Is Gov. Inslee really using Trump to justify going after WA’s Snake River dams?

So it’s Donald Trump’s fault.

Apparently, he’s the reason we can’t trust the 2020, multi-agency Environmental Impact Statement on the Snake River dams that took years to complete.

At least that’s the explanation Gov. Jay Inslee gave during his recent visit to the Tri-Cities — and it was unfortunate.

Inslee was in the community for the June 2 grand opening of the LIGO Exploration Center at Hanford, and we appreciate his effort to make the trip.

In addition to being part of the celebration, his presence gave the Herald a chance to ask him directly about a variety of topics — including the Snake dams analysis he launched last fall with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

It is due to be released very soon, and we hoped Inslee would give a thoughtful remark about it. But instead, his response cemented the concern that the joint Inslee-Murray report is a politically-driven tool to give hope to dam opponents.

He told the Herald that the overriding failure of the Trump administration, under which the EIS was completed, was a refusal to follow science and that “anyone who trusted Donald Trump’s administration to make a decision on science would be buying the Brooklyn Bridge.”

It was pretty flippant take on a very serious matter for residents of Central Washington.

Never mind that the latest EIS on the Snake dams affirmed similar conclusions that were made by other federal studies conducted when Democrat President Obama was in office.

In fact, going through the Herald archives, we found a guest opinion piece written in 2018 by WA Republican Reps. Dan Newhouse, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jaime Herrera Beutler.

It said this:

“Conducted in 2014, the Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion (BiOp) was an unprecedented example of cooperation between President Barack Obama’s administration, state governments, sovereign Northwest tribes, and public and private power groups.

Its conclusion: Dams and fish can coexist.

Those essentially have been the same findings time and again, including in the court-ordered 2020 EIS that was finished up while Trump was president. It’s thousands of pages and includes massive amounts of data.

And it affirmed that the Snake dams should remain.

But Inslee and Murray joined forces last year to determine what would be required to replace the services the Snake River dams provide.

“I’m glad we are doing it and have an administration willing to look at the science,” Inslee told the Herald.

Ahead of the report’s release, it would have been helpful if Inslee had given a substantive comment on the issue. But instead, he chose to deflect and bring up that Trump was in office when the EIS was completed.

Tri-Citians deserved a better response than that.

The debate over breaching the Snake dams has swirled for decades and those who actually work on the power grid have consistently said that the back-up electricity the Snake dams provide is essential to preventing power shortages when energy demand is high.

In addition, the Spring/Summer Chinook on the Snake River have increased for three years in a row.

But those who want the dams breached don’t seem to be as encouraged about that trend as we are.

Inlsee’s interest in battling climate change seems at odds with his interest in finding out how the state can function without all the clean hydropower it can get.

We would have liked to have heard more about that conflict, and perhaps even a small acknowledgment of the concern for our region if the dams were breached.

After all, another proposal released just last year by Republican Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho estimated it would take at least $33 billion to mitigate the loss of the dams in our region.

Inslee said a lot of right things during his recent visit to the Tri-Cities. And we appreciate that he called on the Biden administration to increase its proposed cleanup budget for the Hanford site — which actually happened.

But on the Snake dams issue, he missed an opportunity to provide Tri-Citians with a sensitive response.

Blaming Trump was a poor way to sidestep the question.

This story was originally published June 9, 2022 at 9:12 AM.