The four-dam teardown brings hope and uncertainty to residents in an area of Southern Oregon and Northern California where drought has made water a source of fierce controversy. Looking down at a pool filled with Klamath River salmon swimming back to their spawning grounds, Karuk Tribal Councilor Aaron “Troy” Hockaday says he can’t wait to see what the future holds for them.
Few rivers have faced such a protracted battle about their future as the Klamath, which flows through Oregon and Northern California. After decades of negotiations, the decommissioning of four dams on the river is finally in sight, but hurdles remain. We spoke with Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, to learn how he’s working to get the dam removal across the finish line—and what the transformation will mean for the many communities that depend on the river.
Who will benefit from the Klamath dam removals? Who may be at risk of negative consequences? How might the dam removals impact the tribes in the basin?
Since time immemorial, as summer turns to fall, the Karuk Tribe’s fatawana, or world renewal priests, have gathered for a renewal ceremony that spreads across many days. They fast and hike to ancient prayer sites. They dance and ritualistically bath in the waters of the Klamath River, all in an effort to bring balance back to the world.
Decades of political conflict over the fate of four obsolete dams on the Klamath River reached a turning point last week with a multi-party, two-state “memorandum of understanding” to remove them in hopes of restoring salmon runs.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, heads of two Indian tribes that depend on the river for sustenance, and an executive of Warren Buffett’s PacificCorp that owns the dams announced agreement on a $450 million removal project.
“My great uncle and my grandma and my great grandparents and, I’m sure, their great grandparents: they were all fishermen. That’s just what they did – they fished and it was out of necessity to support their families. And it’s because that’s what we’ve always done and we’ve never known another life,” says Amy Cordalis, the general counsel of the Yurok, and a member of California’s largest indigenous tribe.
It’s hard to overstate how important this livelihood has been to the Yurok people who have lived for millennia in rural Northern California. And yet this livelihood has been diminishing for decades after the Klamath River – which flows through the tribe’s territory – was dammed for hydroelectricity. But now, after years of painstaking negotiations, the fortunes of the Yurok could be set to change, with the largest dam removal project in US history given the green light.
PILCHUCK RIVER, near Granite Falls, Snohomish County — Washington’s dam-busting summer is still rolling, with two more dams coming down on the Pilchuck River, opening 37 miles of habitat to salmon for the first time in more than a century.
The $2 million dam removal project is a collaboration between the City of Snohomish and Tulalip Tribes, and will benefit multiple species of salmon, including threatened chinook salmon, crucial food for endangered southern resident killer whales.
It’s the state’s second dam teardown project in two months. In July, the city of Bellingham blew up its Nooksack Diversion Dam on the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River, opening 16 miles of habitat for salmon, including chinook.
Desperate to complete a historic but complicated dam removal on the California-Oregon border, Gov. Gavin Newsom has appealed to one of the world’s wealthiest men to keep the project on track: financier Warren Buffett.
We have had a chance to review the feasibility study for the removal of the Potter Valley Project’s Scott Dam and find the conclusions used to be frighteningly misguided. George Santayana must have had the NOI parties – Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, Sonoma County Water Agency, California Trout and the county of Humboldt – in this project in mind when he made the famous quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The Klamath River Renewal Corporation’s (KRRC) plans to remove four dams on the Klamath River in the US has taken a major step forward with the issuance of key documents from the California State Water Board.
The largest dam removal project in U.S. history came one step closer to fruition this week, as California issued permits for breaching the four dams on the Klamath River.
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