The biggest dam removal project in American history is back on track, following an agreement last week to move ahead with demolition of four dams on the Klamath River in southern Oregon and Northern California. By securing additional state funds to guarantee the project, the agreement clears a financial logjam that has long delayed the world’s most ambitious salmon habitat restoration program.
The deal is a major victory for environmentalists, anglers, river-runners, and especially the Yurok and Kuruk tribes, whose culture and sustenance depend on the once-abundant salmon runs that the dams have all but annihilated over the last century.
“This dam removal is more than just a concrete project coming down. It’s a new day and a new era,” Yurok Tribe chairman Joseph James said. “Our way of life will thrive with these dams being out.”
The tribes have been at the forefront of a decades-long dam removal fight, leading a coalition that also includes environmental advocates, outdoor recreation groups, and the commercial fishing industry. An agreement to remove the dams was reached in 2010, but has stalled repeatedly over the sticky issue of who will pay for the removal. The most recent hitch came in July, when federal regulators questioned whether the nonprofit Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), which was formed to oversee the demolition and restoration program, could handle potential cost overruns.
The new plan adds a $45 million reserve to the project’s $450 budget, with the additional funds provided evenly by Oregon, California, and PacificCorp, the utility that owns the dams. If costs outrun the contingency fund, California and Oregon taxpayers, and PacificCorp will be on the hook. PacificCorp is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s investment company, Berkshire Hathaway.
Ward’s Canyon of the Klamath during a flow study to identify flows ideal for whitewater recreation. Cloudstreetpilot/American Whitewater
The plan still must receive Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval. If the agency signs off as expected, demolition could begin in 2023. That timeline may sound familiar. When I rafted the Klamath with my family in 2018, the work was expected to begin in three years, thanks to a new agreement that had recently been signed. Now we have another new agreement, and dam removal is supposed to start in . . . three years.
The dams have been remarkably persistent considering they do little good for anyone. Built between 1908 and 1962, the four PacifiCorp dams are not designed for flood control or irrigation, and account for only 2 percent of PacifiCorp’s power generation capacity. They cut off hundreds of miles of salmon habitat on the Upper Klamath, which was once the third most productive salmon river on the West Coast. Toxic algae grows in the reservoirs behind the dams each summer, impacting fish populations and making the river hazardous for swimmers and even dogs.
Still, just talk of removing the dams has caused lakeside property values to plummet by half, provoking widespread opposition to the project from local people and county governments. Some farmers far upstream also have opposed the plan. Though two Klamath dams they rely on for irrigation are not slated for removal, they worry that any dam removal sets a precedent that could affect their livelihood.
Removing the dams would be a boon to recreational users, including anglers and boaters. The Lower Klamath below Happy Camp, Calif., supports a vibrant rafting industry, and the 35-mile stretch above it is one of the best multi-day floats in the West for young families. Farther upstream, dam removal would restore regular flows to Class III and IV canyons that have rarely run since the dams went in decades ago.
The Copco 2 dam on the Klamath River is one of four on the river slated for removal. Thomas O’Keefe/American Whitewater
The most profound benefit, if the tribes, environmentalists and fisheries scientists are right, will be the return of the river’s life-giving salmon runs. Removal of the Klamath dams is the first step in the most ambitious salmon restoration effort in history. Paradoxically, that process will likely start with further stress on fish populations, as some 30 million cubic yards of sediment trapped behind the dams flushes downriver. The silt, sand and gravel eventually will provide new breeding habitat for returning salmon and steelhead, but first it will create turbid conditions.
Dam removal critics say the sediments could take decades to clear. Proponents believe most of it will wash out in the first high-water season. That’s what happened https://therevelator.org/elwha-dam-removal/ after a 108-foot-high dam was removed from the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic peninsula in 2012. Sediment from the reservoir added miles of beach to the river’s delta, and spawning salmon were spotted upstream of the dam site weeks after demolition. Since then, more than 1,700 dams have been dismantled all over the United States. If the Klamath River project goes forward it will be the largest by far.
There’s no certainty in river restoration, but the science and limited experience with dam removal suggest the Klamath and its salmon populations can regain their pre-dam health, and that they can do so over the course of years rather than decades. For Chook-Chook Hillman, a Karuk tribal member fighting for dam removal, the question goes beyond science. It’s a matter of faith.
“If you provide a good place for salmon,” he said, “they’ll always come home.”
Top photo: Tony Webster
Removing dams and hydroelectric capacity is counter productive , if you divide the cost versus saving a few fish ?This is radical leftist ideology at work .
Gods wildlife will all come home if protected and respected.
Most of these current projects are on dams with zero or little energy output and/or poor maintenance history that makes them dangerous to keep up. That being said dams emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide by flooding vast areas of organic material that is then decomposed by anaerobic bacteria. There is a reason most states don’t allow hydropower over 5 MW to count towards renewable energy targets. Hydropower is extremely shortsighted, I agree that we shouldn’t be taking enough away that we would have to then build fossil fuel-based units as a replacement but strategically dismantling the worst dam projects is long overdue.
Nonsense.
Radical leftist ideology? You’d no doubt say the same thing if the proposal was to dam the rivers, generating hydro power (which, being renewable & CO2 free, is, of course leftist!) at the cost of a prime fishing run.
They said in the article that the dam doesn’t even produce much electricity and regardless it is out of code and has been for some time; its options are to either build a salmon ladder (even more expensive) or to take it down and let “Some fish” repopulate their traditional breeding grounds, which with any hope will improve conditions exponentially. We’re talking a huge amount of salmon here, which traditionally fed all the way down the West Coast.
The dams proposed in the removal only provide 2% of the utilities power generation & zero agricultural irrigation; removing them will restore & create a billion dollar recreational & commercial fishery. Duh.
I hope their power jumps another .20 kwh and blackouts then let them see if it was worth it. They better leave the snake alone.
Yay!! Now onto removing the dams on the Snake River in Washington…. I miss my Idaho Steelhead.
If you want the salmon to return you have to remove the nets, if the salmon can’t reach the dams the dam isn’t the only problem. Many rivers don’t have dams and salmon are still disappearing but they do have nets in them, this needs to be a give give.
These 4 dams are not serving a purpose. Get rid of them. In previous dam removal projects the outcomes have been overwhelming positive. Big money to remove yes. However the costs have been accounted for with willing partnerships.
That would be amazing !
Radical lefitist ideology??? Sounds like radical stick in the mud right wing complaining!!! These projects are always studied and rich with reasons of how and why they are beneficial. What can possibly be wrong with restoration.
Thank you! Very well said. You held your temper and stated the facts much better than I did. I think once this project is completed it is going to be amazing!
Why does everything have to be left or right? Can it not just be product uninformed or misinformed people. Political associations are not universally applicable, nor are their ideologies.
But also, remove the bloody dam(s)! Look at the Elwah in Washington! That area is thriving after the dam removal! Let nature be nature.
I hear people cry about CO2, they must have slept through Biology class. News flash!!! CO2 is part of the food chain. With out CO2 plants won’t grow. You won’t eat.
To clarify how photosynthesis works:
CO2 (a gas) isn’t part of the food chain, carbon (elemental C) is. Just like any element it’s cycled through different pathways in different forms. Plants take in CO2 and use water and light energy to break it down into oxygen (what we breathe), glucose (their food source) and more water.
So yes, plants need carbon dioxide to grow, but the CO2 gas added to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and human use (now over 410 ppm) does not benefit plants, they have enough from natural processes and background atmosphere concentrations as it is.
For example the year 1000 (the Middle Ages) had CO2 concentrations at 280 ppm and plants were doing just fine and the world had plenty of food!
For example the year 1000 and you know this how? Don’t tell me you believe everything someone tells you because it not a FACT.
From multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies and global agency reports. This isn’t one group stating this, it’s a collective agreement based on experiments and data.
We actually know CO2 atmospheric concentrations going back 800,000 years. Ice cores from the Antarctic allow use see to a “snapshot” of what the atmosphere looked like back then since air from that time is trapped and frozen. Scientists extract the air and analyze the CO2 concentration.
Today we have continuous atmospheric monitoring stations but multiple studies have all shown the same trend and concentrations from these cores. Below are a few sources to explain the process and data.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL061957
https://www.co2levels.org/
Dumbasses rejoice when the dams come down, but here in Washington state, we have to build shitty wind turbines to send electricity to the greedy Californians.
With the logging of Tongass old growth and the selling of drilling rights in the ANWR, it’s finally nice to get some good news on the environment front. It’s crazy to leave an uneconomic dam in place, like the Elwha too, when it can be removed and restore a massive salmon run that’ll provide many many jobs and some nice wild salmon to eat.