Our position on the big, firm-power dams is that you don't have to choose between clean energy and salmon — you can engineer the fish through. It's easy to say. The Deschutes is where somebody actually did it.
Three hydro dams had blocked salmon and steelhead from the upper Deschutes in central Oregon for more than fifty years. The owners didn't tear them out. They built a way through — and in 2024–25, the fish came back above the dams in the biggest numbers since the 1960s.
The first attempt at passage here failed back in the 1960s, and everyone assumed the upper river was simply lost. The problem was subtle: the reservoir's currents disoriented young fish heading downstream, so they couldn't find their way out. The solution was an engineering feat.
The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Portland General Electric spent more than $100 million on a Selective Water Withdrawal tower in the reservoir, completed in 2009. It creates a surface current that guides juvenile fish to a collection point, and blends water from different depths to send the right temperature downstream. It solved the exact problem that had killed the first attempt — without shutting off the power.
Reintroduction began in 2010. It was a long, hard road — and then it broke through.
In the 2024–25 run, more than 950 adult steelhead passed above the dam complex — essentially hitting the recovery model's long-standing target.
That was roughly six times the numbers of recent years — a genuine breakthrough after more than a decade of hard, uncertain work.
It's the strongest return of steelhead to the upper Deschutes since the dams first cut the fish off, more than half a century ago.
This is the whole "keep the dams, move the fish" argument, made real. Instead of demolishing three dams and forfeiting their clean, dependable power, the owners engineered passage and reintroduced the fish above them — and got salmon and steelhead back into habitat that had been closed for fifty years. Clean energy and fish, exactly as we say it can be done.
Put it beside the removals on this site and the picture is complete: where a dam is old, powerless, and impassable, take it out; where it's firm clean power, engineer the passage and keep it. The Deschutes is the proof that the second half of that sentence isn't wishful thinking. See the rest of the record, or get involved.
This was not a quick win. For most of the fifteen years since the tower went in, returns were low and the effort was heavily criticized — there were real, documented struggles with downstream water quality and with the efficiency of collecting the young fish, and the 2024–25 surge was helped along by favorable ocean conditions, not the engineering alone. Anyone who tells you engineered passage is easy or instant is overselling it.
But it got there. A river written off as lost in the 1960s is now carrying its best steelhead run in sixty years, with the power still on. Hard-won and imperfect beats demolished-and-gone.
The figures on this page are drawn from public, authoritative records:
Questions about our facts and figures? Contact us.