Kempthorne: Bush wants deal to remove Klamath Dams

Updated, 3 p.m. GRANTS PASS — President Bush gave the direction that resulted in a deal to remove four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River to help one of the West Coast’s most beleaguered salmon runs, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said today.

Kempthorne spoke on a conference call marking the signing of an agreement by PacifiCorp to start down a road that will lead to beginning to remove the dams by the year 2020. Kempthorne said the president told officials “to find a collaborative solution” for the Klamath that makes sense for PacifiCorp and doesn’t pit one interest group against another.

The Bush administration had strongly backed farmers in 2001 after the Endangered Species Act forced the shut-off of irrigation water to thousands of acres of farms to leave enough for threatened salmon.

When the administration restored irrigation in 2002 over the objections of tribes and conservation groups, low water conditions in the Klamath River led to the deaths of 70,000 adult salmon returning to spawn.

“We all have those images of what happened in Klamath,” Kempthorne said. “Nobody wants to see those images occur again. We were motivated to find a solution because we’ve seen how bad it can be. Nobody wanted to say, ‘It’s beyond our abilities to solve this.’”

In a statement released by the White House, President Bush said the nonbinding agreement for removing four dams along the Klamath River turns “what was a conflict into a conservation success.

“Together, we have produced an agreement that will greatly reduce the risk of future shutdowns of the irrigation system,” he said. “I applaud this example of cooperative conservation and thank everyone who worked to bring it about.”

Farmers, tribes, fishermen and conservation groups started three years ago on the heavy lifting of overcoming their differences to find a solution they all could live with, resulting in their Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement signed last January, Rothert said. That agreement included resolutions of long-standing conflicts such as irrigation and river flows, while lacking the key ingredient of removing the dams.

Pressure has been building for years on the dams’ owner, PacifiCorp, to make a deal. California’s and Oregon’s governors pressed for dam removal after commercial salmon fisheries collapsed in 2006 due to poor Klamath River returns.