Postcards from the Rogue Valley

When Copco Dam No. 1 , on the Klamath River as it crosses from Oregon to California, succumbed to dynamite last year, it unleashed a torrent of water into the abandoned stream bed below, overgrown with willows and weeds. For local whitewater enthusiasts, it offered the ride of a lifetime. (See video above!)

“No turning back: The largest dam removal in US history begins,” Oregon Public Broadcasting proclaimed.

In the 20th century, the US led the world in dam building. Dams were promoted as a way to harness unruly nature, bring water to deserts, and spin turbines to generate electricity for a rapidly growing population.

The largest of them were (and still are) celebrated as marvels of engineering — and, indeed, tourist attractions. In 2019, according to HydroReview, Hoover Dam was number six on Trip Advisor’s ten most popular US attractions list.

To the builders, the flooding of canyons to create artificial lakes was seen as progress with little downside. But to communities of Native Americans who had fished, hunted, and otherwise used rivers for generations, the dams changed everything.

As awareness about the environmental harm they cause grew, and as some dams became centenarians, the trend reversed: dams started coming down. According to the nonprofit advocacy group American Rivers, in 2022, alone, 65 dams were removed, though barely a dent in the more than 90,000 dams nationwide. Most of these dams were relatively small, but attention started to turn to some of the largest.

Enter the Klamath River.

The removal of four dams on the Klamath, the second largest river in California with roots in Oregon, would be the largest dam removal in US history. Some say it may be the largest in the world.

Built more than 75 years ago to generate electricity, Klamath River’s Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2, Iron Gate and JC Boyle have long taken away more than they have given. 

When former Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced in December 2022 the decision to free the Klamath from almost a century of impoundment she said, “The dams are coming down and it’s about time.”

Upside down

National Geographic magazine has called the 257 miles long Klamath “a river upside down.” Unlike most rivers, the Klamath begins in a desert region and flows through the rugged Cascade Range and Klamath Mountains before reaching the Pacific Ocean south of the fishing community of Crescent City. 

For more than 7,000 years, the river has been home to a number of tribes, including the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, Shasta, and Klamath, who still rely on and care for the river today. 

But it is their world that is now upside down.

The Klamath’s salmon runs were once the third-largest in the nation, but have fallen to just eight percent of their historic numbers. US Fish and Wildlife estimates that 90 percent of the salmon no longer enter the Klamath River and migrate upstream. The water in the mouth can average 70 degrees and when the salmon get in front of it, they don’t enter. 

For the Yurok people, whose tribal land begins at the Pacific and extends 40 miles along the Klamath River, salmon is one of Nature’s miracles. “They are born in shallow fresh water, often in small river tributaries, and eventually make their way to the ocean where they grow large on rich marine nutrients,” Matt Dible of VOA Mews reminds us. “After two to five years they return up river to their exact birthplace to spawn and begin the cycle again.”

Other ripples

Like ripples from a stone hitting a pond, the dams’ effects have extended. Low water levels and warm water temperatures have also created conditions that accelerate the diffusion of a deadly parasite. Green and white sturgeon, Pacific lamprey, and other fish are disappearing too. More than 75 percent of birds migrating on the Pacific Flyway feed or rest in the Klamath’s upper basin and the largest population of bald eagles in the lower 48 states winters in several national wildlife refuges there. They are threatened, too.

And since salmon bring nutrients from the ocean to ecosystems far inland, they are a keystone species supporting everything from insects to giant redwood trees, too. Fewer now reach their ancestral spawning grounds.

“You have this huge disconnect now in a system that was connected for millions and millions of years from the beginning of time,” says Yurok Tribe Fisheries Director Barry McCovey, Jr.

At the 2022 Annual Salmon Festival in Klamath, California, members of the Yurok tribe gathered as they have for 58 years for parades, axe-throwing tournaments, drumming, basket weaving demonstrations, and much more. 

The centerpiece of the annual gathering—a lunch of salmon fresh from the river and roasted on sticks—was spare, however. There was barely enough salmon to smoke. 

“We wondered whether we should serve barbecue chicken instead,” Yurok tribe leader Franki Myers quipped. 

At this past August’s festival, no salmon was served. Instead, there were tri-tip sandwiches and frybread, and the parade featured a skit about dam removal with participants holding large paper cutouts of fish.

Taking action

The Klamath River has long been a stage for many, including competing, stakeholders beyond the Klamath tribes: farmers and ranchers who draw water for irrigation; environmental groups; state and federal agencies; recreationists, fishermen, and hunters; watershed councils. 

The first public flash point came in 2001, when thousands of people in Klamath Falls, near the headwaters of the river, formed a symbolic “bucket brigade” to protest a government decision to cut off irrigation water to farmers in the upper Klamath Basin.

The mile-long line of people passing buckets of water to a dry irrigation canal and the ensuing effort to pry open the canal gates were followed by a Bush administration decision to send more water to farmers the next year. Many later blamed the administration for causing a devastating fish kill in 2002 that left thousands of dead salmon floating in the lower Klamath River.

It was around this time that PacifiCorp, an electric power company in the Western US, needed to renew the licenses for its four Klamath River dams, whose electricity generation had dropped to single digits.  The renewal required the company to comply with environmental regulations like adding fish passage that didn’t exist when the dams were built.

Seeing an opening, the Klamath tribes, along with other conservation-minded stakeholders, put dam removal on the table. 

But not everyone believed that was a good idea. 

Removing the four Klamath River dams would necessitate releasing an estimated 45 billion gallons of water, leaving a free-flowing Klamath but dry land. In a 2010 non-binding referendum in Siskiyou County where three of the dams are located, eighty percent of people voted against their removal. They said the dams benefitted surrounding communities by providing tax revenue, jobs, recreation and lakefront property on the reservoirs. All of that would be lost when the dams are removed.

Meanwhile, members of various tribes in the Klamath river basin traveled to Scotland in 2004 to call for dam removal at a shareholders meeting of Scottish Power, owner of PacifiCorp at the time.

Two decades later, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced an elaborate dam removal project which transferred PacifiCorp’s dam licenses to the newly formed nonprofit Klamath River Renewal Corporation, along with the states of Oregon and California, which kicked in $280 million to help pay for the dam removal project.

What lies ahead

For the past two years, preparing the dams for removal has been an all consuming task. The dams must be modified to facilitate the evacuation of the water and the sediment that has accumulated behind the dams over the last 50 to 100 years. The release of millions of tons of sediment is one of the most challenging aspects of the dam removal.  Most of that sediment is expected to be carried out to sea timing the releases will be critical so as not to harm fish.

Looking ahead to replanting the nearly 2,500 acres of land that will be uncovered when reservoirs are drawn down, tribal members are collecting native seed species and growing them in nurseries. The goal is to collect and plant over a billion seeds. 

Franki Myers, who sits on the Yurok Tribal Council in Northern California, recently told Oregon Public Broadcasting: 

“Almost 20 years later, we have this half-billion-dollar project to remove the four lower dams and be a part of the largest salmon restoration project ever conducted. It’s pretty exciting.”

Last month, American Rivers named the Klamath its River of the Year. “The Klamath is proof that at a time when our politics are polarized and the reality of climate change is daunting, we can overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges and make incredible progress by working together,” it said.

“The benefits of river restoration will be far-reaching for all who live along the river. The Tribes who have cared for and depended on the Klamath since time immemorial will see vital aspects of their cultures restored. The river’s water quality will improve as the stagnant reservoirs choked with toxic bacteria disappear. Salmon will once again have access to hundreds of miles of habitat so they can multiply and thrive, supporting other species from bears and eagles to orca whales and people.”

Still, many uncertainties remain as the Klamath reemerges: Will sediment from the demolition harm the river and its inhabitants? Will healthy numbers of salmon finally return? Will it flood its banks more readily? What will the riverfront look like?

And there is an existential question for rivers, especially in a region where water left in nature is often deemed wasted: “Once a river is dammed, is it damned forever?” 

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