winter,” Lipscomb said. “So think 110 degrees across the Columbia River Basin and in western Montana in August, when there’s no water and the water that’s in there gets spilled. The stress goes up on the system.” In that scenario, Lipscomb said Energy Keepers could be called upon to send more water through the dam’s turbines to generate enough power to keep the lights on and air conditioners running across the region. He added that that same water will support additional generation as it continues making its way through dams located lower in the basin. “When you get a stress on the system from a power-generation perspective, the likelihood that we have a power shortage event in the basin goes up,” he added. “Can I say it’s going to happen? No. Can I say it’s not going to happen? No. I can say the likelihood has now gone up.” Steven Hawley, a southwestern Washington-based journalist who has been writing about dams and fisheries in the Pacific NorthWest since the mid-1990s, told MTFP that the convergence of climate change, long-running Endangered Species Act litigation and burgeoning power demands point to a future with less of the cheap BPA power that residents of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana have long enjoyed. “Climate change, primarily, and court orders for salmon restoration, secondarily, are going to make it really hard to maintain that at-cost power rate,” Hawley said. “I cannot foresee a scenario where the low-cost power that we’ve reaped the benefits from for 80 years in the Pacific Northwest are going to stick around.” But the outlook isn’t all that rosy for fish advocates either, he added, something Judge Simon also highlighted in his order, writing that the threats to federally protected species are “dire and immediate.” “My hunch,” Hawley said, “given [how] power interests have drug their feet to implement what would be best for fish and wildlife populations, is that fish and wildlife advocates are going to have a hell of a fight on their hands.” The post Spillover: The battle over fish and power in the Columbia River Basin appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less