Klamath Dams Removal 

From January 1999 to October 2001, Danosky and Kaffka (2002) collected and analyzed subsurface tile drain and surface water quality samples throughout the Tulelake Irrigation District and surrounding locations in California and Oregon within the Klamath Project area.  Their report summarized earlier studies documenting the biogeochemistry of the Upper Klamath Basin.  Organic soils developed over geologic time beneath the region's shallow wetlands under anaerobic conditions.  Wetland adapted plants with their ability to transport oxygen to their roots below the water line, coupled with high nutrient levels in water and soil promoted exceedingly high biomass productivity and high organic matter development in soils.  It is the anaerobic condition that allowed exceptionally high quantities of organic deposits to develop because oxygen was largely unavailable under water and therefore natural decomposition rates for belowground roots and dead plant shoots under water were exceedingly slow for millions of years.  Parent material in the area is naturally high in apatite minerals containing phosphorus which promoted high productivity in natural wetlands and soils for millennia.  Post-settlement drainage and cultivation released large amounts of organically bound nutrients as fine sediments when first exposed to air through decomposition processes, enriching sediments in the region's lakes and streams as well as behind hydropower dams and below (Snyder and Morace 1997).

Professor Hans Jenny at UC Berkeley developed the 'state-factor' equation to explain contributing factors to soil formation:  Soil  =  function (climate, organisms, relief, parent material, and time)

In the Upper Klamath Basin, Meiss Lake area of Butte Valley, and sub-basin areas of Shasta Valley, dry semi-desert climates, anaerobic bacteria and waterfowl, basin relief with restricted drainage if drained at all, high phosphorus-laden parent materials, and time, respectively, over millions of years have developed rich wetland soils loaded with organic phosphorus and organic nitrogen in huge quantities per acre over very large areas of these landscapes.  Cultivation exposed these organic materials to the air leading to decomposition and mobilization of fine particulate, highly chemically active phosphorus and nitrogen.  These two elements are the prime driving forces for all plant growth on earth, from single celled algae, to aquatic multi-celled higher plants, to all terrestrial plants.  Waterfowl enhancement efforts by fish and wildlife agencies have worked hard to enhance bird populations throughout America, but unfortunately in these three areas of the Klamath River Watershed, waterfowl enhancement has contributed to the phosphorus and nitrogen problems in the watershed as a whole.

Returns of steelhead to Iron Gate Hatchery in 2009-10 have been meager at best which certainly is due to spreading disease exposure below Iron Gate Dam caused by very high residualization behavior of steelhead (delayed migration to the ocean until age three).  Coho are next most affected, likely because of their life cycle of living in freshwater for a year longer than Chinook.

Systems ecology theory states that 'lag-effects' often lead to instability of ecosystems.  This may be a classic lag-effect of post-gold rush farming practices mobilizing nutrient-rich sediments in such large quantities and of such high mobility that it has taken until 2009-10 to cause steelhead to become threatened (hatchery-mitigation-program-limited) below Iron Gate Dam.  Recent droughts certainly have a role as well since the flushing benefits of higher flows certainly have not occurred in recent years. 

 

So, as fine particulate phosphorus sediments move downstream, further disease exposure will occur, as more polychaete worm habitat develops.  Record steelhead and high Coho salmon runs today on the Trinity River with its clean mountain watershed serves as a local stark comparison of steelhead and Coho salmon population dynamics returning to Iron Gate Hatchery.  Shasta Valley soils and wetlands share many of the conditions as in the Upper Basin and therefore Coho salmon populations in Shasta Valley are more limited than those in tributaries without high phosphorus soils and organic rich wetlands such as Scott Valley.

Danosky and Kaffka (2002) paint a bleak picture as far as a solution is concerned.  While lower phosphorus containing fertilizer should be used in potato and onion production in the Tulelake Irrigation District, irrigation water coming into the District contains 5-25 times more phosphorus than is considered a problem in freshwater systems (Grobbelaar and House 1995; Correll 1998).  Input surface waters, fine particulate-high phosphorus sediments, and phosphorus-rich soils are the most important sources of phosphorus in the Klamath Basin.  Amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen are not likely to change, even if farming activities are modified or curtailed in the Klamath Basin (Danosky and Kaffka 2002).

In all three locations, Upper Basin, Butte Valley, and Shasta Valley, clean water sources exist at headwater locations, however, at the lower end of each basin or along the conduit water course, the contamination problem discussed above taints the out-flowing water severely.  There is no general solution to any of these problems.  Solutions have been tried in all three areas from the massive long-term Bureau of Reclamation's Klamath Project, to Meiss Lake's relatively small-scale pumping plant development to flush nutrient-rich water and sediments to the Klamath River, to recent efforts take away private water rights for the Little Shasta River and wash out tainted sediments forever from the Shasta Valley Wildlife Area.  This would further impair both the lower Shasta River but also the Klamath River itself by providing a nearer source of fine phosphorus sediment causing deposition even further down river below the Shasta River confluence than at present.  

The massive acreage of phosphorus laden organic soils in the Upper Basin, Butte Valley, and Shasta Valley is a severe geographic (size/area) limitation, and nature will cause continual drainage and fine sediment transport forever.  Naïve regulators have imposed irrational TMDL standards (Danosky and Kaffka 2002), fish biologists are seeking to take away irrigation water to increase flows through the Shasta Valley Wildlife Area, with little or no positive results expected due to nature's volcanic deposits of parent material in these basin and range landscapes of the Upper Klamath Basin, Butte Valley and Shasta Valley. 

 

It is the nature of basins to accumulate salts and organic phosphorus and nitrogen on certain volcanic parent materials.  Since these areas are true basins and they occur in locations with periodic, relative high precipitation or incur periodic runoff events, they have supported exceptional high productivity wetlands-and it is these wetlands and their productivity of nutrient-rich organic deposits and soils that are the basis of the 'problem at hand'.  It is not a problem from nature's perspective-it is natural and historical records tell us that.

Narrow analysis of the problem is unacceptable.  Ignoring history is inexcusable!

Hopefully the USGS assessment led by Dr. Lynch will include soil science and nutrient cycling expertise before making a critically flawed recommendation.  Area soil scientist Jim Komar, NRCS Red Bluff, recommended to me a few months ago to forgo this research effort of mine, since according to Jim "the dams are going and soil science is out of vogue".  I don't know whether Jim Komar as well as Jim Patterson ( NRCS District Conservationist, Yreka) have been given marching orders from Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack or not, but I would not be surprised these days.

I recommend that a scientifically-rigorous GIS-referenced, area-based assessment be made of the soils/wetlands in the three areas:  Upper Klamath Basin, Meiss Lake, Shasta Valley Wildlife Area (and add to that the Grenada area with similar soil types as that for Shasta Valley Wildlife Area), using a water and nutrient mass balance approach, modeling wet, average and dry year scenarios to determine phosphorus and nitrogen content of outflows expected from all three basins including fine sediment deposition impact analysis. 

 

Now that I have become aware of the fine particulate phosphorus sediments, very detailed assessment must be accomplished on sediment deposits behind the dams prior to making a determination concerning dam removal.  The volume of deposits of fine phosphorus sediments behind the Klamath River dams could put the fine fisheries of Scott River, Salmon River and Trinity River at risk from colonizing polychaete worms all the way to the mouth of the Klamath River.  I for one would not like to give up outstanding steelhead fishing from Johnson's Bar to Bluff Creek, one of the blue-ribbon steelhead fisheries of the world!

The relative isolation of the Klamath River Watershed allows regulators nearly carte blanche influence to filter the information used to justify a program they already have decided is a good thing.  This is unprofessionalism at its highest and will be very disappointing to the public and Native Americans in the future when a cesspool river situation occurs much of the time following dam removal.

Retired Iron Gate Dam hatchery employees who can speak openly worry as I do that without the dams, a four-year drought could essentially wipe out the salmonid genetics in the upper Klamath River below Iron Gate Dam and above.  The study by Danosky and Kaffka (2002) and their nutrient/water balance calculations indicate the concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus from mobilized fine sediments and natural drainage in dry years, coupled with lack of adequate dilution effects during low summer and fall flows without the dams, will lead to a worse cesspool condition than the historians wrote about prior to the first dam construction in 1918.

Dr. Stephen Kaffka, a colleague of mine in Department of Agronomy and Range Science, UC Davis, sent me a copy of his report.  Dr. Dan Drake, Siskiyou County farm advisor, searched the literature for me concerning waterfowl effects on water quality.

References Cited

Correll, D.L.  1998.  The role of phosphorus in the eutrophication of receiving waters.  J. Environmental Quality 27:261-266.

Danosky, Earl and Stephen Kaffka.  2002.  Farming practices and water quality in the Upper Klamath Basin-Final Report to the California State Water Resources Control Board, 205j Program.  April 16, 2002.  168 pp.

Grobbelaar, J.H., and W.A. House.  1995.  Phosphorus as a limiting resource in inland waters:  interactions with nitrogen.  Pp. 255-273.  In:  Tiessen, H. (Ed.).  Phosphorus in the Global Environment.  J. Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York.  462 pp.

Hetrick, N.J., T. A. Shaw, P. Zedonis, J. C. Polos, and C. D. Chamberlain.  2010.  Compilation of information to inform USFWS principals on the potential effect of the proposed Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (Draft 11) on fish and fish habitat conditions in the Klamath Basin, with emphasis on fall Chinook salmon.  Arcata Fisheries Program, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office, 1655 Heindon Road, Arcata, California.  January 28, 2010.  193 pp.

Manny, B.A., W.C. Johnson, and R.G. Wetzel.  1994.  Nutrient additions by waterfowl to lakes and reservoirs:  predicting their effects on productivity and water quality. Hydrobiologia 279-280 (1):121-132.

Olson, Mark H., Melissa M. Hage, Mark D. Binkley, and James R. Binder.  2005.  Impact of snow geese on nitrogen and phosphorus dynamic in a freshwater reservoir.  Freshwater Biology 50(5):882-890.

Portnoy, J.W.  1990.  Gull contributions of phosphorus and nitrogen to a Cape Cod kettle pond.  Hydrobiologia 202:61-69.

Post, D.M., J.P. Taylor, J. F. Kitchell, M.H. Olson, D.E. Schindler, and B.R. Herwig.  1998.  The role of migratory waterfowl as nutrient vectors in a managed wetland.  Conservation Biology 12(4): 910-920.

Scherer, Nancy M., Harry L. Gibbons, Kevin B. Stoops, and Martin Muller.  1995.  Phosphorus loading of an urban lake by bird droppings.  Lake and Reservoir Management 11(4):317-327.