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If settlement fails, more struggle will
followA time to choose
By JEFF MITCHELL, WILL HATCHER, BUD ULLMAN
and LARRY DUNSMOOR
In regard to the dam removal issue, it is true that removing
the lower four Klamath River dams will increase costs to
ratepayers by about $1.50 month. Legislation capping
ratepayer costs at this amount, Senate Bill 76, is making
its way through the legislature.
What ratepayers — that is, all of us — should understand is
that if settlement efforts fail, and the dams proceed
through relicensing, costs that will face ratepayers will be
substantially higher, and will have no cap. PacifiCorp sees
settlement as the best option for ratepayers, which is why
it supports the legislation and is working hard on
settlement.
Efforts to relicense the dams have been ongoing since 2000.
In 2006, a judge upheld a series of mandatory measures
PacifiCorp will have to implement if the dams are
relicensed. It will have to build and operate upstream and
downstream fishways. It will have to allow significantly
more flow to go down the Klamath River below JC Boyle Dam,
and severely curtail its peaking operation at JC Boyle, both
of which decrease generation of electricity.
Next in the relicensing process, should settlement fail,
comes battles over a required permit under the Clean Water
Act.
Reservoirs behind the dams create conditions that support
blooms of toxic algae that pose health risks for humans and
the ecosystem, and they also store heat that warms the
Klamath River downstream to damaging levels when fall
chinook are trying to swim upstream to spawn. They create
many other problems as well, but these two alone are major
obstacles to meeting Clean Water Act requirements.
So there are two choices. One is to keep the dams in place
and pursue relicensing, a course that guarantees many years
of expensive litigation and, if successful, expensive
structural and operational changes.
Under this option, all expenses will be covered through rate
increases which will be passed on to you the ratepayer. The
other choice is to resolve issues through settlement
resulting in dam removal, avoid most litigation, and cap
costs to rate payers. We think settlement is a better deal
for rate-payers. The Citizen’s Utility Board, a
Portland-based group that advocates for Oregon ratepayers,
agrees and supports Senate Bill 76, which is designed to cap
settlement-based costs to ratepayers.
Finally, to state Sen. Doug Whitsett and state Rep.Bill
Garrard we say this: Get out of the way. The mindset you
represent is deadly to building collaborative solutions to
complex problems.
Stop expending all of your efforts trying to tear down what
others have built through years of supremely difficult
work.
We ask both of you, where are your solutions? After you tear
down the settlement, what will you replace it with? If you
succeed in your efforts to dismantle settlement, then you
doom the Basin to the ensuing conflict as all parties turn
to litigation as the only available pathway to meeting their
needs.
The Klamath Tribes have neither seen nor heard from either
of you during these negotiations. You have never shared your
thoughts or ideas with us, or attempted to meet with our
leadership to help craft solutions.
Citizens of Klamath County and the State of Oregon deserve
much better leadership than you are giving them. You do not
have to like the Klamath Tribes, and it is clear that you do
not, but it is simply irresponsible to attempt to destroy
what we have built with the Klamath Project irrigators and
many other parties, especially when you offer no viable
alternatives.
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