Bonneville Power Administration wants to raise customer rates – and is wrongly blaming emergency measures to protect salmon

Seattle, WA —

Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that sells Columbia Basin hydropower and operates much of the Northwest’s power grid, has begun a process that would allow it to raise electricity rates. 

If approved, BPA’s utility customers could see another increase in their energy bills. The proposed adjustment is designed to raise an additional $250 million, resulting in an increase to ratepayers’ bills of up to 6.3 percent.  

In its stated justification for the rate hike, BPA wrongly shifts the blame onto measures that are needed to protect vulnerable salmon in the Columbia River Basin. Earlier this year, a federal court in Oregon sided with clean energy, conservation, and fishing groups represented by Earthjustice and required federal agencies to modify their proposed 2026 operations of the Columbia Basin hydropower system to prevent serious salmon declines.  

The court ordered increased spill over eight dams on the lower Columbia and Snake rivers during the juvenile fish out-migration that begins each year in March and continues through the end of August — allowing juvenile fish to pass over the dams instead of through lethal hydropower powerhouses. 

BPA is prematurely seeking this increase and likely exaggerating the cost of implementing the court order, ignoring the variety of factors that influence both BPA’s expenses and revenues. Indeed, BPA has previously overstated the impact of salmon protections on electricity rates: In 2018, BPA claimed that it needed to immediately raise rates because of a similar court order and yet still managed to end the year with a $123 million surplus. 

There are serious questions as to whether the agency could instead spare ratepayers and absorb costs that may arise from the order. Rate adjustments are supposed to be based on the agency’s actual financial situation. According to BPA’s own forecasts, its financial position is secure, with net revenue exceeding projections by $38 million. BPA also currently has adequate cash on hand, and if needed, the authority to borrow over $1.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury. BPA appears to be in a solid position to address unforeseen costs without raising customer rates and scapegoating salmon. 

The rate proceeding also comes on the heels of other recent rate requests. Based on its previous rate case from just a year ago, BPA has already raised rates by close to 9% for 2026, and last November BPA indicated that another 2% hike was likely.  

These rate increases stem in part from poor planning. BPA has for years neglected to invest in transmission lines or develop sources of cheap, clean energy that would better prepare the region’s energy grid for future demands. BPA is now requiring customers to pay for its own planning failures.   

“BPA is required by law to make decisions that are economically sound for its customers while also protecting endangered salmon and steelhead,” said Earthjustice Attorney Michael Mayer. “BPA is failing at both and complaining about salmon protections to distract from bad decision-making.”  

“We’ve been down this road before,” said Bill Arthur, Chair of the Snake/Columbia River Salmon Campaign at the Sierra Club. “BPA should wait until all of the evidence is in before soaking ratepayers with another price hike. Salmon are not the problem here.”   

“BPA has financial tools specifically designed to address revenue shortfalls,” said Ben Otto, Interim Policy Director at the NW Energy Coalition. “It doesn’t need to immediately put a financial burden on ratepayers, and it shouldn’t try to scapegoat the salmon in the process.”  

“Ratepayers deserve better than scapegoating endangered fish,” said Brad Smith, Interim Executive Director of the Idaho Conservation League. “BPA is pointing the finger at salmon while ignoring decisions that have a much bigger impact on its finances—from delaying needed transmission investments to choosing Markets+ over a market that its own analysis found would deliver greater economic value.” 

Background 

The clean energy, conservation, and fishing groups represented by Earthjustice returned to federal court in Oregon last fall after the Trump Administration unilaterally terminated the historic Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. Signed in 2023, the agreement was intended to pause the parties’ long-standing litigation for a decade while a set of federal commitments were implemented to restore salmon populations, honor Tribal treaty obligations, and build out the region’s clean energy resources.  

The spill ordered by the court earlier this year after the Trump Administration reneged on the agreement is an emergency measure, needed because of the government’s repeated failure to adequately protect salmon. As noted by the court, the responsible agencies have a “disappointing history of government avoidance and manipulation instead of sincere efforts at solving the problem and genuinely remediating the harm.” 

Separately, research has confirmed the main pressures that are driving electricity rates nationwide. In October 2025, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Brattle Group released an analysis outlining the top five factors causing electricity rate increases between 2019 and 2024.  

The reasons for rising costs noted in the report include overdue updates and repairs to the power and transmission system and supply chain problems; extreme weather and wildfire mitigation; methane gas price volatility; rising electricity demand due in part to data centers, and costs to integrate new industrial wind and solar projects into an outdated grid. The protection and restoration of imperiled salmon was not included in the report as a primary driver of rising energy costs.