A historic announcement just in from the Associated Press: it appears the Klamath River’s four salmon-exterminating dams are finally coming out:
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — The Bush administration has announced a nonbinding agreement for removing four dams along the Klamath River, a key to resolving the basin’s long-standing trouble balancing the water needs of farms and fish.
While not a final answer, the deal represents a milestone toward what would become the biggest dam removal project in U.S. history.
It also would help resolve issues at the root of the 2001 shut-off of irrigation to thousands of acres of farmland under enforcement by U.S. marshals and the 2002 deaths of 70,000 adult salmon in the river after irrigation water was restored.
The agreement in principle reached in Sacramento, Calif., was to be signed Thursday by the U.S. Department of Interior, the utility PacifiCorp and the governors of Oregon and California.
The non-binding agreement apparently endorses the controversial Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, which doesn’t enjoy universal support among stakeholders, but might represent our single best chance to get dams removed.
My concerns?
- Removal isn’t slated to begin until 2020, and a lot can happen before then – including an ongoing dwindling of the already-endangered salmon runs
- By then, the costs of dam removal will have skyrocketed (projected $450 million), and the agreement removes PacifiCorp from liability and limits ratepayer (I am one) liability to $200 million
There’s plenty more to be said on this issue, which I’ve admittedly done a poor job covering (a guy’s only got so much time).
For a fairly skeptical perspective on the whole Klamath Dam issue, visit Felice Pace’s excellent-if-high-voltage Klamblog.
[UPDATE: I just posted a brief history of the very, very contentious Klamath River salmon/dams/irrigators issue here. Worth ten minutes of your day if you're not wholly up to speed on the Klamath.]
What’s a Healthy Klamath Mean?
A healthy Klamath would likely turn into a sustainable economic bonanza for an economically despressed Sisikiyou County (home of the Trout Underground), though that reality didn’t stop our largely anti-environment, anti-sustainable-anything Board of Supervisors from fighting dam removal, often through scare tactics and lies about toxins in sediment loads.
Healthy salmon & steelhead runs on the Klamath River would likely see a mirror of the crowds of people fishing the Trinity River (now that a little water’s been put back in). Simply put, Northwest-based Undergrounders may soon have a whole new river to fish.
See you on the Klamath, Tom Chandler.
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At least it is one step in the right direction for the salmon and local environment.
Kara(Quote)
It is, though the timeframe is a concern. Hell, I could have those dams out in a couple weeks and for only the cost of a couple houseboats and some ammonium nitrate, but patience has never been my strongest suit.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Isn’t there the concern that when removed water drawdown and water rights from agriculture will leave only a trickle?
Brent(Quote)
Brent: The Klamath Basin Agreement (negotiated over several years by 26 stakeholders [they started with 28, and several of the current number still won't sign onto the deal]) guarantees water to upper Klamath irrigators, and leaves some for fish in medium to high-flow years, but astonishingly doesn’t guarantee low flows in drought years.
In some ways, the agreement’s upside down; it guarantees water for irrigators (though less than their water rights allow), but not salmon or other endangered species.
This has been a sticking point of the agreement all along.
I’m patching together a story about the Klamath agreement I wrote for a magazine but was never published, and will post it soon.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Friends of the River has a good page on their website about what might not be wonderful with this deal…
http://www.friendsoftheriver.org/site/PageServer?pagename=KlamathAgreeInPrinciple
B(Quote)