Seattle reaches $4B deal to keep Skagit River dams, truck salmon

The Seattle City Council approved a landmark $4 billion agreement Tuesday laying out a road map for the city's next half-century of hydropower on the Skagit River.

After a century of harnessing the river to provide cheap electricity for the city, the agreement addresses some of the hydropower project's impacts on salmon and Native nations. The fight for measures enshrined in the agreement included a petition, lawsuits and years of negotiations among tribes, federal, state and local governments, and environmental groups.

About half, or $1.8 billion, is dedicated to maintenance and operation of the dams, powerhouses and transmission lines.

The agreement also commits the city to help restore salmon and steelhead at risk of extinction, including actions advocated by Native nations for years. This includes $979 million for trapping and trucking salmon upstream and downstream around the dams, as well as $200 million for habitat restoration on hundreds of acres.

The city will also compensate tribes to mitigate damage caused by the dams. The city has agreed to return some land to the Upper Skagit and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, and to build a cultural meeting center at Daxʷálib - also known as Newhalem - that would be owned by the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe. The city's utility will return some water to a roughly 3-mile stretch known as Skagit Falls that's spiritually significant to the Upper Skagit people.

Seattle City Light customers could see electricity rates go up about 0.5% per year from 2027 to 2032 due to the agreement, according to the utility. After that, the utility says costs are difficult to predict.

The agreement has already been signed by tribes, state and federal agencies, as well as Skagit County commissioners. It will head to Mayor Katie Wilson for her signature May 12 before being submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which grants licenses to operate dams. The city anticipates its new license may be issued around 2030. Work on some commitments can begin now.

"Thank you to the City Light team, but more importantly, to our tribal leaders," Councilmember Dan Strauss said. "We will live better lives, our future generations will be better off because of the work that you did in this agreement."

Legislation to send the agreement to the mayor passed unanimously Tuesday.

Councilmember Debora Juarez, who chairs the Parks and City Light Committee, said what public utilities and the federal government did to rivers here "verges on violence and obscene, because it did more than just take fish."

"And as Uncle Billy (Frank Jr.) used to say: We're not a transient community or group, we will live and die on those rivers because it's home," said Juarez, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation.

The three dams today have about 840 megawatts of generating capacity and provide about 20% of the city's electricity. Ross Lake is the biggest of the reservoirs, helping to moderate flooding in the lower Skagit Valley and filling and storing snowmelt for energy generation.

Seattle residents benefit from cheaper electricity rates than the average U.S. household.

Construction on the Skagit River dams began more than a century ago to support Seattle's growth. Settlers also saw dams as a means of taming the river to protect agriculture in the lower valley.

The company town of Newhalem was built atop an Upper Skagit village, Daxʷálib. Construction of the first dam, Gorge, removed the river from a sacred gorge and instead flowed water to a tunnel blasted in a mountain to feed a powerhouse.

"This was the ancestral home of the Upper Skagit, sometimes referred to as the ‘Valley of the Spirits,'" Upper Skagit elder Scott Schuyler told a Seattle City Council committee last month. "Our ancestors lived and died in what we call today the Seattle City Light project area."

Not only did the city's project desecrate villages holding graves of Upper Skagit ancestors, Schuyler said, but it led to the demise of salmon. Opportunities to exercise treaty-reserved fishing rights dwindled.

The Upper Skagit fought for provisions restoring salmon, land and the river to its natural banks, said Schuyler, a longtime policy representative who helmed negotiations with the city.

Dam removal was not on the table. But the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, supported by both traditional ecological expertise and Western science, convinced the city that fish passage was critical for endangered fish recovery, even more so in the face of climate change.

Investigative reporting in The Margin revealed Seattle City Light had misrepresented the environmental impacts of its dams over decades and failed to adequately address impacts.

The state in the 1940s wrote the construction of the dams "resulted in destruction or damage to salmon, steelhead and cut-throat trout" after earlier requirements to offset the dams' damage to salmon went unfulfilled, according to reporting in The Margin.

For Upper Skagit people, the agreement means a chance to come home for the first time in more than a century, Schuyler said in an interview. Early settlers had encountered Upper Skagit people still living in the project area before the dams were built.

"I just hope to complete as much as we can in my lifetime, and not burden our descendants with jobs that aren't finished," he said. "And so it's up to us to ensure that we work faithfully with our new partner, the city of Seattle."

He added: "The satisfaction will come when we see fish returning."

The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community also fought for flood plain and estuary habitat restoration outlined in early Chinook recovery plans.

"I think when you look at it, it's a big price tag," Tino Villaluz, Swinomish wildlife program manager, said to the council committee last month. "There's a lot of glamorous numbers in there that aren't glamorous at all. They are a fragment of the representation of the extraction that's happened over the last 100 years, and represent a level of accountability."

The Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe has sued the city over its dam operations, including over claims the utility was "green" and salmon-friendly.

This agreement, Sauk-Suiattle Chair Nino Maltos II said, "solidifies the city of Seattle's dedication to giving back to the river while making amends for years of power generation."

The dams cut off about 40% of the Skagit River watershed for salmon and oceangoing trout, isolating miles of cold-water habitat, which is becoming both more important and more scarce amid climate change. And in the Skagit delta, more than 80% of the estuarine habitats used by juvenile Chinook have been lost to human development, according to the state.

Bull trout, steelhead and Puget Sound Chinook salmon have been newly listed as threatened species since the last license for the dams was granted in 1995. Southern resident orcas, who rely on Chinook, were listed as endangered in 2005.

"We think seven generations ahead, and that's what we want to protect," Swinomish Chair Steve Edwards told the council committee. "By having this agreement in place, I know there's a future."

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This story was originally published April 7, 2026 at 11:42 PM.