… The Skagit River dams, the first of which was completed in 1926, have enabled Seattle’s citizen-owned utility to brag that it “has delivered carbon-free hydropower for over 100 years.” … City Light has quietly insisted that the upper Skagit—before the dams were built—was too swift and gnarly for salmon. … This fishy denial—long challenged by biological evidence, Indigenous oral history and investigative reports on local television and in online publications—is now biting the utility and its half-million ratepayers in their pocketbooks. … Mayor Katie B. Wilson signed a settlement Tuesday that authorizes what a City Light manager says is by far the largest payout in American history from a utility to Indigenous tribes as part of a dam relicensing.