Dam Removal Revitalizes Salmon In Win For Native Tribes – CleanTechnica

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If you read One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest years ago, you may recall how Chief Bromden’s psychosis originated with the loss of his people’s fishing habitat due to the construction of a monstrous dam. Ken Kesey brought the loss of annual fish runs of the Columbia River, estimated at 15 to 20 million salmon, to our attention. They had supported an essential human industry long pre-dating the arrival of Columbus in the Western Hemisphere. Pacific tribes ever since have fought for dam removal projects across the US.

It’s not just native people who argue for dam removal. The US Fish and Wildlife Service explains that dams slow the natural flow of water and warm it, promoting the spread of deadly algae and parasites. Dams, they say, have been harming salmon and sturgeon since their installation, and people are frustrated to see these culturally and economically important species hurt when it is within our ability to protect them.

While dams have provided benefits like hydroelectricity and water storage, they have also been ecologically disastrous. Besides blocking fish migrations, these human-made structures can destroy seasonal pulses of water that keep ecosystems in balance.

In what can be described as nearly a miracle, for the first time since 1918 an astonishing 420 miles of salmon habitat in the Klamath River watershed in California and Oregon has been reopened. This results from the world’s largest dam removal effort: the Klamath River Renewal Project. The amount of habitat opened up on the Klamath is equivalent to the distance between Portland, Maine and Philadelphia.

It’s only been a month since the dam removal project on the Klamath River. Four dams were removed — and you know what? The salmon are already returning. The dams impeded fish migration for nearly a century, but, since those dams came down, salmon are once more spawning in cool creeks that had been cut off to them for generations.

Salmon Return After Dam Removal Project On The Klamath River

Pacific salmon and steelhead have a diverse life cycle that begins in the rivers of Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho where salmon spawn, or lay their eggs. Juveniles travel from freshwater to the Pacific Ocean and move great distances up and down the West Coast of North America. When salmon are ready to reproduce, they migrate from the ocean back into freshwater rivers and streams to their spawning grounds.

On their journey along the Klamath River, they had encountered four hydroelectric dams, which halted their journeys.

Video shot by the Yurok Tribe show that hundreds of salmon have made it to tributaries between the former Iron Gate and Copco dams, a hopeful sign for the newly freed waterway. “Seeing salmon spawning above the former dams fills my heart,” Joseph L. James, chair of the Yurok Tribe, described, as reported by the Boston Globe. “Our salmon are coming home. Klamath Basin tribes fought for decades to make this day a reality because our future generations deserve to inherit a healthier river from the headwaters to the sea.”

No longer do four hydroelectric dams block passage for struggling salmon. Through protests, testimony, and lawsuits, tribes showcased the environmental devastation caused by the dams, especially to salmon, which were cut off from their historic habitat and dying in alarming numbers because of poor water quality. Earth Justice calls it a great victory for the local tribes, who, despite their deep cultural and economic ties to the river, were at first rarely offered a seat at the stakeholders’ table.

Why Is Dam Removal Becoming More Common?

Increasingly, removal is being seen as a long-term solution for dams that are no longer needed. Removal can often achieve both short- and long-term cost savings, while creating a permanent ecological improvement and strengthening resiliency against climate change.

Many factors contribute to the dam owner’s choice to remove, rather than rehabilitate, these unneeded dams. Policies like the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA) have led to an influx of public funding available for dam safety projects, further strengthening the economic case for removal.

The dam removal projects on the Klamath River are an example of advocacy and economics in play.

Power company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962. But the structures halted the natural flow of the waterway that was once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. They disrupted the lifecycle of the region’s salmon, which spend most of their life in the Pacific Ocean but return to the chilly mountain streams to lay eggs.

The dams only produced a fraction of PacifiCorp’s energy at full capacity, enough to power about 70,000 homes. They also didn’t provide irrigation, drinking water, or flood control. In 2016, after several lawsuits, PacifiCorp opted out of renewing the license and got behind dam removal, recognizing it would be more affordable than making the necessary upgrades. In 2020, PacifiCorp submitted an application to FERC to transfer the license for the Lower Klamath Project from PacifiCorp to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (Renewal Corporation) and the states of Oregon and California as co-licensees. In June 2021, FERC approved transfer of the Lower Klamath Project license to the Renewal Corporation and the states of California and Oregon as co-licensees to carry out removal of the four dams in that license. FERC gave its final approval for the actual dam removal work late in November 2022.

KRRC was created to take ownership of four PacifiCorp dams — JC Boyle, Copco No. 1 & No. 2, and Iron Gate — and then remove these dams, restore formerly inundated lands, and implement required mitigation measures in compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local regulations. PacifiCorp continued to operate the dams in the interim.

It took nearly eight more years in total to develop the dam removal plan, conduct environmental and safety reviews, and navigate around political backlash.

Yet in October 2024, with the dam gone, the water temperature during the day was an average of 14 degrees Fahrenheit cooler compared with the same month over the last nine years, according to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), the nonprofit entity created to oversee the project. There have also been lower concentrations of harmful algae blooms since the dam removal.

Decommissioning will also prevent stagnant reservoirs from increasing water temperatures in the summer and help alleviate the poor habitat conditions that contribute to fish diseases below the dams.

The number of salmon that have quickly made it into previously inaccessible tributaries has also been encouraging. Experts have counted 42 redds, or salmon egg nests, and have tallied as many as 115 Chinook salmon in one day in Spencer Creek, which is above the former JC Boyle dam, the furthest upstream of the four removed dams.