Four of Oregon’s dams may fall, but for some, their controversy will always stand

(The Center Square) — The Biden administration may seal the fate of four aging dams on the Klamath River and decades-long efforts to save what indigenous peoples call a priceless fish habitat.

Beginning in the high deserts of Northern California, the Klamath River flows for some 257 miles north through the mountain ranges of Southern Oregon before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

As a passageway for migrating Chinook salmon and steelhead trout, the river was a millennia-old source of food and trade for the Klamath tribes, who include the Klamath, the Modoc and the Yahooskin.

The hydroelectric dams sitting on it today – Iron Gate, JC Boyle, Copco 1, and Copco 2 – were built from the early 1900s to the late 1960s by the California Oregon Power Company and later bought by energy giant PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire Warren Buffett.

Since their completion, the dams have been blamed by the tribes and environmentalists for slowing water flows and gutting the river’s once abundant fish population – accusations not lost on PacifiCorp or politicians.

Here’s the deal

An interstate agreement reached in November by PacifiCorp, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, and the Yurok and Kaluk Tribes will see PacifiCorp hand ownership of the four dams to the two states.

The company will cover $200 million in demolition costs while California will pay the remaining $250 million through bonds.

The deal represents 20 years of negotiations between the parties to jumpstart the process of handing ownership of the dams to the states and the Klamath River Renewal Corporation.

It still requires a nod from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission which could see a changing of the guard under the new presidential administration.

Among the most vocal supporters of the deal is U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, D-New Mexico, a member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe and President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Indigenous peoples have lauded the deal as a critical step in reclaiming a natural resource.

“I think it’s a positive step in getting the dams out,” Chair Don Gentry of the Klamath Tribes said. “Our people would think of our treaty resources and the ability to live our lifestyle and culture is priceless.

Fishy history

Proponents of the dams say their role in killing fish is often overblown or completely unfounded.

Richard Marshall, president of the Siskiyou Water Users Association, is among them and claims their demolition is a waste of taxpayer money.

“The facts that come out that are pushed by those who are trying to remove the dams are incorrect, and they’ve been incorrect for a long time,” Marshall said. “And unfortunately, it’s hard to get through the chatter from the side that has a lot more money, which are the NGO groups and tribes and so on are pursuing for their own purposes.”

Marshall points to oceanic conditions as the primary culprits behind the river’s dwindling fish population and cites historical accounts from 19th-century prospectors suggesting salmon and other fish never migrated north of where the four dams sit now.

Many like Gentry disagree and say stories of salmon abound in Klamath legends and stories.

A wealth of ethnographic literature from Oregon archeologist Luther Cressman and others come to the same conclusion as well as archeological evidence from a 2011 Portland State University study of the Upper Klamath Basin.

But most agree on one fact – the Klamath River’s fish population has tanked in the century since the dams were first built.

Findings by Stanford ichthyologist John Otterbein Snyder from 1931 described a salmon population disappearing at an “alarming rate.”

Research by California fishery biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggest salmon runs during the early 1900s saw up to a million fish reach the Upper Klamath Basin.

In recent decades, the Klamath River’s annual count of salmon and steelhead often falls below 10,000 fish.

In 2002, the Klamath River saw as many as 34,000 chinook salmon die. A report by the California Water Boards asserted low water flow from PacifiCorp’s Iron Gate Dam played a primary role in the event.

Adapt or die

Such low flows are central to what Klamath Tribe Fisheries Biologist Alex Gonyaw describes as an unnatural burden for the region’s aquatic life.

“Having dams in the Klamath River is completely outside the bounds of what [the fish] are capable of adapting to,” Gonyaw said. “Short term change is extremely difficult for species to deal with.”

A 2015 Oregon State University study sponsored by PacifiCorp found that intensive blooms of cyanobacteria called Microcystis in the Iron Gate Reservoir on the river were the ultimate source of toxic algae observed downstream.

“All this biomass builds up in these these reservoirs,” Gonyaw said. “That biomass then dies back in the fall, which produces low oxygen or anoxic conditions and generally degrades water quality. This water is then released into the river in the fall. But having to swim into degraded water produced by these reservoirs is particularly stressful.”

Dollars and sense

The Klamath River dams have also become something of a liability for their owner in light of their modest energy output and mounting environmental regulations ordered by the courts.

The dams can generate 169-megawatts of electricity or enough to power 300,000 homes, but demand is typically half that number, Pacific Power’s Toby Freeman told the Klamath Herald and News. They provide no irrigation and little to no flood control.

Producing 169-megawatts of electricity through other renewable energy sources “no-brainer” according to Gonyaw.

In June 2005, U.S. District Judge James Redden of Portland ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to redirect substantial water flow away from the dam turbines on the grounds they were slicing the salmon swimming through them.

The order cost the company as much as $67 million, according to estimates by the Bonneville Power Administration, which sells electricity through the dams estimated.

No dam difference?

One study dam supporters like Marshall point to comes from Kintama Research which tracked survival rates for young salmon swimming up the dam-riddled Columbia River and the dam-free Fraser River. Both groups of fish saw low survival rates.

Scientists like John Ferguson of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center argue the study shows efforts to make dams more fish-friendly like passageways work.

“It’s not because the Columbia River is so bad now,” Ferguson told the Seattle Times. “It’s because it’s way better than it was.”

The 2008 study was followed by another in October of 2020 which tracked young Chinook salmon returning to California from Alaska – some swimming through Eastern Washington’s Snake River dams, with others swimming in free-flowing rivers.

The study, funded in part by the Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy, found all fish saw low survival rates.

Kintama CEO and lead researcher Dr. David Welch says the studies still leave a lot about manmade dams up for discussion.

“I am not saying that the dams do not cause some damage or harm to salmon populations,” Welch said. “What I am saying is the data suggests is that level of harm is quite low. Some fish die, but it seems to be much, much less than people have simply assumed in the past.”

For Gonyaw, removing the four Klamath River dams is only part of the ecological restoration needed throughout the region.

“These fish evolved for thousands and thousands of years prior to all the significant changes that have happened in the last hundred plus years, from forest management down to the damage that was done by agricultural practices,” Gonyaw said. “But the dam removal is the major first step that needs to happen for fish populations to begin the recovery process.”

Final federal approval for tearing down the dams is expected sometime in 2022.