A decades-long effort to remove four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River may soon come to fruition.
In the Klamath Basin, salmon face an increasingly perilous journey to their spawning grounds. Extreme drought, low water levels, deadly parasites and algae plague the river. Although the significant barrier posed by the dams may soon be gone, fierce competition over water in the Klamath Basin will remain an ongoing challenge.
Before colonization, hydroelectric dams, ranching, farming and the timber industry began extracting resources from in and around the Klamath River, the waterway supported a diverse ecosystem and thriving populations of native fish species, living in harmony with the tribes that have called the Klamath Basin their home for thousands of years.
Today, a variety of stakeholders, including tribal nations, farmers and commercial fishermen, rely on the Klamath River, which flows 257 miles through Southern Oregon and Northern California, as a resource.
The difficulties of competing interests in the Klamath Basin are compounded and complicated by worsening climate change and broken promises, according to tribal officials.
Coho, Chinook and steelhead salmon populate the Klamath River, returning from the ocean to spawn in bi-annual salmon runs in the spring and fall.
Undamming the Klamath
After more than a decade of studies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, released a Final Environmental Impact Statement recommending the removal of the four lowermost dams on the Klamath River on Aug. 22. FERC is expected to release its final approval for the dam removals as soon as this fall.
Supporters call the likely removal of the dams “the biggest river restoration project in history.”
For decades, a diverse coalition of groups led by tribal nations, and more recently including environmentalists and commercial fishermen, united under the cause of removing the four lowermost hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River to restore salmon’s access to cold water habitat further upriver.
A lengthy review process for the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, the official name for the dam removal project, began in 2010 with impact and environmental studies. After more than a decade of studies, FERC issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement in February before issuing its final FEIS in August, paving the way for the federal commission to take its final step in the review process by issuing a license surrender order to the dam operator.
Energy company PacifiCorp owns the dams, which were constructed by defunct power companies now under PacifiCorp ownership, between 1903 and 1962. Three of the dams are located in California, and the other is located in Oregon. The affected dams are the Iron Gate, Copco I & II and J.C. Boyle dams, which comprise the Lower Klamath Project.
After murkiness regarding its position in 2020, PacifiCorp said it supports dam removal.
“PacifiCorp appreciates the diligent and timely review of the Klamath dam removal project by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff and looks forward to continuing our collaborative work with stakeholders to achieve the balanced customer outcome represented by the Klamath settlement,” Stefan Bird, president and CEO of Pacific Power, PacifiCorp's parent company, told the Ashland Chronicle in August.
The dams block salmon’s ability to access more than 400 miles of habitat in the Klamath River and its tributaries.
Supporters of the Undam The Klamath movement aim to restore the Klamath’s fish habitat and populations by removing the hydroelectric dams that choke the river’s flow, making salmon migration difficult and resulting in the proliferation of deadly algae blooms and parasites like Ceratanova Shasta, which killed thousands of salmon in recent years.
For several tribal nations located in the Klamath River Basin, the threat to salmon is existential. The Karuk and Yurok tribes, located in the Klamath Basin, are salmon people, meaning salmon are inextricably linked to their culture and ability to thrive as a people. The Hoopa Valley Tribe, located nearby, also relies on salmon from the Klamath watershed.
Members of these tribes practice sustenance fishing in the Klamath River and its tributaries, which used to be one of the world’s most productive fisheries. As salmon numbers dwindle, it becomes increasingly difficult for tribal members to fish salmon in appreciable numbers.
The dams cause a host of problems for the health of the river and the fish inside it, which also includes salmon as well as C’waam and the Koptu, culturally sacred suckerfish to the Klamath Tribes (Klamath, Modoc, Yahooskin).
The dams drastically restrict the amount of water flowing in the Klamath, resulting in higher water temperatures that are the ideal conditions for toxic algae to proliferate. The concentration of toxic algae in the water is often high enough to be fatal to fish.
Low water levels and high temperatures in the river not only increase the risk of toxic algae, but also increase stress on the salmon, causing them to congregate together in deeper pockets along the river, where deadly parasites like Ceratanova Shasta spread rapidly, killing more fish.
“The best prevention is letting the river act like a river, meaning removing dams, implementing natural flow variability and taking a hard look at hatchery practices.”
– Grant Johnson, water quality program manager for the Karuk Tribe
Removing the dams will unleash cold water from upriver, improving fish habitat by decreasing the water temperature, flushing out algae and parasitic worms. By creating a better habitat for salmon, more would survive the long journey back to their spawning grounds and the number of juvenile salmon, or fry, would increase, stabilizing and ultimately increasing the salmon population.
2022 was a particularly trying year for salmon populations. In addition to an ongoing drought plaguing the region, a major fish kill hit the river as the fall Chinook salmon run began.
In August, the McKinney wildfire raged near the Oregon-California border. Thunderstorms over the burned area caused massive landslides, causing a cascade of debris to fill the river, choking the life inside of it. The landslide affected a 50-mile section of the river, below its lowermost dam, between Humbug and Vesa creeks, according to High Country News. The fish affected included salmon, suckerfish and other fish species.
The fish kill occurred just weeks before multiple irrigation districts responsible for allocating water to farmers along the Klamath River defied federal regulators by releasing water that had been reserved for the protection of endangered fish in the Klamath Basin, compounding difficulties for the beleaguered species.
Imbalance
Grant Johnson is the water quality program manager for the Karuk Tribe. Johnson says the river has always contained Ceratanova Shasta, but alterations to the river, such as the addition of dams, has thrown the river out of balance.
“The best prevention is letting the river act like a river, meaning removing dams, implementing natural flow variability and taking a hard look at hatchery practices,” Johnson said.
The dam removal would create a massive flow of sediment, likely at fatal levels for fish downriver, so supporters say the ideal conditions for the dam removal would be to remove all four dams at once, timed strategically to occur when the majority of the salmon population is in the ocean. This would not eliminate all fish death but would minimize the impacts on the already-fragile salmon populations.
Cascading effects
Salmon are a keystone species in the environment, and more than 100 other organisms depend on them to survive. The collapse of the salmon populations in the Klamath Basin would be catastrophic for the ecosystem and for communities that rely on the fish.
That collapse is already underway. Although tribes called for the removal of the Klamath dams for decades, worsening climate change and extreme drought have intensified the river’s problems.
The poor conditions already all but eliminated the spring run of Chinook salmon, once the basin’s most productive. Fall salmon populations drastically decreased, as well, despite supplementation from hatchery fish.
Klamath River Coho salmon are listed as threatened under both the federal and California Endangered Species Acts. In 2021, Klamath-Trinity Spring Chinook salmon were added to California’s list of endangered species after a petition by the Karuk Tribe.
A common cause
Tribes and commercial fishermen have historically had a complicated relationship, but more recently, united under a common cause – to get rid of dams.
Glen Spain, Northwest regional director and legal counsel for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association, says the continued survival of salmon is important to fishermen’s livelihoods and communities that rely on the salmon fishery for income.
The size of the commercial salmon fishery is 80% smaller than it was 50 years ago and most fishermen haven’t found another fishery to sustain themselves, meaning they’ve left the industry permanently, according to Spain.
The hydroelectric dams are an outdated technology providing little benefit to anyone. Three of the dams targeted for removal are actually losing money and providing minimal electricity, according to the Bend Bulletin. The other is barely turning a profit.
“So what (tribes) get is promises and a lot of dead fish,” Spain said. “And what (fishermen) get is promises and very few fish coming out of the rivers.”
Spain said one of the governing principles of commercial fishing is to maintain a sustainable fishery, which includes “weak stock management,” meaning fishermen avoid fishing species that do not have a healthy, sustainable population.
As the Klamath salmon fisheries grow weaker, it severely limits fishermen’s ability to sustainably harvest from salmon populations off of the Pacific Northwestern coasts due to the chance of catching fish from the Klamath River, where salmon travel both north and south once they exit into the ocean.
(Photo by Melanie Henshaw)
The quibbling over dam removal has dragged for over a decade as salmon populations rapidly dwindle.
Although the effort to remove the dams cleared significant hurdles, especially given the FERC’s approval on Aug. 22, final approval has yet to be given. Supporters are eyeing 2024 for the $500 million dollar project to get underway.
Final approval of the dam removal is highly-anticipated by supporters of the movement, like Mark Sherwood, executive director of the Native Fish Society, a pro-fish group based in Oregon City that supports fish habitat restoration, including the Klamath dam removal, and provides education about native fish species in the Pacific Northwest.
“It's probably the single most hopeful, exciting, inspiring thing that's happening, definitely in the Pacific Northwest, for rivers and fish — and I have to say nationally, I have to say it will be the biggest river restoration in history,” Sherwood said.
Sherwood said removing the dams would have immense benefits for native fish populations, water quality and the communities that rely on the health of the river.
Competing interests
2022 has been yet another contentious year fraught with conflict over who should receive water allocations in the drought-stricken region of Klamath Basin, with the consequences of the water shortage only intensified due to climate-related disasters.
The Klamath River Basin is long haunted by severe drought. The federal Bureau of Reclamation manages the Klamath Project, which is responsible for water irrigation allocations for 240,000 acres of farmland near the Klamath River.
The project also has obligations under the Endangered Species Act to set minimum water levels for the Upper Klamath Lake, which is home to two species of critically endangered suckerfish as well as the federally threatened Coho salmon farther downriver.
The Klamath Tribes are the senior water rights holders in the Klamath Basin, meaning their water needs supersede those of other stakeholders in the watershed, such as farmers. The Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribes also have federal fishing rights on the river.
For the Klamath Tribes, the preservation of two species of native suckerfish, the C'waam and the Koptu — which are considered sacred, intertwined with their culture and ability to thrive — is essential. The fish, once a food staple for the tribes, can only be found in the Klamath Basin and are critically endangered.
In the 20th century, the federal government monetarily incentivized farmers to occupy the region, who now graze livestock and grow a variety of crops, including alfalfa, onions and potatoes.
In May, the Klamath Tribes sued the federal government, saying any amount of water released from the Upper Klamath Lake would be detrimental to the survival of the C’waam and Koptu.
The Klamath Tribes warn of the “ecological collapse” of their people should the critically endangered C’waam and Koptu go extinct, which they say is “imminent.”
When the Bureau of Reclamation announced how much water it would allocate to farmers over the summer, farmers balked, saying the survival of their crops was unfeasible given the amount of water allocated was less than 15% of what they asked for.
On Aug. 15, Bureau of Reclamation officials announced it was out of the water to allocate to farmers. Three days later, on Aug. 18, project officials announced it would halt allocations to farmers. The Klamath Irrigation District, or KID, initially refused to comply, illegally diverting water from the river to distribute water to farmers in their districts until the evening of Aug. 23.
“I am not doing my duty if I just comply because I do not have a legal justification to deny the people I serve their property,” Gene Souza, KID’s district manager, told the Capital Press Aug. 24.
Tribal officials were furious.
“After last week’s fish kill, every juvenile salmon in the Klamath Basin must be protected to ensure future runs,” the Karuk and Yurok tribes said in an Aug. 23 press release. “We are horrified, we are angry, and we expect accountability.”
The federal government threatened to withhold $20 million dollars in federal funds from the district if it did not comply with the order to stop releasing water.
KID officials announced later the same day, Aug. 24, that they would comply with the order to stop water allocations, saying they were in a “bad spot.”
“(Our board’s) desire to do what’s right for our community put us in a really bad spot,” Souza told the Oregonian Aug. 24. “There was no good decision.”
Shortly after KID announced it would comply with the federal government, the Klamath Tribes released a statement regarding the water diversion, pointing out it was KID’s second illegal diversion in six months.
“The Klamath Tribes urges KID leadership to act responsibly. Tensions are already high in our community,” tribal officials said. “Further treaty violations will put all of our communities at risk.”
Tribal leaders highlighted the fact that despite federal law mandating minimum levels to protect the C’waam and Koptu, the levels “remain unmet year after year.”
“Specifically, and tragically, the minimum levels necessary for spawning were blatantly disregarded for the last three years,” Klamath Tribal officials said.
Officials and agricultural groups have repeatedly run afoul of federal regulations and tribal interests in recent years, at times with the support of far-right extremist groups.
For the past two years, Karuk tribal officials called for flushing flows, which are strategically timed releases of water, to be released from the Upper Klamath Basin to flush out parasites and other bacteria from the river to improve the chances of survival for salmon.
However, given the extreme drought and low water levels, no flushing flows were released in order to meet the needs of the endangered suckerfish.
In 2021, far-right group People’s Rights, created by Ammon Bundy — the infamous cattle rancher who, along with his supporters, committed an illegal, armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016 — set up a camp near the headgates of the Klamath River. The group repeatedly threatened to forcibly open the headgates to the river to allow water to flow to the region’s farmers.
Ultimately, no such forcible opening occurred, but the demonstration by People’s Rights Oregon was reminiscent of behaviors that have flared throughout the ongoing conflict between tribes and farmers over water, where groups associated with farmers resort to illegal diversions, threats, intimidating and racist behavior against Native peoples in the region stretching back decades.
Given the region’s seemingly perpetual drought and other ongoing struggles facing native fish that call the Klamath River their home, future conflict over water allocations in the parched basin is almost guaranteed.
The compounding effects of climate change, like extreme drought and increasingly severe wildfires, and the likely consequences of worsening conditions, such as increased competition for and conflict over natural resources, mean the Basin’s troubles are far from over. But to the tribes who call the region home and rely on its bounty for their continued survival, the fight to protect the Klamath Basin is existential.
Still, excitement remains for those who see the dam removals as a sign of hope for the Klamath River’s health.
“The Klamath River is absolutely remarkable, it's such an incredible place to go to visit,” Sherwood of Native Fish Society said. “It would mean so much for so many fish species, it would mean so much for people. I hope I capture it well enough, it's deeply deeply meaningful for folks who are seeking a future healthy river and abundant wild fish, and thriving communities.”
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