Progress for Cold Water

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How the Clean Water Act is forcing the Army Corps to get serious about reducing heat pollution from the Lower Snake River reservoirs

Updated Sept. 5, 2024

Miles Johnson, Legal Director for Columbia Riverkeeper

Good news for fish and fans of cold water: the Washington Department of Ecology recently used its Clean Water Act authority to require the Army Corps to study all possible ways to cool the Lower Snake River!

The Clean Water Act is America’s flagship law protecting healthy streams, rivers, and lakes. Enacted when some of our nations’ waterways were so contaminated that they actually caught fire, the Clean Water Act’s common-sense goal is to ensure that rivers and lakes remain clean enough to support fishing, swimming, and (after appropriate treatment) drinking. Although significant threats to water quality obviously remain, the Clean Water Act has proven to be one of our nation’s most effective—and most popular—environmental laws.    

All of this prompts the question: Does the Clean Water Act contain the tools and authorities to address hot water caused by dams on the Lower Snake and Columbia rivers? In theory, the answer is yes, but federal agencies have long resisted any meaningful action to reduce the dams’ temperature pollution. So for the last decade, Columbia Riverkeeper and many others have used science and the Clean Water Act to ratchet up pressure on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to reduce heat pollution caused by the Lower Snake River dams. 

Ecology’s recent decision is another important step toward that goal! Here’s a quick history of this issue:

  • 2014: Columbia Riverkeeper sues the Corps for discharging oil and heat pollution into the Lower Snake River without Clean Water Act Permits.
  • 2015: 96% of adult endangered Snake River sockeye salmon die because of hot water in the Lower Snake and Columbia rivers. Major temperature-related fish kills  occur in the summers of 2013, 2021, and 2023.   
  • 2016: Columbia Riverkeeper and allies sue under the Clean Water Act to require EPA to create a pollution budget (called a Total Maximum Daily Load analysis, or TMDL) for heat pollution in the Columbia and Lower Snake rivers.  
  • 2017: Columbia Riverkeeper uses computer modeling to show that, without the dams, the Lower Snake River would be cool enough for salmon to migrate safely.
  • 2019: Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals orders EPA to write a temperature TMDL for the Lower Snake and Columbia Rivers.
  • April 2024: The Corps submits a Water Quality Attainment Plan for the Lower Snake River reservoirs that does not propose any meaningful changes to meet the temperature limits.

What’s next? Over the next year, the Corps and expert partners will study ways to keep the dams and reservoirs from warming the Lower Snake River to levels that kill endangered salmon. Despite the Corps’ attempts to ignore potential solutions—like drawing down reservoirs for part or all of the year—Ecology made clear that nothing is off the table when it comes to studying what could be done to keep the Lower Snake River cool.

We are making steady progress and we remain hopeful, but we still have a long road ahead. Studying and implementing ways to keep the river cool will take time, and we fully expect the Corps to continue resisting meaningful actions that benefit salmon and steelhead. Nevertheless, we remain dedicated to delivering on the Clean Water Act’s promise of clean, healthy waterways with abundant fish.