Klamath Deal Reached, Largest Dam Removal in US Set in Motion

An agreement that has been decades in the making was finally signed yesterday. After a century of water wars along the Klamath River in Northern California and Southern Oregon, farmers, tribal members, conservationists, and fishermen have a plan for how to share water and return salmon to their spawning grounds.

Their agreement comes in two parts. The AP reports:

One agreement lays out a roadmap for removing four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and Northern California. The other details how to share water between fish and farms and restore the ecological balance of the basin. Water will be shut off to farms in extreme drought.

In the early 2000s I spent a few years hanging out with members of the Klamath Tribes and also with farmers in the Klamath Basin and the conflict between the various stakeholders there was huge. In the years since, this community has come an incredible distance to find common ground.

Although there are a few balls in the air still. Removal of the dams is not scheduled to start until 2020 and “depends on funding, authorization from Congress and a federal determination that it will actually help salmon and is in the public interest,” the AP reports.

And of course there is the cost. AP again, “PacifiCorp, the utility that owns the four dams, will not bear the estimated $450 million cost for removing the dams. Oregon and California share the costs with surcharges on PacifiCorp customers and a $250 million bond not yet approved by California voters.”