OPINION: Willamette Falls is worth fighting for

Published 5:00 am Thursday, January 16, 2025

To stand near Willamette Falls is to stand in the presence of greatness. As many know, experiencing the roar of the water, the mist falling on your face and the sheer magnitude of the falls is something that stays with you for a lifetime.

It’s certainly had that impact on me. In 2021, I became a ceremonial fisher for my Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. I was the Tribe’s first female ceremonial fisher, but I am also part of a proud team that returns to Willamette Falls each year to harvest 15 ceremonial salmon for our community.

Words cannot express how my heart feels every time I step out onto our fishing platform for our community. Right now, however, my heart is broken over what Portland General Electric is threatening to take from Grand Ronde, Oregonians and everyone who knows how special Willamette Falls is.

Since 2022, PGE has been working to pull off one of the greatest heists of all time: stealing Willamette Falls from Oregon’s citizens by condemning land that provides access to the falls. What is land condemnation? In theory, it’s the taking of land for the good of the public. But what PGE is doing at Willamette Falls is nothing but a land grab.

This private, for-profit energy company worth hundreds of millions of dollars wants us to believe it is in our best interest to remove this land from the public trust, denying access to Willamette Falls and placing it under corporate ownership and control. What’s more frustrating: PGE is forcing its customers, myself included, to pay for this costly and tone-deaf scheme through double-digit rate increases and higher electricity bills.

At a hearing on Dec. 4 at the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, I sat in disbelief as lawyers for PGE argued a false narrative around Grand Ronde wanting exclusive access to the falls. I was appalled to hear their lawyers dismiss Willamette Falls as nothing more than “this rock area in the middle of the river.” Appalled is actually an understatement.

But what is Willamette Falls to Oregonians like me? Willamette Falls is the second largest waterfall by volume in the United States and an amazing natural icon that has helped define our state. It’s where Lewis and Clark met the Clowwewalla (Willamette band of Tumwaters) and the Kosh-huk-shix Village of Clackamas people. Its waters powered Oregon’s earliest economies and greeted families hoping for a better life at the end of the Oregon Trail.

But not everyone sees it that way. To PGE, this “rock area in the middle of the river” is worth a mere $150,000.

Unfortunately, this significance seems to be lost on a lot of people because at the same hearing, the state of Oregon made it clear that it is not interested in fighting to keep this public treasure. Grand Ronde stood alone in its legal defense, fighting to maintain public and tribal access to the falls. The state seems more than willing to hand over Willamette Falls to PGE without regard for the devastating loss to Oregon’s citizens.

The state needs to step up to protect Willamette Falls from corporate greed, not offer it up for pennies. What’s next, Oregon? Our public beaches? Haystack Rock? The Painted Hills?

If PGE is successful, not only will the Tribe’s access to our ceremonial fishing platform be blocked and a culturally important tradition ended, but access for everyone, from kayakers who paddle up to the falls to the lamprey fishers and even other Tribes, will be cut off. One of Oregon’s true natural wonders will no longer be Oregon’s.

While losing the right to fish for ceremonial salmon at Willamette Falls would be a huge personal and cultural loss, the larger tragedy is that such a storied part of Oregon’s history and landscape could end up in the hands of the very same for-profit company that has played a huge role in nearly destroying it.

Willamette Falls is an Oregon gem. It deserves to be protected and revered. And it belongs to all of us who know what its true value really is: priceless.