Art Credit: Sue Sutherland
Columbia Riverkeeper 2025 Annual Report
Columbia Riverkeeper’s successful formula: combine strategic legal advocacy with community organizing and creative communications. We work in solidarity with Tribes, partner with people who live and work along the Columbia, and celebrate the impact of people coming to together to fight for what they love. Here are a few of the year’s highlights by the numbers.
Climate & Energy
6 lawsuits advanced to protect our climate and reduce air pollution, including legal challenges to NEXT Energy’s diesel refinery and the GTN Xpress pipeline expansion
2000+ Columbia Riverkeeper members and supporters who urged the Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality to reject an air pollution permit for the Zenith Energy facility in Portland, OR
13 proposed bills defeated in the Oregon Legislature that would have paved the way for new nuclear energy
Clean Water
5 Clean Water Act legal actions brought or settled in 2025, all with the goal of reducing harmful pollution in the Columbia and its tributaries
70,000+ people who watched our videos in Spanish or English about the fish advisories at Bonneville Dam and how to advocate for cleanup
$425,000 awarded to Tribes and nonprofit organizations as a result of our Clean Water Act enforcement actions
Science & Education
250 water quality samples collected at Columbia River beaches
1500+ pounds of garbage volunteers collected at community cleanup events along the Columbia
800+ kids and young adults who experienced bilingual (English and Spanish) environmental education through Columbia Riverkeeper’s outreach program
60+ events Columbia Riverkeeper hosted or partnered in to inspire people in Columbia River communities to speak up for clean water, salmon, and our climate
Clean Up Hanford
800+ Columbia Riverkeeper members who reminded the U.S. Dept. of Energy that leaked high level waste is still high level waste
70+ people who gathered on the Yakama Nation Reservation to remember the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the connection to the Hanford Nuclear Site
40+ pages of detailed technical comments submitted by Columbia Riverkeeper on the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s proposed plans for remediation of the 324 Building, located less than 1,000 feet from the Columbia River
Salmon Recovery
42,780 artificial barriers to fish migration that remain subject to Oregon’s long-standing requirement that barriers, like dams, be upgraded to allow fish to swim freely past. A court upheld Columbia Riverkeeper’s challenge to a new rule that would have made it easier for dam operators to trap salmon and load them into trucks for transport around dams—a process with much lower survival rates.
2,225 Columbia Riverkeeper members who told their senators and representatives to oppose laws that would undermine salmon recovery, energy modernization, commitments to Northwest Tribes, and progress towards undamming the Lower Snake River
15 nonprofit organizations that joined Columbia Riverkeeper’s comments opposing the “low-impact” certification of Wells Dam on the Columbia River (which harms migrating salmon and steelhead and drowns 25 miles of fall Chinook spawning habitat), resulting in the dam operator dropping the proposal
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