More spill could lead to increased power costs, blackouts

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 6, 2026

The public power business is made up of a bunch of industry terms and acronyms that are probably not familiar to our customers. BPA, WPUDA, resource adequacy, and load growth are a few that jump to mind.

We use them all the time and treat them as part of the everyday vocabulary, even if it’s not clear to everyone what they mean or why they are important.

But there is one word that you are going to hear a lot about in the coming months that I think we should talk about more: spill.

In the power world, that’s not accidentally tipping over a glass of water or kicking over a bucket of water. Spill is the practice of letting water bypass the turbines at hydroelectric dams and pour over spillways to continue the journey downriver to the ocean. The reason you will be hearing more about it this year is because on Feb. 25, dam operators were instructed by the United States District Court to increase spill as a way to help salmon and steelhead fry as they make their way to the sea.

While many in the environmental community celebrated this order as a step to help endangered fish runs, myself and others in the energy industry have serious concerns. More water over the spillways means less energy being generated.

Less energy means greater demand for a smaller product and that means increases in costs. In Grays Harbor, your PUD has managed to avoid a rate increase four times in the last five years by successfully navigating an ever-changing power market.

Our contract with the Bonneville Power Administration puts us in a good position to keep costs as low as practical. But if Bonneville has less power to sell and the demand for power continues to increase, they will be forced to increase costs to make up the difference.

That means more money from utilities and their customers.

I think this is just the latest in a series of attacks on the hydroelectric system that has made Washington and the Northwest what it is today. It could not come at a worse time. A study released last month by Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3) found that if energy demand continues as it is, the Northwest could see a gap between energy used and energy generated of nine gigawatts by 2030. To put that into context, Washington uses an average of 10 gigawatts each day.

That is a serious problem.

We all want to see healthy fish runs, but this is not the way to do it. We need more energy, not less and to cut back on the amount produced on the Columbia and Snake rivers is a big step backwards that could lead to blackouts and higher energy costs.