Think Out Loud

Demolition plan of four Klamath River dams moves forward

By Elizabeth Castillo (OPB)
Nov. 18, 2022 5:42 p.m. Updated: Nov. 18, 2022 8:58 p.m.

Broadcast: Friday, Nov. 18

PacifiCorp's Copco 1 dam on the lower Klamath River is one of four hydro dams that would be removed to facilitate fish passage.

A plan to demolish four dams on the Klamath River moves forward.

Amelia Templeton / OPB

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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a plan to demolish four aging dams on the Klamath River. Removing the dams would open up salmon habitat and help restore the river, which has faced toxic algae, major fish kills and was impacted by the McKinney Fire earlier this year. Cassandra Profita is a reporter for OPB’s Science & Environment team. Barry McCovey Jr. is the Fisheries Department director for the Yurok Tribe. They join us with details on what the demolition means for the Klamath River.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The removal of four dams on the Klamath River is one huge step closer to reality. Yesterday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted unanimously in favor of breaching the aging dams to open up salmon habitat and help restore the river. In a few minutes, we’re going to talk about this with the director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, but we start with Cassandra Profita. She has been covering this issue as a reporter for OPB’s Science and Environment team. Cassandra, welcome back.

Cassandra Profita: Thanks for having me.

Miller: So, let’s start with yesterday’s big news. What does this vote actually mean?

Profita: Okay, so FERC is ordering PacifiCorp to surrender the licenses to these dams so that they can be removed. The licenses will go to this new corporation – it’s a nonprofit corporation called the Klamath River Renewal Corporation – and then also to the states of Oregon and California. There’s a $500 million plan for removing these dams that kicks into gear with this decision.

Miller: So, barring any surprises, this long awaited removal, it’s actually going to happen now? That’s the headline of yesterday’s news.

Profita: Looks like it. Yeah. Yeah, it really looks like this is going to happen. And it’s going to happen pretty fast. The early construction is set to start next spring, like this coming spring. And then the first dam can come out this summer, next summer, with then the drawdown of the reservoirs early 2024 and the big dams coming out that summer.

Miller: Can you put the scale of both the dam removal and the river restoration in perspective?

Profita: Yeah, it’s the biggest in the world. As far as anybody knows, no one has taken out four dams all at once in one fell swoop. And the amount of habitat that is being reopened through this process is larger than any other dam removal project that has come before. It’s about 400 miles of river habitat that will be open to salmon after this happens.

Miller: That’s been closed off for more than half a century.

Profita: It’s been blocked. Yeah. The lowest dam wasn’t installed till the 60s, but the oldest dam was more than 100 years ago.

Miller: Let’s go back in time a bit then. When did the really active push to take down these dams gather steam?

Profita: There’s a lot of history here. I think it’s all really, really interesting because back in 2001, there was this big federal decision to cut the irrigators off from their water supply in order to help the fish downstream, the salmon downstream.

Miller: Irrigators meaning people who were drawing water...

Profita: Farmers, ranchers… yeah.

Miller: …as ranchers or farmers.

Profita: Yeah, and that was very controversial. There were protests. There was a pretty famous bucket brigade to protest that decision. The next year, you had the Bush administration make a decision to give more water to the farmers, and we had this devastating fish kill on the Klamath River that a lot of people tied to that decision to give more water to farmers. It was right around that time that PacifiCorp had to start relicensing those four dams on the Klamath River. That really just sort of opened up this flurry of conversation about, what can we do? We have all these problems, all these environmental problems, all these water problems. So it kicked off this series of negotiations. It was a really long set of negotiations to try to solve all of these issues with one big agreement. It ended up being three agreements that were never approved by Congress. But what did survive out of all that was an agreement to take out these dams. Along the way, the tribes really fought hard to get these dams out: they traveled all around, and they went to shareholder meetings for the owners of PacifiCorp to say, ‘Hey, these are killing fish.’

Miller: What were the big arguments that Native tribes and environmental organizations and other groups were making in terms of taking these dams down?

Profita: The dams create these reservoirs that trap water and this, kind of like a bathtub-like environment, and then that breeds toxic algae blooms, bacteria that is really bad for water quality that the fish depend on. So that’s bad for salmon. That’s in addition to just blocking the salmon from getting to all of this habitat and spawning grounds.

Miller: And suckers as well…

Profita: Yeah.

Miller: …above. Why did PacifiCorp agree to take the dams down? What’s in it for the company?

Profita: It was cheaper for PacifiCorp to go this way. In the relicensing process, they were going to have to install fish passage around all four of those dams. That means essentially fish ladders. The $215 million that it’s going to cost for them to take these dams out was actually the cheaper option for the utility rather than having to pay for all this fish passage.

Miller: It’s such a key point there: It’s not like the company said the big motivating factor here is environmental restoration or righting a historical environmental wrong. It’s cheaper for them to take the dams down. It’s worth reiterating what you just said.

Profita: Yeah, that it’s just so expensive to have to comply with modern environmental laws that require fish passage.

Miller: Now, the vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, yesterday was unanimous, but the dam removal is not without controversy. Nothing about water in the Klamath Basin is unanimous. So what have opponents to dam removal been arguing?

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Profita: There are some tangible drawbacks for people who live around, in the communities surrounding these dams. Those reservoirs that are above the dams – one in particular, the Copco Reservoir – they have homes along them. Those homes are on waterfront property. They have a lake. There’s a lot of lake recreation that happens on those reservoirs. Those reservoirs are going away. So they’re losing the reservoirs; they’re losing whatever property value comes along with living on a lake. Then the surrounding counties also lose tax revenue that came from the dams themselves, whatever jobs were happening at the dams where people were working. And there’s the less tangible impacts that are kind of like… it’s a lot of uncertainty. What’s going to happen with all the sediment that’s stored behind the dams? When they take the dams out, the sediment flows downstream. Is there going to be more water required for this? Everyone in this basin is very hypersensitive to the use of water, and there’s no guarantee. There’s no guarantee that this won’t affect the amount of water that the project needs to take to make sure that the river is restored.

Miller: Where is the money for this immense project going to come from?

Profita: There’s three main sources. One is PacifiCorp; they’re kicking in $215 million. The other is the states of Oregon and California, so taxpayers in those two states.

Miller: What are you, as a reporter… I mean, you’ve already done some trips to the Klamath basin over the last year. What are you most excited to be covering about this as this removal goes forward?

Profita: Oh my gosh. What am I most excited about? Well, okay. I did go on this rafting trip, and it was tremendously exciting. I didn’t know that there is this ‘best in the west whitewater rafting’ that is completely dependent on water releases from JC Boyle dam. It was an awesome trip, and that particular trip that we went on in August, that’s going away. But I am looking forward to going back and doing some version of that trip again, after the dams come out, to see how much the river changes.

Miller: Cassandra, thanks very much.

Profita: Thank you.

Miller: Cassandra Profita is a reporter for OPB’s Science & Environment unit. For another perspective on this news, I’m joined by Barry McCovey Jr. He is the director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department. Barry McCovey, welcome back to the show.

Barry McCovey: Hey, thanks for having me.

Miller: I have read that members of the Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa Valley tribes lit a bonfire and watched the vote yesterday via a satellite uplink while on a sandbar along the Klamath River yesterday. I know that you weren’t there, but did you hear about that event?

McCovey: Yeah, definitely. This was a long time coming, and a lot of the people who have been involved in this fight to restore the Klamath River for the past two or three decades – a lot of those people were there. I’m sorry I missed it. I wish I was there, but it sounded like a great celebration.

Miller: And that was the mood? I mean, it’s such a funny blend of what I imagine to be long-standing ritual with a satellite uplink added in. But was the sense you got that that event was a celebration?

McCovey: Definitely. People were celebrating the decision. We knew that that decision was coming. We had a good feeling about it. Everything pointed to a unanimous decision. When it came down, people weren’t really surprised, but the finality of it was incredible. We’re still feeling it. Everyone in the lower Klamath Basin here, tribal people and non-tribal people alike, are extremely excited.

Miller: What do you think this vote means? And what doesn’t it mean?

McCovey: Well, it means we’ve cleared the final regulatory hurdle that was in the way of dam removal. So here we are on the precipice of the largest restoration project in the history of mankind, maybe, as far as river restoration is concerned. It opens the door to the actual, on the ground, recovery to begin. We can start moving equipment. We can start fixing roads. We can start moving water lines. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done prior to the actual removal of the dams, and we can get to work as soon as possible. We can put our boots on and roll up our sleeves and start working on that stuff, and that’s what we’re really excited about. What it doesn’t mean is, it doesn’t mean that the Klamath River is going to be fully restored. There’s a lot of issues on the Klamath River. Don’t get me wrong, removing these four dams on the Klamath is one of the biggest steps we can take towards healing the river. But there’s a lot of other issues out there that we need to focus on, and we are primed up and we’re geared. This is giving us the momentum we need to start addressing some of those other issues.

Miller: I want to get to those other issues as we go. But, as you might remember, we talked in July of 2021 when, as a show, we spent a week in the Klamath Basin following the river down to where it meets the Pacific. As part of that trip, we went to one of the dams, the Iron Gate dam, to talk to the head of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. That’s the nonprofit that’s going to be managing the removal of these dams, as Cassandra explained. I want to play part of that interview with Mark Bransom that we did at that site. Here he is talking about what will happen after the dams are taken down:

[Excerpt of Mark Bransom interview plays]

“So after the reservoirs are drawn down and completely gone, we anticipate that the river will re-establish itself in its historic channel. Part of our responsibility will be to follow the dam removal with a significant amount of restoration work. And that includes both work in the channel as well as replanting the riparian zone and the upland areas as well. So I’m envisioning that over the course of a couple of decades, we should have a very healthy riparian area which will be a mix of small plants and shrubs and trees that are growing, cottonwoods and willows and other native species that we will plant.”

Miller: That is Mark Bransom standing with us near one of the dams a year and a half ago. One of the things that stands out from what he said, Barry McCovey, is the time frame. He talked about work spanning decades. Is that the time frame that you are envisioning right now?

McCovey: It’s gonna take time. Yeah. You know, everything takes time to heal, and there’s been decades upon decades, if not centuries, of mismanagement and degradation to the Klamath River. So it’s gonna take some time to heal, but we’re in it for the long run. We’ve been collecting seeds. He mentioned the revegetation project: the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department has been working on that, collecting seeds and propagating seeds for two or three years now. It’s gonna take time, but we’re not worried about how long it takes. We’re we’re worried about restoring the river.

Miller: You said collecting seeds and propagating them for years now. Does that mean that you have, say, willow seedlings in a greenhouse somewhere just waiting to go along the riverside?

McCovey: Absolutely. Yeah, we have a number of native species that we’ve been collecting for a few years and propagating in large-scale greenhouses throughout the Pacific Northwest. They’re just sitting there waiting to be planted in the newly exposed lake beds, which will be river riparian areas.

Miller: One of the arguments that opponents of dam removal have made is that when the sediment behind the dams is flushed down the river, that could create problems for salmon. Do you share that concern at all?

McCovey: We know that there will be some impacts. You can’t have a watershed level restoration project without having some minor impacts. We’re hoping for a wet winter. If we get a lot of rain, that will really help us flush that sediment out of the system. But everyone agrees – I think even FERC staff agrees – everyone who’s reviewed this project agrees that the small scale impacts associated with the sediment plume are far outweighed by the benefits of dam removal.

Miller: Getting rid of dams doesn’t create more water in the basin. It changes the way water is stored or changes the way the river will function. It’ll return it more like the way it was before European Americans put the dams in. So this gets to what you were saying at the beginning in terms of what’s not going to be fixed or addressed directly by dam removal. I’m curious how you think the removal of these dams could affect the politics, the really complicated water politics, of the basin.

McCovey: I think it’s gonna be beneficial. It’s gonna provide… There’s gonna be improved fisheries and an improved ecosystem. We’ll be experiencing something that we haven’t experienced in 100 years. Over time the fishery will improve, and the ecosystem will start to heal itself. Water quality will improve. And this is likely to lead to fewer regulatory burdens on farming and ranching operations. So that’s one benefit that we would see in the upper basin from dam removal. Of course, it’s complex. It’s complicated, and there are still… You know, this is the West and we’re talking about water, so there’s still a lot of battles to be fought regarding that water. That’s for another day. We’re working hard right now to remove these dams. Eventually, we’ll need more water in the system, but that’s down the road.

Miller: The McKinney Fire, meanwhile, this past summer burned over 60,000 acres in the Klamath National Forest. Four people were killed; 185 buildings were destroyed. How are you thinking about fires – more serious, larger, more destructive fires – as you work to restore riparian areas in the basin?

McCovey: Sure. As Tribal people, we know that everything is interconnected. The upslope mountainous areas have a direct impact on riverine habitat and water quality, etcetera. That was abundantly clear in the Mckinney Fire where we had this incredibly hot fire storm blow through an area adjacent to the Klamath River and tributaries, followed by a monsoonal thunderstorm event that caused a flash flood and debris torrent to flow into the Klamath River. It killed every fish, and probably every living organism, in a 50-mile stretch of river. So this is something that’s really concerning to us. We’re trying to study this event as close as possible. We’re currently working with partner tribes and NGOs and environmental groups to try and look as closely as we can at exactly what happened in this event so that we can try to avoid them in the future. We know that, with climate change, that something like this is probably going to become more normal as we go forward, so we want to have a really good understanding of the impacts. But we also want to look to our past. As far as tribal people, we want to look to our past to say, ‘How did we prevent this in the past?’ We did that through managed fire and what we call good fire: cultural burning and burning the landscape in a way that is good for the landscape. That stops these hugely catastrophic wildfires that we’ve seen over the last few years. Our hope is that we can move in that direction.

Miller: Barry McCovey Jr., thanks very much.

McCovey: Thank you for having me.

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