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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
Klamath River dams' removal is no quick fix
Is the north state on the verge of one of the largest dam-removal projects in American history?
It might happen, but you would starve to death waiting for that fish to bite.
Federal fisheries regulators this week demanded that, as a condition of relicensing Pacifi-Corp's Klamath River hydropower project, the company install fish ladders on Iron Gate and other dams along the California-Oregon border. At a cost between $300 million and nearly $500 million, the ladders would make retaining the dams preposterously expensive.
The decision thus greatly increases the odds that the dams will come down, opening a vast stretch of the upper Klamath to salmon and other migratory fish. Potentially -- and the biology is complex, to say the least -- opening that habitat could restore the river's once-legendary salmon runs, whose collapse is both a natural tragedy and a severe economic blow to residents all along the Klamath.
But let's not count our redds before the fish spawn.
Removing the dams would be a massive and massively expensive operation. Proponents peg the cost at $200 million, PacifiCorp at up to $1.5 billion -- and good luck finding someone interested in paying that bill. The extensive environmental studies and engineering, meanwhile, would take years of work.
That is, whatever the long-term benefits of knocking down the dams, it won't do a thing to lift endangered-species listings or get fishing vessels back on the ocean today. It won't end the need for habitat improvements that can revive the river in the meantime.
Down the road, though, something big needs to happen. The Klamath is simply overworked -- with the competing demands of farmers and ranchers, the fishing industry and hydropower guaranteeing a perennial crisis. One year farms lose irrigation water, the next fishing fleets are idled. And that's not to mention the interests of Indian tribes and nature itself.
Whether it's expensive fish ladders or high-dollar
dam removal, though, there's one sure benefit for the region -- big
spending. In the Great Depression, public works projects like Shasta
Dam supplied badly needed jobs. Nowadays, tearing out obsolete dams is
a growth industry for the rural West. Hey, it pays the bills.
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