Conflicting interests in ongoing Klamath Basin water crisis force difficult choices
In 2023, the Klamath Basin enters a new era as the long-awaited removal of several hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River begins.
As dam removal begins, the region faces a years-long drought exacerbating declining native fish populations. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, or BOR, which allocates Klamath Basin water, must again try meeting regional stakeholders’ water demands with an insufficient supply, while local Indigenous communities relying on the fish say the losses have devastating effects.
Over a century of drastic alterations to the Klamath Basin, particularly wetland draining, hydroelectric dams and climate change, caused significant damage to the region’s animal populations and ecosystem.
As Street Roots reported in November 2022, removing the Klamath dams would release cold water from upriver, improving water conditions and restoring salmon’s access to nearly 400 miles of habitat.
The year ahead
2023 poses both opportunities and challenges for water users in the Klamath Basin.
In November, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, approved the removal of the four lowermost dams along the Klamath River; one located in Southern Oregon, and the other three located in Northern California.
Native nations long called for dam removal in the name of fish and environmental protection, later joined by environmentalists and other groups advocating for dam removal to aid struggling salmon populations.
The response to FERC’s decision has been overwhelmingly positive.
On Dec. 8, 2022, Yurok Tribal Chairman Joseph L. James, Karuk Chairman Russell “Buster” Attebery, Klamath Tribes Councilwoman Natalie Ball, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, then-Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland celebrated FERC’s decision at the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery.
NEWS: Dams, drought and survival in the Klamath Basin
“Today’s celebration was well earned by the thousands of people who fought for clean water, healthy fisheries, and environmental justice for Klamath River communities,” Attebery said at the celebration. “I am grateful to everyone, from the youth to the elders, Governors Newsom and Brown, and the team from PacifiCorp who made this possible.”
At the gathering, Haaland announced $5.8 million in BOR Native American Affairs Technical Assistance to Tribes Program funding for four tribal water projects. The funds will help mitigate ongoing drought effects, restore aquatic ecosystems and improve habitat resilience.
Workers will first remove the Copco II dam, located in Northern California. Before the dam comes down, workers will make a series of bridge and road improvements to accommodate heavy equipment needed to begin dam removal. After the necessary preparations are complete, Copco II could come down as soon as this summer.
Workers will remove the remaining three dams — the J.C. Boyle Dam, located in Southern Oregon, and the Copco I and Iron Gate dams, located in Northern California — by the end of 2024.
Grant Johnson, water quality program manager for the Karuk Tribe, told Street Roots the ball is rolling on dam removal, with some work beginning soon.
Johnson confirmed after Copco II's removal this summer, crews will begin deconstruction and reservoir drawdown on the other three dams in early 2024, which he says will last the entire year. The last dam to be removed will be the Iron Gate Dam due to its size.
Short-term vs. long-term
As Street Roots reported last November, dam removal will flush sediment downriver, which could be at fatal levels for fish.
Supporters say short-term impacts are necessary to ensure the ecosystem's survival and the survival of the species it supports.
“We know that there will be short-term negative impacts from removal of these dams but are confident this is the only way to start healing the river for future generations,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he expects water quality impacts in late 2023 and early 2024 when the two lower dams, Copco I and Iron Gate, are removed. The Karuk Tribe is an active partner in monitoring the river’s conditions, and it will use its monitoring network to keep an eye on the water quality, according to Johnson.
Though they are located upriver from the dams slated for removal, the Klamath Tribes also welcome the decision to take down the aging dams.
Clayton Dumont, Chairman of the Klamath Tribes, said his people haven’t had c’iyaals (Klamath word for salmon) in their homelands in over a century.
“We have to go back to my great grandfather's generation to get to the time when some people were actively having salmon,” Dumont said. “So we're very, very excited about that; we're, of course, also concerned because the ecosystem is in such bad shape. There's a lot of work that needs to get done to prepare for them to come back.”
Persistent struggles
While most welcome the dams’ impending removal, it does nothing to solve the region’s ongoing drought problem.
As irrigation season approaches, BOR regularly updates stakeholders in the basin about hydrologic conditions.
In BOR’s 2023 Temporary Operating Procedures released Jan. 13, the agency explains how it will attempt to meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act amid “challenging” hydrologic conditions.
To comply with the Endangered Species Act governing two species of sucker fish, Upper Klamath Lake must maintain a water elevation level of 4,142 feet so sucker fish can survive and spawn.
The temporary procedures will be in place until BOR releases its Annual Operations plan by April 1.
The Klamath Water Users Association, or KWUA, a group representing Klamath Basin agricultural interests, is vocal in its opposition to the calculations BOR uses to manage water allocations in the Klamath Project, which drained regional wetlands to allow farms in their place.
On Jan. 23, the KWUA responded to the BOR’s release of its temporary operating procedures in a letter, saying the Klamath Project “is being managed for failure,” calling the objectives outlined in the document “inadequate.”
“Delivering water to contractors, or to family farms that grow food for our nation, or to national wildlife refuges that support the Pacific Flyway, is not among (BOR’s) goals for 2023,” KWUA President Ben Duval said in the letter sent to various federal officials. “To the contrary, (BOR) is actively managing the (Klamath) Project so as not to meet those objectives.”
BOR regularly releases water from Upper Klamath Lake throughout the winter, a move farmers oppose. Farmers want to accumulate as much water as possible in the lake before irrigation season in hopes it will provide them a larger water allocation come irrigation season.
The farmer advocacy group pointed to recent rainfall as reasoning for BOR to recalibrate its operating procedures.
“Yet amidst these encouraging hydrologic conditions, (BOR’s) current plan does not include delivering a drop of water for (Klamath) Project purposes,” Duval said.
Although the region experienced high levels of rainfall over the past month, BOR says the Klamath Basin “remains in severe to extreme drought.”
On Nov. 22, 2022, the KWUA released “A Plan To Fill Upper Klamath Lake,” a document detailing how the organization would like to see BOR manage the lake. Predictably, the plan included a significant pivot towards the interests of farmers and away from the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.
“Admittedly, the action required now would constitute a significant reduction in river flows compared to current levels, but that condition is the result of a failure to act before now,” G. Moss Driscoll, KWUA director of water policy, wrote in a letter accompanying the plan.
Overpromise, underdeliver
The U.S. government allowed veterans to “homestead,” or receive free plots of land, in the Klamath Basin through the end of World War II. More than 1,400 farms operated in the region by the year 2000, cultivating various crops, including barley, alfalfa, potatoes and sugar beets.
The conflict over water allocations in the region has persisted for decades. Some associated with the region’s agricultural communities have a long history of illegal, intimidating behaviors toward Native Americans, with tensions flaring particularly over the last three years, as some farmers aligned with right-wing extremist groups.
Dumont said the “racialized animosity” developed around water in the region is saddening but emphasizes the agricultural community is not monolithic.
“I think that there are many in the irrigator and agricultural community who understand and are coming more to understand we have to do things in a sustainable way,” Dumont said.
As for current conditions, the Klamath Basin is just over 100% of normal precipitation for the water year to date — but that doesn’t mean the region is free of drought. Before recent rains, the basin received precious little precipitation.
“What has often happened is that we started out well, and then things have just dried up,” Dumont said.
Several other issues contribute to insufficient water supply, including low snowpack and farmers in the region aggressively harvesting groundwater to meet their needs.
Dumont said groundwater harvesting exacerbates water woes on their treaty lands — as Upper Klamath Lake is spring-fed — and he sees marshes and springs drying up yearly.
The region needs significant, consistent precipitation.
“At this point, we are all hoping that we get some more weather to fill Upper Klamath Lake,” Johnson said.
Courtney Matthews, public affairs specialist in the BOR’s Klamath Basin Office, said the basin still needs several feet of new snow to reach the annual median snowpack.
Matthews said BOR will announce summer water supply allocations in early April.
Conflicting interests
A vast expanse of rich landscape stretching from arid desert to lush redwood forests, known as the “Everglades of the West,” the Klamath Basin encompasses more than 10 million acres. Prior to colonization, its roughly 350,000 acres of lakes, rivers, marshes and springs were home to thriving salmon populations and millions of migratory waterfowl.
The Klamath Project and climate change dramatically altered the landscape. Today, there simply isn’t enough water to go around to satisfy all the parties who rely on it.
As white settlers poured into the Klamath Basin tribes' ancestral homelands seeking to develop land and construct farms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they confronted the region’s bountiful expanse of wetlands.
In 1906, the newly minted BOR created the Klamath Project. The U.S. government drained Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake, diverting other waterways with a series of ditches, canals and levees into Upper Klamath Lake, which is now the reservoir for the Klamath Project. The project straightened the once-meandering river, eliminating its natural floodplains.
Today, BOR’s management of water allocations in the project is fraught with conflict on all sides.
In the Upper Basin, the Klamath Tribes are protecting two critically endangered species of endemic sucker fish, the C'waam and the Koptu. The survival of the C’waam and Koptu is critical to the survival of the Klamath Tribes, according to Dumont.
Dumont said the rapidly dwindling populations of sucker fish have significant mental and physical health effects on the members of the Klamath Tribes.
“It's devastating in terms of physical health,” Dumont said. “Culturally, they're absolutely foundational, you know, when you have a population that's dependent on a species like that, of course, they're going to be part of your giving of thanks, your understanding of what's important in the cosmos. Those fish were all of that; we have stories about how our Creator, the ancient of the ancients, provided them to us — told us to take care of them.
“So it's hard, you know, when you see your lifeways around you crumbling, and you can't have the young people out taking care and protecting the way that they ought to be and the way that they want to be.”
Meanwhile, lower in the basin, the Karuk and Yurok tribes are fighting to protect endangered salmon populations from massive die-offs in the river as the fish traverse a gauntlet of challenges on their spawning journey.
For several years, tribes in the lower basin have called for a “flushing flow” from Upper Klamath Lake to protect the salmon. A flushing flow would decrease the number of parasitic worms downriver. BOR recently listed a flushing flow as one of its priorities in 2023.
As it stands, the salmon’s needs conflict with the sucker fish. The sucker fish need as much water as possible in Upper Klamath Lake, whereas the salmon need as much water as possible released into the river — and that doesn’t include the water demands from the region’s wildlife refuges and farmers.
During its creation, the Klamath Project destroyed much of the existing ecosystem, leading to many of the problems the basin faces today, which are further exacerbated by climate change, according to Dumont.
“When the ecosystem was healthy, all the living things were doing well,” Dumont said.
Dumont said the project created unnatural conflict between tribes and animal species. Many Indigenous people from the region have relationship ties throughout the basin.
Dumont said while relations between the tribes are presently “rugged,” tribes historically recognize the interconnectedness of the river system.
“I think the tribes have always known that it’s one ecosystem, from the headwaters to the ocean, but getting everybody else to realize that — that it's all interconnected — has been tough and difficult,” Dumont said.
He emphasized the Klamath Tribes care about salmon protection, but the tribe’s sucker fish are “one catastrophic summer away from extinction,” so they focus their attention on them.
“Just because the ecosystem is in such shambles, we're having to make assessments about which species are the worst off,” Dumont said. “We're having to make the case with a few more than 3,000 adult Koptu left on the planet, that that is a more dire situation than what the salmon are facing downstream. And that's in no way to suggest that the salmon don't need help; they absolutely do, and they're important to us also.
“We wish no ill will on the lower river tribal brothers and sisters, but it's just a situation where everybody's backs are up against the wall.”
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