Breaching Lower Snake River Dams Would Cause Severe Economic Harm, NGFA Says

Breaching the lower Snake River dams (LSRD) in the Pacific Northwest would create severe economic harm to the entire U.S. agricultural value chain, NGFA President and CEO Mike Seyfert said in comments submitted July 11 in response to a draft report on the benefits of replacing the LSRD.

In October 2021 Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced a joint federal-state process to determine whether there are reasonable means for replacing the services and benefits provided by the LSRD, sufficient to support dam breaching as part of a salmon recovery strategy for the Snake River and the Pacific Northwest. The draft report, published on June 9, will be revised based on public comments. Inslee and Murray said they would make their final recommendations no later than this summer.

“Removing the LSRD will hurt producers and negatively impact the operations and livelihoods of NGFA members who have made investment decisions based on the ability to utilize barge transportation,” Seyfert noted. “This is the wrong policy prescription, especially at a time when the prospects for global food shortages have been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Barge transportation moves about half of all grain exports to export elevators and is critical to NGFA members in the Pacific Northwest. The Columbia-Snake River System is the third-largest grain export corridor in the world, transporting nearly 30 percent of U.S. grain and oilseed exports.

The draft report states that breaching the LSRD would eliminate all commodity barging between the Tri-Cities in Washington and Lewiston-Clarkston in Idaho causing that transportation to shift to regional rail and trucking networks.

“This is not feasible or workable given the current inability of several Class I rail carriers to provide reliable rail service and the well-documented truck driver shortage,” NGFA noted.

According to the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, the removal of barge access would require 39,000 rail cars or 152,000 semi-trucks to replace the cargo volume shipped on the Snake River in 2019.

In his comments, Seyfert also noted that transporting grains and oilseeds via barge is an environmentally friendly alternative to rail and truck hauling. One four-barge tow can move as much grain as 144 rail cars or 538 semi-trucks.

“Removing the LSRD would not only remove clean hydroelectricity, but it would also significantly increase carbon emissions as grain handlers would be forced to rely on thousands more railcars and semi-trucks for long-haul delivery to export facilities,” he said.

Navigational access through the LSRD must be maintained, NGFA concluded. Read the full comments to Governor Inslee and Sen. Murray here.

Meanwhile, the White House released two draft reports on July 12, one of which recommends breaching one or more of the LSRD to rebuild Columbia Basin salmon populations.

Advocate: NGFA members can advocate that the Water Resources Development Act of 2022 being negotiated between the House and Senate does not authorize the breaching of these dams by using the NGFA’s advocacy tool. Send a letter to your lawmakers here.