Restoring the Klamath River Basin: The Largest Dam Removal Project in the World

Restoring the Klamath River Basin: The Largest Dam Removal Project in the World

0:00:00.8 John Sheehan: The Klamath River in Northern California was once a bountiful source of wild salmon.

0:00:05.7 Bob Pagliuco: There were significant amounts of Spring Chinook and Fall Chinook and Coho and Steelhead. I used to hear from folks that used to be able to walk across the backs of these fish and not touch the water to get to the other side of the river.

0:00:17.3 JS: Today it is not.

0:00:18.6 Amy Cordalis: Things are awful, the fish runs have just plummeted.

0:00:33.0 JS: And the cause is almost entirely human-made. Dams, throughout the 20th century, six dams were constructed in the Klamath Basin, irrigation, diversions and hydropower, but at the expense of the river's health and of the indigenous people who have lived there for generations.

0:00:49.0 AC: A huge part of our life force was coming from the river. We've always been fishing people.

0:00:56.4 JS: But things are about to change, thanks to what's being called...

0:01:00.4 BP: The biggest dam removal project in the world.

0:01:03.7 JS: This is Dive In with NOAA Fisheries. I'm John Sheehan, and today we'll hear about the restoration of the Klamath River Basin involving the efforts of many, many people.

0:01:13.2 BP: There's a lot of different organizations, state and federal, tribal, NGOs that have been working to restore some of the habitat in the basin.

0:01:20.9 JS: This is Bob Pagliuco a Marine Habitat Resource Specialist in the Office of Habitat Conservation's Restoration Center. NOAA Fisheries is a key stakeholder in the removal process, though not as central as the people more directly impacted.

0:01:35.0 AC: My family has always lived on the mouth of the Klamath and I always felt safe there, there just was this deep sense of like, "I am safe here and I'll always be provided for."

0:01:48.0 JS: This is Amy Cordalis, a member of the Yurok Tribe, and an attorney has been deeply involved with the dam removal and basin restoration efforts, and with the Klamath river itself for her entire life. Because as we'll hear, this story started a long time ago. Dam removal is the latest development, albeit, a very significant one. In a series of events and actions that stretch back to the founding of our country and beyond, it's about Westward expansion or colonialism, about how this country was built, and on whose backs, the decisions that were made and the consequences. It is also a story of people coming together in spite of this history to try to set things right. So let's start where it starts, in the Klamath River Basin, here's Bob.

0:02:34.0 BP: The Klamath Basin straddles Northwestern California and Southern Oregon, it's bisected by the state line there. It's 15,000 square miles, it's also the third largest salmon producer on the West Coast.

0:02:49.3 JS: And so give us some history of the region, what has happened to it that's necessitated this restoration effort.

0:02:56.6 BP: Well, tribes have been living in the Klamath Basin since time immemorial, and there's several tribes that live in the basin, the Yurok tribe, Karuk, Hoopa, Klamath tribes, the Shasta Indian nation, the Modoc nation and then several other tribes well, including the Courts Valley in Resighini Rancheria. And they've been managing their land and resources through ceremonies and fire and just general land stewardship. And all that changed in 1850 when the Gold Rush began, so the 49ers came out and cattle ranching happened and agriculture, timber harvest and obviously, the mining. They diked and drained a lot of the wetlands to create agricultural fields and they also needed water. So they created a lot of water diversions as well, taking water out of the Klamath River and its tributaries to water those crops. Also, dams were built, there was six dams built in the Klamath Basin from 1918 to essentially 1965 and that changed the Klamath Basin significantly. Some of the effects of those dams were felt as early as in the 1980s, the Lost River and the shortnose suckers who live in the upper Klamath Basin. They were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. And then shortly after that, in 1997, our NOAA trust resource, Coho salmon was also listed under the Endangered Species Act.

0:04:22.8 BP: These dams, they block over 420 miles of habitat and they also influence water quality, so water temperatures go up, dissolved oxygens go down. And then also, there's an incredible amount of fish disease that is created by the conditions from these dams. There's also toxic algae blooms of cyanobacteria and they produce microcystin toxins which is really bad for fish, it's really bad for dogs and wild life if they drink that, often times they'll die and it's not good for humans at all. So there's quite a bit of issues associated with these dams and the reservoirs behind them.

0:05:02.3 JS: Yeah, a lot of impacts on wildlife and on habitat. Can you talk about some of the impacts on the people?

0:05:10.6 BP: The tribal communities that have relied on these fish for ages have lost their connection to the river and when the river is sick, so is their community. The tribal members in the basin have high rates of diabetes and poverty based on a lot of different things that have happened to them and they're really struggling and the fishing communities are struggling as well. The Klamath is one of two major populations that essentially set the regulations for sport, ocean and tribal fishery in California. And because of the low salmon runs, commercial sport and tribal fisheries have been significantly limited over the past few years.

[music]

0:05:53.9 JS: This is where I want to bring Amy back into the conversation. So Amy, can you describe the Yurok tribe's history with the Klamath's watershed and with the river?

0:06:03.0 AC: Sure, so it starts at the beginning of time. So we might be here a while. [laughter] The creator made the land, the water, made all the creatures, the plants and the animals, and then made the humans last. And told the Yurok people that if we lived in a balance with the natural world, that we would never want for anything. We would always have enough. But a key to that balance and sustainability and livelihood, was that we never took more than what we needed from the natural world to survive. And so Yurok throughout the generations and thousands and thousands of years has taken that, what I call cultural covenant, very seriously where the creator made Yurok country and we've tried to live in a balance with the natural world and steward it, and protect it, so that it would keep supporting us and our livelihood. And what's really unique about Yurok is that we've never been relocated. We are still in our Aboriginal territory. And for Native American or indigenous Californians, that's really rare. There wasn't really a heavy influx of colonizers and Europeans into Yurok country until right around the 1850s.

0:07:37.9 AC: Through even the late 1800s into the 1900s, we continued our village style, like fishing way of life and used the river for almost everything. So in 1888, the Federal Government Congress passed what's called the General Allotment Act. And that act essentially opened up Indian reservations across the country for settlement. What came out of the General Allotment Act, and Yurok losing a lot of its land on the reservation was that then the state of California argued that Yurok and the reservation was no longer Indian country. And they started making those arguments right around 1920, 1930. And what that meant for fishing was that the state took the position that the Yurok people had no special rights to fish on the Klamath River. Now for Yurok, this was egregious, this is mind-blowing to them. Yurok people were essentially subject to state prosecution, for just trying to fish.

0:08:49.6 JS: And I think one of the real turning points was the Supreme Court trial, Mattz versus Arnett in 1973, involving your family. Could you describe it?

0:08:58.3 AC: Yeah, so Mattz is my family. Raymond Mattz, who was the plaintiff in that case, was my great uncle. And the family fought long and hard for that decision, and eventually the family really grew tired of being the subject of the state's, essentially illegal prosecution of them for just trying to fish. And so one day in 1969, my great-grandmother, Geneva Mattz told her son Raymond Mattz, that she wanted fish heads for dinner. And so Raymond Mattz, when his mother was hungry for fish heads, went down to the river with a couple other friends and his older brother also, there were five of them, and they put a net in the water. The state took the position that it was illegal for Yurok people to fish with gill nets in the Klamath River. And the story goes that they confiscated the nets., Raymond goes to state court, he shows up and the judge says, "Give me a dollar and I'll give you your net back and drop the charges." And uncle Ray said, "No." And so California Indian Legal Services took uncle Ray's case, and he did just what he told that judge he would do. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

0:10:23.1 JS: He took his case to the Supreme Court and he won.

0:10:26.1 AC: And one of the most important components of the court's analysis was that the Indian people had stayed on the land, and they had kept fishing in the same places that, their ancestors did. And because of that, the whole area had maintained what the court called its Indian character. And as a result of that, it was still Indian country. So I think it's a beautiful story of Indian resistance and they just kept being Indians. So finally in the '80s and '90s, the Yurok people had secured our right to fish, not only for just subsistence purposes, but also for commercial purposes, right? And for ceremonial purposes. And so '80s and '90s we had a few good, decent years of a commercial fishery. But then in the late '90s we started seeing the fish runs decline. And essentially through the 2000s until now, the fish runs have just plummeted.

0:11:32.2 JS: And this is where Amy herself enters the picture and plays her part in the story of this river.

0:11:37.6 AC: In 2002, I was in college at the time and I had taken a summer internship with the Yurok Tribal Fisheries, and my job that whole year had been as a fish technician, counting fish and counting the tribe's harvest. September rolls around, it's hot. We are expecting a really large run of Fall Chinook to come back into the river. And then we start getting reports that the fish are dying. And that had never happened before. And so it was like, "What? The fish are dying?" So I remember getting in one of the Yurok tribal fisheries boats, and sure enough we started observing dead fish floating in the water. And as we got further up the river, it got worse and worse and essentially what we saw was, you would see a fish, an adult Fall Chinook salmon, and they would come up out of the water and their mouths would be open, like they were gasping for air. And then they'd go back down and then just a little while after that, they'd come up belly up to the surface of the river, and they had died. After a few days, carcasses, their bodies would line the banks of the river, three, four layers deep. I remember being in the boat thinking my great grandmother, Geneva Mattz, who fought for Yurok fish and water and the river and sovereignty her whole life is rolling over in her grave. And I gotta go to law school to try to prevent this from ever happening again.

0:13:19.7 JS: I had planned on asking you why you became an attorney, thinking that it likely had something to do with the fish kill. I had no idea that it was such a direct and visceral reason and experiencing this very devastating event and then making the decision like, "Yep, I gotta do something." That's tragic but amazing.

0:13:40.2 AC: I wasn't the only Yurok person who was moved to that decision, right? The fish kill has inspired a whole generation of Yurok people to advocate for our river and there's a lot of us that went out and got degrees and are now working for the tribe in a very professional capacity. And again that's another way in which those fish help contribute to the betterment of not only the river, but our people as well.

0:14:13.1 JS: And now I want to bring Bob back into the story, because this is the point where NOAA Fisheries plays a role in initiating the eventual dam removal.

0:14:19.2 BP: In 2002, there was a massive fish kill where agricultural interest in the upper basin got their water and flows were reduced in the lower basin for fish, and it was also coupled with a pretty decent sized run. And because of the low water conditions, they all kind of crowded together in pools and disease just spread rampantly and killed upwards of 75,000 adult Chinook and Coho and Steelhead. And just after seeing that, everyone got to the table and said, "This can't be sustainable, something needs to happen." NOAA Fisheries played a key role getting the beginning stages of dam removal happening because we recommended fish passage.

JS: Essentially through its regulatory process, NOAA Fisheries required the company leasing the dams to provide fish passage, or fish ladders, over the dams, and ultimately the company declined.

BP: And that opened the door to dam removal, and at that point 40 or 50 different parties, NGOs, conservation fishing groups, farmers, tribes, state and federal agencies all got together and developed a couple different agreements.

0:15:12.3 JS: Not all of those agreements worked out, but it was agreed that the dams had to come down.

0:15:15.3 BP: And they created a dam removal entity, which is the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. And they're the ones getting all the parties together. So now it's just moving forward with dam removal.

0:15:26.9 JS: To give us a sense of what that entails, you can't just blow up the dam. What does dam removal... What does that take?

0:15:37.7 BP: Well, [chuckle] it takes decades of planning, having folks that are really dedicated to the process, getting over the hurdles. And what's happening now they're gonna start mobilizing equipment and getting up into that reservoir reach and getting ready for the dam removal. So in 2023, this year we call that the pre-drawdown year. And on January 1st, 2024, that's the big show. That's when those plugs at the bottoms of the dams are gonna be pulled. And reservoir and sediment drawdown and demolition essentially will occur and they're gonna be working their tails off trying to get all of those dams out using heavy equipment. Just removing all the concrete and the earthen berms. And then we should have volitional passage by November in 2024. And then after that 2025 and beyond, there's gonna be a lot of restoration and monitoring to make sure that there's fish passage at those tributary mouths. Make sure that the vegetation that's gonna be planted in the reservoir footprint and seeded is surviving. So there's gonna be a lot of stewardship as well, five to seven years post dam removal.

0:16:54.8 JS: And how long do you anticipate before you start seeing the environmental impacts?

0:17:00.8 BP: These dam removals are gonna affect the entire basin. These salmon are gonna bring marine derived nutrients and carry them all the way up into the upper basin to replenish those nutrients that have been lost for the last 100 years and help riparian forests grow, and feed the animals up there and also feed the tribes that are up there as well and provide fishing opportunities. So the majority of the impacts are gonna be within the reservoir dam reach footprint and below, but there's definitely gonna be a lot of benefits to the upper basin as well as these fish make their way back. These fish are incredibly resilient, and I think in 2024, as soon as those dams are down, I would bet that juveniles start migrating past that area looking for alternative habitats. This is the largest dam removal in the world and it's gonna be a huge benefit to the Klamath River, but there still is more work to do.

0:17:55.2 BP: Just last year in December, NOAA, Trout Unlimited, and the Pacific State's Marine Fisheries Commission just released a reservoir reach restoration plan, where we went out there for the last three years and assessed the habitat conditions, looked at what was needing to be restored, and then developed a prioritized plan for how to address some of those things. So we came up with over 200 projects that deal with screening, irrigation, diversions, habitat restoration, building wetlands to kind of reduce nutrient inputs into upper Klamath Lake. There's flood claim reconnection projects down in the lower basin as well. And then we've been experiencing several years of drought and water conservation is definitely one of our really high priorities, both in the upper basin and in the Shasta and Scott Rivers where there's a lot of agriculture too. So working with those communities to develop win-wins where they can still have a successful agricultural enterprise, but the fish also get some benefits of some cold water as well.

0:19:00.9 JS: And it's worth repeating that, as Bob mentioned, there are many entities and communities affected by these decisions. Some homeowners were concerned for their property values, or that their wells would go dry. Hydroelectric customers had to find new ways to get power. And when you're talking about water, that's going to mean serious consequences for agriculture. A diverse array of interests had to come to the table to work this out.

0:19:25.1 BP: There are some folks that are not necessarily super excited about the dam removal, but through the public comment process and the inclusivity of everyone that have been kind of going through this process, they've figured out some ways to mitigate and help address some of those concerns.

0:19:42.8 JS: But at the end of the day...

0:19:44.8 BP: It's not only the largest dam removal project in the world, but it's also the largest environmental justice project that I've ever worked on. We're almost at the finish line here. It's just essentially persistence and perseverance. It's a story of fighting for bringing back the salmon and bringing back the tribe's way of life and culture. And the tribes have led the way.

0:20:11.2 JS: Now that we're seemingly right on the edge of this dam removal process, these dams are coming down within the next year and a half. What is the sensation like? What is the feeling among the Yurok?

0:20:27.2 AC: It's almost unbelievable. I would say it feels like it's a miracle if I hadn't gone through all of the work it took to get us here. [laughter] I was Yurok's lawyer through that all, but also am Yurok's representative to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. I'm the board member and that's the entity responsible for dam removal. So, I play a lot of different roles in dam removal and we worked really hard and there's no doubt that we hit some regulatory hurdles. And as a coalition and with a lot of determination, we got to this point, and it feels really exciting. It feels historical. I don't wanna say we've won because there's still so much work to do, but the dams are gonna come down. And I think as we get closer we'll settle more into this new reality of, we turned enemies into allies and I can't even imagine what it's gonna be like to stand at the bank of the river and watch that dam come down and see the river flow again. So we have this beacon of hope through dam removal, but there is still so much work that has to be done. So wish us luck. [laughter]

0:21:54.8 JS: Amy Cordalis, thanks so much for talking with me and thanks for sharing this story.

0:21:57.4 AC: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity.

0:22:03.9 JS: Amy Cordalis is an attorney and member of the Yurok Tribe. Bob Pagliuco is a Marine Habitat Resource specialist in NOAA Fisheries Office of Habitat Conservation's Restoration Center. To find more about the removal of the Klamath dams, you can visit klamathrenewal.org or get more general information about conservation efforts, including about the previously largest dam removal project on the Elwha River at our website, fisheries.noaa.gov. I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.

[music]