This week the Bush Administration, Warren Buffett’s
PacifiCorp and the state governments of Oregon and California announced an
“Agreement in Principle” to remove four of the five dams on the Klamath River. If all goes according to their plan, removal of four dams
would begin in 2020. A fifth dam – Keno in Oregon – would be transferred to the US
Bureau of Reclamation.
Members of three Klamath River
tribes and others cheered the agreement even as they wondered
why it is necessary to wait until 2020 to begin what promises to be a
decade-long dam removal project. But the Hoopa Tribe — as well as other environmental
groups including Friends of the River, the Northcoast Environmental Center and Oregon
Wild — criticized the agreement. Critics say it
unnecessarily delays dam removal for more than a decade and does not actually guarantee
that they will ever come out.
Major river and fishing groups including American Rivers,
Trout Unlimited and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association
have signaled their support for the deal by joining the Bush Interior
Department in a letter to the California Water Resources Control Board
requesting delay of the Clean Water Certification process which the dams must
pass before they can be relicensed. The Clean Water Certification is widely
viewed as a hurdle which PacifiCorp could not overcome because of the pollution
the dams and reservoirs generate. This includes toxic algae, water temperature
inhospitable to salmon and trout and low dissolved oxygen. The poor water
quality has been linked to epidemics which kill young salmon and
other fish in and below the reservoirs and dams.
The dam removal deal is also being criticized because it
would include a controversial water agreement which, if it becomes final, would give
irrigators in the Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Project a legislative
guarantee that they would be first in line for Klamath
River water. Critics say this would make it necessary to lease
water from the irrigators in drought years in order to provide river flows needed
by salmon and other fish – including threatened Coho salmon. Some Klamath River and salmon advocates see this as
unsustainable and a threat to the Public Trust Doctrine which has been used to restore streamflow – most notably in
a famous lawsuit involving Mono
Lake and the Los Angeles
Metropolitan Water Authority.
The water deal has also been criticized because it does not
provide assurance that the Klamath’s national wildlife refuges will have
sufficient water during drought years. Klamath refuges host 80% of Pacific
Flyway birds during migration and the largest concentration of wintering Bald
Eagles outside Alaska.
Non-federal irrigators could also be asked to give up more water for fish in order to
make up for the water irrigators in the federal Klamath Project are not
supplying. Some of these non-federal irrigators criticized the deal
announced last week.
The dam deal calls for a cost-benefit
analysis by the federal government. If the feds decide
that the cost of dam removal exceeds benefits, the dams would not come down and
the entire process of seeking a license to operate the dams would begin again.
There are several other conditions which could nix dam removal in the dozen or
so years between a final agreement and demolition. Critics say this would allow PacifiCorp to manipulate the process to
avoid dam removal indefinitely.
Dam removal would also depend on the State of California coming up with
$250 million in water bond money to finance part of the removal. Another $200
million would come from PacifiCorp’s electric customers. A consumer advocacy
group has criticized charging electric customers for dam removal and one
commentator has suggested that Governor Schwarzenegger is supporting
Klamath dam removal as an inducement to voters to approve bond financing for two
new dams and reservoirs in the Sacramento
Valley as well as a controversial
canal to move northern California water around the Sacramento River Delta to
corporate irrigators and cities in southern California.
The linked dam and water deals are likely the last attempt
by the Bush Administration to lock in its vision of how to end conflict over
water in the Klamath
River Basin. That vision
would return those who get water from the Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath
Project to the head of the line for Klamath water in exchange for a promise of
dam removal in the future. It has been effective in splitting the coalition of
tribes, environmental, river and fishing groups which previously stood together
for restoration of the Klamath River and
recovery of Klamath Salmon.
Some Klamath watchers wonder why this
vision for the Klamath is being backed now when Bush is about to leave office.
They say the Klamath River, Klamath salmon and
the Klamath refuges would get a better deal from the Obama Administration.
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