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.
This year marks 25 years of victories powered by work in solidarity with Tribes and communities. I am proud to work for a nonprofit that punches above its weight, tackles complex challenges with optimism and hope, and makes a difference.
At our 25th Anniversary Celebration, Yakama Nation Tribal Councilman Jeremy Takala reflected, “Our shared victories remind us that when we unite, we can move mountains—or in our case, move agencies and systems—to do what’s right for the river.” In 2025, our team of community organizers, attorneys, and policy advocates rose to the critical times we are living through to make an impact. We advanced:
- Lawsuits to stop federal environmental rollbacks and pollution from flowing into the Columbia and its tributaries.
- Creative strategies to secure laws and policies that protect everyone who relies on the Columbia and locally caught fish.
- Work in solidarity with Tribes who are fighting for salmon recovery and Hanford Nuclear Site cleanup.
- Strategic litigation and community organizing to protect our climate from refineries and dirty-energy infrastructure.
- Environmental education to inspire the next generation of river advocates.
We also celebrated many inspiring victories. Case in point: We worked with our allies to stop a proposed oil-by-rail expansion. When Tristar quietly filed paperwork to expand its Vancouver, Wash., facility, we explained the risks; how the permitting process works; and legal arguments to stop the proposal. And we teamed with Advocates for a Cleaner Environment to turn out residents to hearings. We won! Instead of letting fossil fuel expansion slip through unnoticed, we made sure the public interest came first.
In 2025, we launched new advocacy efforts, including a partnership with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission to tackle the prolific expansion of data centers and their voracious appetite for energy and water. We also raised the alarm about potential impacts of an underwater transmission line in the Columbia. Together, we will protect the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest.
Columbia Riverkeeper is powered by people with a shared passion for clean water, climate action, and a river that unites us. Your support empowers all of us to keep up the momentum.
Warmly,
Lauren Goldberg, Executive Director
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
Prefer to read the PDF?
