June 30, 2025 — Earlier this month, the Trump administration pulled the federal government out of the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement — a deal struck in 2023 by the Biden administration between two states and four Indigenous nations aimed at restoring salmon populations and paving a way to remove four hydroelectric dams along the river system. The move is likely to revive decades-old lawsuits and further endanger already struggling salmon populations.
But hydroelectric producers in Washington and Oregon have hailed the administration’s decision, citing an increased demand for energy driven primarily by data centers for AI and cryptocurrency operations.
“Washington state has said it’s going to need to double the amount of electricity it uses by 2050,” said Kurt Miller, head of the Northwest Public Power Association representing 150 local utility companies. “And they released that before we started to see the really big data center forecast numbers.”
Indigenous nations, however, say ending the agreement undermines treaty rights. Through the 1855 treaty between the United States and the Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and what is now the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, Indigenous nations ceded 12 million acres of land to the federal government in exchange for several provisions, including the right to hunt, gather, and fish their traditional homelands. But in the 1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction of hydroelectric dams along the Lower Snake River — a tributary of the Columbia River — that had immediate impacts on salmon runs, sending steelhead and Chinook populations into a tailspin.