Water Resources Development Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss and express my support for the Columbia River Federal Power System. The federal dams on the Columbia River System are a boon to the Pacific Northwest and stands as an example to other hydropower projects across the country and the world. Its capacity to generate always-on, baseload carbon-free power is vital not just to the Northwest, but relied upon by our friends in surrounding regions as well. The dams also bring substantial benefits for flood control, local recreation, irrigation, navigation, wildlife conservation, and industry. Even Idaho, my landlocked home State, is able to have a working seaport because of the navigation benefits provided by these dams, sending Idaho's products all around the world in an efficient, cost-effective, and low-carbon manner. As additional challenges have risen, scientists and managers at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have adapted to ensure the dams are still beneficial to humans and our natural environment.

In the Water Resources Development Act before the Senate today, there is a seemingly innocuous but rather consequential and far-reaching study directed at aquatic habitat restoration in the Columbia River Basin. Other studies in this section are small enough to be measured in acres or at largest, a portion of a state. The Columbia River Basin spans nearly 260,000 square miles and reaches into seven States. This is not a small, localized review but instead an authorization for a comprehensive study on anything relating to aquatic restoration in one of the largest basins in the country.

This may sound benign to my colleagues who are not from the Northwest, but this issue is not a new or small one. I have been discussing the Columbia River System and salmon recovery since my early days in the Idaho Legislature. Improving salmon and steelhead populations in the Northwest is an important goal and one I have long supported. What I cannot, however, support are the constant efforts to remove the benefits provided by our hydropower system under the guise of salmon recovery. The fact of the matter is we have studied this river and these dams ad nauseam. Most recently, we completed the Columbia River System Operations review, which specifically considered whether dam breaching was necessary for fish recovery and determined the opposite. It is pointless and irresponsible to spend further taxpayer dollars considering dam breaching.

This brings me back to the study in title II. I appreciate very much the chairman and ranking member working with me to place appropriate sideboards to ensure this study will not consider any recommendations that would result in the removal or reduction of the federally authorized purposes of the system or any measures that would result in a reduction in services provided by those purposes. While I still believe that this study is far too large and untargeted to result in timely recommendations for anadromous fish recovery--and as such, wastes funding better used in the region than on yet another river study--with this important limitation, I am pleased to be able to support the overall WRDA bill and the many important priorities it encompasses for our water infrastructure. Should this study be signed into law, I expect and will pay careful mind that it meets the specific congressional intent of preserving our hydropower system and the many benefits it provides. I look forward to continue working with my colleagues to identify solutions to salmon recovery that do not inhibit the clean energy, flood control, navigation, agricultural, and recreation benefits of our Federal power system.

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