Klamath dams should be removed 

By S. Craig Tucker

and Leaf Hillman

July 10, 2007

Much attention was focused last week on a Washington Post report that Vice President Dick Cheney manipulated flows on the Klamath River in the lead-up to the 2002 fish kill. Calls for a congressional investigation and regional field hearings have been issued over the matter. Steve Pedery, conservation director of Oregon Wild, echoed these calls in a guest viewpoint in the July 5 Register-Guard.

The story on the Klamath today, however, is not what politicians did or didn't do four years ago, but what Klamath Basin residents and coastal fishermen are doing today to solve the Klamath crisis.

The farm irrigation shutoff of 2001 and the fish kill of 2002 were back-to-back disasters for all Klamath Basin residents. Either alone was enough to intensify the already vitriolic fight over the basin's precious water resources. Together they could permanently divide neighbors along political, ideological and cultural lines. Indeed, some would say that this permanent divide was imminent - when along came a chance for a solution in the form of a dam relicensing application.

When PacifiCorp's 50-year license to operate its six Klamath dams expired in 2002, stakeholders, along with local, state and federal agencies, assembled to participate in the processing of a new license application. The dams play a fundamental role in the decline of Klamath salmon by blocking more than 300 miles of historic spawning habitat and degrading water quality. Since the dams are poor power producers, offer no flood control and create reservoirs full of toxic blue-green algae each summer, there is strong local support for removing them.

At the same time that the Klamath dams' license expired, PacifiCorp slammed irrigators with a sharp rate increase which for some families will result in a 1,200 percent increase in power bills. All of a sudden, farmers, fishermen, tribes and conservation groups began discussing how we could work together to have all of our needs addressed. Because our particular need is rather big - the removal of four dams, resulting in the largest river restoration project in America 's history - we are willing to work with farmers to address their needs at the same time.

Today, four American Indian tribes, nine environmental groups, farm groups and a host of local, state and federal agencies are working hard on a settlement to prevent disasters like the ones we saw in 2001 and 2002 from happening again.

So far, the Bush administration is doing its part to support us. In January, the administration's wildlife agencies mandated the strongest fishway prescriptions within their legal authority. The result is a dam project that is so expensive to relicense that the removal of four large dams makes economic sense. The administration's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries experts went so far as to recommend dam removal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the ultimate referee in the proceeding.

For its part, PacifiCorp remains defiant. The company seems more interested in gouging its own ratepayers than in making a responsible and sound business decision. That is to say that instead of working to ensure ratepayers get the cheapest out - dam removal - the utility would rather stick them with the excessive cost of bringing these outdated dams into compliance with modern environmental laws. Even installing ladders would do little to aid salmon recovery, because the degradation of water quality caused by the dams would remain. However, with at least a year left in the relicensing process, there's still time for PacifiCorp to act responsibly and stop exploiting Native Americans, farmers and its own customers.

For our part, we plan to continue to work with our neighbors in the basin and on the coast on real solutions to the ongoing Klamath crisis. It has not been easy. There is a bitter history of conflict to overcome. But we believe that we can have a Klamath Basin where farmers can farm, fishermen can fish and Indians can practice their traditions and culture.

And when the solutions come from the grass roots up and cross political, ideological and cultural divides, politicians of all stripes are sure to follow.

S. Craig Tucker is Klamath coordinator for the Karuk Tribe. Leaf Hillman is the tribe's vice chairman. Both live in Orleans , Calif.

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Source:  http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/07/10/ed.col.klamath.0710.p1.php