The largest dam removal project in American history finished today along the California-Oregon border. Four hydroelectric dams sitting on a 240-mile stretch of the Klamath River provided clean electricity, and a lake, to the area’s homes and farms for decades. The river has returned to its natural channel for the first time in a century.
The area's Indigenous tribes, including the Yurok, pushed to get rid of the dams for years, claiming they led to poorer water quality and the disappearance of local salmon, a species integral to tribal culture.
But non-tribal residents of the area are upset about the dams being gone — because their once idyllic lake-side homes are now simply on a field.
Soumya Karlamangla visited this removal project. She’s a New York Times reporter covering California. She tells KCRW that the dams came up for renewal with the federal government, and would have required extensive upgrades. Thus, officials agreed years ago to take down the dams.
“Ultimately it was a decision about economics because the dams were owned by PacifiCorp, which is a power company, but the federal regulators are very involved in the decision-making process, and the federal regulators were pretty obviously influenced by the environmental activism of the tribes,” she explains. “They made a point of saying, ‘When we were building these dams, no one was consulting the tribes.’ There was this feeling that they had to undo the wrongs of the 20th century and before. But they couldn't force the power company to do anything because the power company owns the dam. So it's a little bit of both.”
As for fish populations in the area, Karlamangla says the Klamath River was once the third-most salmon-producing river on the West Coast, behind the Columbia and Sacramento Rivers. Before settlers came into the area, local tribes relied on the water source for sustenance, with each member eating 450 pounds of salmon a year.
“Many of these tribes see salmon as a gift from God, that the creator who created them also created salmon as a way for them to have sustenance.”
Karlamangla continues, “The salmon are born in the river. They hatch from eggs, and then they swim all the way up to the Pacific. They live there for somewhere between one and seven years, and then they swim back up the river where they reproduce, and then they die. And so they make this unusual journey between the river and the ocean. And so you can see why, if there are dams, they really can't do this journey.”
Salmon have also been a keystone species in the area, pulling nutrients you can only get from the ocean back to the land. “When they reproduce and they die in the rivers, or when bears pull them out and eat them, those nutrients make their way into the land.”
Years with an especially larger salmon run contribute to increased tree growth as well, Karamangla points out. “They can determine the size of a salmon run by the width of a tree ring.”
Around September, a new salmon run is supposed to begin, and scientists will be on the watch.