Momentum Builds Towards Dam Removal on the Klamath

by SYRCL staff

Spring 2007 Issue

Editor’s note: We are not geographically confused. The recent media headlines regarding the hydropower relicensing on the Klamath River compel us to devote some ink to the issue in our Around the Sierra news. Events in the Klamath may very well inform the discussion and actions in upcoming fish passage and FERC relicensing proceedings occurring throughout the Sierra and in the Yuba watershed specifically.

On January 30, the federal government declared that four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River must undergo costly modifications to allow passage for salmon—a decision that could trigger the largest dam removal project in world history.

Since modifying the aging dams would cost an estimated $300 million, removing them has suddenly become a much more plausible—and considerably cheaper—option for their owner, PacifiCorp, a company owned by Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

PacifiCorp’s dams on the Klamath River , built between 1908 and 1962, cut off hundreds of miles of productive salmon spawning and rearing habitat in the Upper Klamath, which was once the third most productive salmon river on the West Coast. The dams also impair water quality, encourage the growth of toxic algae and fish parasites, and degrade river habitat. Klamath salmon populations dropped to such low levels in 2006 that much of the commercial salmon fishery was closed along more than 700 miles of California and Oregon coastline. Recent closures may have cost the California economy more than $100 million.

According to a recent report written for the California Energy Commission, removing the dams would cost $101 million less than modifying them as ordered by federal agencies.

Although several dams across the United States and around the world have been removed or scheduled for removal in recent years, river advocates say they know of no other river in the world for which the removal of four hydroelectric dams is under review.

Good for Salmon

If the dams were removed, the Klamath, which straddles the Oregon-California border, would have extraordinary potential to rebound as a major salmon resource, according to fish biologists and regional officials. They say that a revival could dramatically improve commercial and sport fisheries along the coasts of Oregon and Northern California .

The Klamath once supported the third-largest runs of salmon on the West Coast. But in the more than eight decades since it was dammed, it has become one of the most fought-over rivers in the West—with massive fish kills, blooms of algae, angry irrigators, litigious environmentalists, and Indian tribes whose diet and culture have been substantially damaged by the disappearance of salmon. Biologists blame the dams as a contributing factor to the near shutdown last summer of commercial salmon fishing along 700 miles of the Oregon-California coastline.

"The Klamath dams are economic losers, and by removing them, PacifiCorp would protect its ratepayers from higher costs. PacifiCorp has a golden opportunity to do the right thing and to contribute to what could arguably be the greatest river restoration project in our country’s history," says Steve Rothert, director of the California field office of American Rivers based in Nevada City .

Uniquely Restorable

The four dams produce electricity for about 70,000 customers. The power is worth about $29 million a year, according to a recent California Energy Commission (CEC) study. The CEC and the Department of the Interior found that removing the dams and replacing their power would save PacifiCorp ratepayers up to $285 million over 30 years.

David Diamond, an analyst with the Department of the Interior, was quoted in a Washington Post article as stating, "The Klamath is a degraded system, but it is uniquely restorable. These dams are the only barriers to fish passage from the headwaters to the Pacific. The watershed is 80 percent under federal ownership, and it doesn’t have major cities or other development that prevents the return of healthy salmon runs."

For years, pressure to remove the four Klamath dams has come from Indian tribes, conservation groups, and commercial fishermen. Recently, in a somewhat surprising move, the Bush administration—through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service—concluded that dam removal would be best for salmon.

The issue has been forced on PacifiCorp because federal licenses for the dams, the oldest of which was completed in 1918, are up for renewal. The Portland , Oregon , power company had proposed that it be allowed to trap and haul salmon around its dams as a way to revive the river’s salmon fishery. At the time, conservation groups such as Friends of the River denounced the "trap and truck" fish passage methodology. This approach is practiced on other salmon rivers, such as the Columbia , at considerable expense and with marginal success, at best.

Science vs. PacifiCorp

In September 2006, a judge upheld the Klamath restoration requirements proposed by conservationists and the government, which has set the stage for the latest rounds of negotiations. The Hon. Parlen L. McKenna concluded, "project operations have and continue to adversely affect" river health, including the resident trout fishery and riparian habitat. He also found that the measures required by the agencies would benefit threatened coho salmon and other anadromous fish, resident trout, Pacific lamprey, and riparian habitat. The judge made his decision after hearing 45 hours of testimony over a five-day period and reviewing thousands of pages of written testimony and exhibits.

At the time the ruling was announced, Curtis Knight of California Trout stated, "This hearing was PacifiCorp’s chance to challenge the agencies’ restoration program—and they failed. They learned today that good science is unbeatable."

The hearing, created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, allowed PacifiCorp to challenge the factual basis for the federal agencies’ mandatory terms and conditions for a new license.

"This ruling not only seriously undercuts PacifiCorp’s ‘trap and haul’ proposal, it also means that one way or the other, salmon will someday return to the Upper Klamath River ," noted Glen Spain, Northwest regional director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA), one of the litigants in the Energy Policy Act hearings.

The joint announcement by the Department of the Interior and NOAA earlier this year reaffirmed the federal government’s opposition to the trap and truck approach. As a necessary condition for obtaining a new federal license, PacifiCorp must build costly fish ladders and other fish-passage devices at each of the dams on the Klamath.

"The agencies made the right choice in requiring fish passage at the dams," concludes Rothert. "The onus is now on PacifiCorp to make the right economic and environmental decision and remove the dams."

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Source:  http://www.syrcl.org/sierra-citizen/sc-view_article.asp?id=344