Ad Policy<\/a>
<\/p>\n
Above the Skagit River in Washington state, clouds flow through sheer granite peaks. The canyons below once resounded with the free-flowing power of a river that nourished and rejuvenated the ancestors of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe along with the ecosystem they stewarded for millennia. It ran unobstructed from the Cascade Mountain Range into the Pacific Ocean. Now, the third largest river on the west coast of the contiguous United States no longer runs freely.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Behind Gorge dam is Gorge \u201clake.\u201d This man-made reservoir conceals the home site of the late Upper Skagit political and spiritual leader, Charley Moses. Seattle\u2019s City Light Department (SCL) dammed the river and inundated the Upper Skagit\u2019s spiritual area to build a cheap source of electricity to support an industrial economy. Salmon, steelhead, sea-run cutthroat trout, and bull trout, all known as anadromous fish, once migrated from the ocean to spawn here and further upstream. These fish formed the basis of the Upper Skagit Tribe\u2019s culture and economy. Today, they\u2019re blocked by a dry stretch of riverbed and three dams.<\/p>\n
In 1855, the U.S. government signed a treaty with Tribes, including the Upper Skagit at Point Elliot. The government took the Tribe\u2019s lands in exchange for basic rights, including the right to fish, hunt, and gather in their usual and accustomed areas. Decades later, however, the federal government failed the Tribe as its trustee by not acting on their behalf when SCL began constructing its dams in 1919. Upper Skagit tribal members weren\u2019t considered U.S. citizens until 1924, and thus didn\u2019t have legal standing to assert their cultural and treaty rights, David Hawkins, General Counsel for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, told Seattle City Council committee members in January 2023. SCL benefitted\u2014and still benefits\u2014from this historic injustice, according to Scott Schuyler, an Upper Skagit Tribal elder and the Tribe\u2019s policy representative.<\/p>\n
SCL is the public utility department of the City of Seattle, Washington. It owns and operates electric generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, delivering electricity to Seattle and other surrounding areas, where it has operated as a monopoly since 1951. SCL maintains a massive hydroelectric project on the Skagit River consisting of three dams and electricity-generating facilities, three reservoirs, and miles of high voltage transmission lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, SCL is seeking to obtain a 50-year license to continue operating its dams on the Skagit River. It submitted its final application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in April 2023. SCL was then granted an additional year to complete studies necessary for FERC\u2019s environmental review. In an effort to reach an agreement for SCL\u2019s FERC license application, confidential negotiations continue between Native American Tribes, federal and state agencies, First Nations of Canada, and conservation groups. If an agreement is reached, it would be submitted to FERC, which would then determine whether to approve it as part of the licensing decision.\u00a0<\/p>\nScenes from the bypass reach with Scott Schuyler. (Chona Kasinger for The Margin)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nScott Schuyler is part of a family that descended from Pat-teh-us who signed the 1855 treaty. He follows in his ancestor\u2019s footsteps in defense of his Tribe\u2019s treaty rights. When he was younger, he witnessed SCL\u2019s decades-long dewatering of the Skagit River from between Gorge dam and Gorge powerhouse\u2014known as the \u201cbypass reach.\u201d He was shocked and traumatized by the waterless riverbed. \u201cI knew this was wrong,\u201d he said. In that moment, he vowed to change it. \u201cUltimately, the Upper Skagit would like to see the sights and hear the sounds of a naturally flowing river\u2014a return to the Indigenous landscape,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
For over a century, evidence appears to show that SCL has misrepresented the environmental impacts of its dams in the historical and contemporary record and, therefore, has failed to adequately address those impacts. Evidence from contemporary science, historical documents, public records, presentations, and interviews, show that SCL may have been motivated by a desire to protect its hydroelectric assets and the benefits they provide. Doing so has allowed SCL to operate its hydroelectric project without sufficiently mitigating the environmental harm it causes.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nSchuyler says, this lack of accountability has impacted the Upper Skagit\u2019s treaty rights and culture. It is the U.S. government\u2019s legal responsibility as the Tribe\u2019s federal treaty trustee to ensure these rights are protected and can be exercised in the FERC licensing.<\/p>\n
Janelle Schuyler (Hout-Suli-a), Scott Schuyler\u2019s daughter and a member of the Upper Skagit Tribe, works for the Tribe, shadows her father, and hopes she can continue his work in the future. \u201cSeattle City Light can make it right with its Tribal neighbors,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
An SCL spokesperson stated that in the current licensing process, \u201c[W]e have, and continue to, work closely with all our license partners to advance our shared commitment to the Skagit River watershed. With license partners and other stakeholders, we are working to balance needs that include flood risk management, park access, renewable power, and fish restoration and harvest.\u201d<\/p>\n
SCL has committed to providing fish passage, according to its spokesperson, but an agreement committing SCL to this has yet to be signed, according to Scott Schuyler.\u00a0<\/p>\nJanelle Schuyler outside Upper Skagit Indian Community administrative building on June 27, 2024. (Chona Kasinger for The Margin)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nEngineering An Alternate History<\/h3>\n Through the 1970s and 1980s, treaty Tribes in Washington state became more powerful, particularly with the landmark 1974 case U.S. vs. Washington<\/em>. This ruling affirmed the treaty-guaranteed fishing rights held by Tribes including the Upper Skagit. The Tribes and their federal trustees became an increasingly formidable adversary to environmental degradation, especially when it came to anadromous fish.<\/p>\nEarly in 1986, the nearby Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe asserted the need for removal of two dams on the Elwha River to provide anadromous fish necessary access to dam-blocked habitat and restore access to their dam-inundated creation site. New federal laws also required FERC to give equal consideration to factors including wildlife and fish spawning grounds and habitat, not just to hydroelectricity production. Furthermore, legal decisions held that FERC had the authority to require dam owners to mitigate for the original impacts of their dams. That same year SCL\u2019s 50-year license, first issued in 1927, had been expired for nine years and SCL was applying for a new one. The power of treaty Tribes and these new federal policies set the stage for the real possibility that SCL would be required to implement costly mitigation measures to obtain its new FERC license, including dam removal and fish passage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In anticipation of these new requirements, SCL funded and oversaw the production of a report on the original impacts of its dams on fish and wildlife ahead of FERC\u2019s environmental assessment. The Original Impacts Report process began with SCL leading the drafting of a scope of work. This scope of work included tasks to be carried out by SCL\u2019s potential consultant informed by stakeholders, including federal and state agencies, Tribes, and non-governmental organizations.<\/p>\n
Stakeholders expressed concern at the time. Dave Fluharty, then president of the North Cascades Conservation Council, was reported as saying in a meeting on the original draft of the scope of work, \u201cThe tone might discourage the consultant from assembling the best available information on fish.\u201d Fluharty recently reflected on his comments: \u201cWe were properly suspicious of City Light, and we believed that they wanted to support a specific outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others detailed this outcome. Jon Jarvis, who served for eight years under President Obama as National Park Service director and then served as North Cascades National Park Chief of the Natural and Cultural Resources Division, recently confirmed his belief that SCL was working toward a pre-determined conclusion that anadromous fish were historically blocked by natural barriers prior to the dam\u2019s construction: \u201cCertainly, I felt that in terms of fish getting beyond Gorge\u2014yeah\u2014they were pretty dug in on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the stakeholders all agreed on a version of the scope of work, SCL created its own version. SCL\u2019s version reframed the description of the task, from one confirming the potential for<\/em> historical anadromous fish passage to one questioning whether or not anadromous fish passage was ever possible<\/em>\u2014a consequential change that stakeholders, including federal agencies and the Upper Skagit Tribe, were not informed of until it was recently revealed to them by The Margin<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n