Environmental Regulation and Salmon Recovery

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon in Oregon ordered only narrow changes to hydropower operations on the Columbia and Snake River dams late Wednesday, effectively locking in 2025 reservoir and spill levels as litigation resumes over endangered salmon. The states of Oregon and Washington, Northwest tribes, and fishing and conservation groups had asked for lower reservoir levels and more spill to speed juvenile salmon past the dams, while the Trump administration sought higher reservoirs and warned that plaintiffs were trying to 'wrest control' of the river system and raise power costs. Simon, criticizing what he called decades of 'government avoidance and manipulation' as salmon runs 'disappear from the landscape,' rejected both extremes and ruled that 2025 operating conditions had already shown they could be managed safely while offering some protection for fish. His order follows the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from a 2023 Biden-brokered $1 billion salmon and tribal clean‑energy deal, which had paused the 30‑year‑old lawsuit and left on the table—but did not mandate—the possibility of breaching four lower Snake River dams. The decision keeps immediate dam operations largely status quo but underscores rising legal pressure on federal agencies to reconcile power, navigation and irrigation uses with treaty obligations and collapsing salmon runs in one of the nation’s most important river basins.