Ice Harbor
Ice Harbor Dam is a 423 MW conventional hydroelectric plant on the Snake River in Walla Walla County, Washington, with four operating generating units brought online between 1962 and 1976. It is the lowest (most downstream) of four federal dams on the lower Snake River and is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Walla Walla District, part of the Corps' Northwestern Division. Power from the plant is marketed by the Bonneville Power Administration and settles at BPA price nodes near the dam. The dam has no scheduled retirement under EIA-860, but it remains the subject of a decades-long federal fish-recovery dispute over whether the four lower Snake River dams should be breached to aid endangered salmon and steelhead runs. A 2020 federal Record of Decision kept all four dams in place, and as of 2026 litigation over that decision is active, with a March 2026 court order preserving current spill and reservoir operations while the case proceeds; no binding order has set a closure date for Ice Harbor. Various non-binding proposals, including a 2026 tribal letter calling for removal of Ice Harbor in 2031, describe possible future breaching, but Congress alone can authorize dam removal and none has been enacted.