Redding Record Searchlight: Judge backs fish ladder plan

Judge backs fish ladder plan

Federal report supports structures for spawning salmon

By Dylan Darling, Record Searchlight
September 30, 2006

A north state American Indian tribe says its hopes of seeing salmon swim up a dam-free Klamath River were buoyed this week by a federal judge's findings.

"We are kind of celebrating," said Craig Tucker, spokesman for the Karuk Tribe of California, whose headquarters is in Happy Camp along the river.

But PacifiCorp, the company that owns the hydroelectric dams, says the structures should stay.

Company officials think salmon should be trapped and then hauled in trucks to their former spawning beds to test how the salmon react.

The hydroelectric project produces enough electricity to supply 70,000 homes, company spokesman Dave Kvamme said.

"That's a pretty big neighborhood," he said.

The Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp had challenged the science behind a federal mandate to build fish ladders, or concrete structures that allow fish to pass around or over a dam, on four of its dams on the Klamath as part of a new operating license. In her review, Administrative Law Judge Parlen L. McKenna wrote that installing fish ladders would benefit the salmon, opening up 58 miles of river.

Although McKenna didn't touch on the topic of dam removal, Tucker said the economical choice for the company to make between dam removal and putting in fish ladders would be dam removal.

"It looks pretty clear to me that dam removal is the better out for them," he said. "It's like they have a 1974 Ford Pinto and it can't pass smog (checks). So they can spend a lot of money and get it to pass smog, or buy a new Prius and be ready for the future."
PacifiCorp is in the lengthy process of renewing its 50-year federal license on the dams with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and received support from FERC's staff earlier this week for its plan to truck salmon upriver to test the Klamath waters.

Kvamme said the tests could lead to fish ladders eventually, but only if water quality along the river and in Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon is found to support salmon. The cost of putting in fish ladders is estimated to be $250 million.

"You are betting if you build fish ladders and screens they are going to be successful," Kvamme said.

Reporter Dylan Darling can be reached at 225-8266 or at ddarling@redding.com.