Workers breach key Klamath dams, allowing salmon to swim freely for the first time in a century

(29 Aug 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Hornbrook, California – 17 September 2023
1. Various Iron Gate Dam
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Mark Bransom, CEO, Klamath River Renewal Corporation:
"We’re in the process of removing the Iron Gate Dam and three other dams here on the Klamath. A year from now, the Klamath will be a free flowing river through this hydroelectric reach for the first time in over 100 years."
3. Various hydroelectric equipment at dam
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Mark Bransom, CEO, Klamath River Renewal Corporation:
"These dams were built to produce hydroelectric power. They don’t store water for municipal or agricultural uses, and they’re not operated to provide any flood control benefits, simply to use the water to spin turbines to generate electricity. The electric company that previously owned the dams made a decision that they did not want to continue to operate them and entered into a settlement agreement in 2016 that resulted in the transfer of the facilities to the renewable Corporation for purposes of removal."
5. Blueprint showing tree planting plans once dam removed
6. Reservoir which will eventually be eliminated
7. Various Copco Dams in process of being removed
8. Various reservoir above dam

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Chiloquin, Oregon – 18 September 2023
9. Creek feeding into Klamath River
10. Fly fisherman in creek
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Don Gentry, Natural Resources Specialist, Klamath Tribes:
"I mean some of our people say we’re here because those fish were here. You know, it helped us survive the ages."
12. Various creek where tribes hope salmon return
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Don Gentry, Natural Resources Specialist, Klamath Tribes:
"To restore the salmon, it may take really concentrated efforts, some hatchery supplementation before they finally can maintain their own populations, spawning naturally and reach harvestable levels. The biologist said, what happens if even a one salmon comes up here, you know, after the dams are removed? You know, in early years, that would be a pretty amazing."

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Hornbrook, California – 17 September 2023
14. Various lakefront homes which may lose waterfront views
STORYLINE:
Workers breached the final dams on a key section of the Klamath River on Wednesday, clearing the way for salmon to swim freely through a major watershed near the California-Oregon border for the first time in more than a century as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion.

Crews used excavators to remove rock dams that have been diverting water upstream of two dams, Iron Gate and Copco No. 1, both of which were already almost completely removed.

With each scoop, more and more river water was able to flow through the historic channel.

The work has given salmon a passageway to key swaths of habitat just in time for the fall Chinook, or king salmon, spawning season.

The demolition comes about a month before removal of four towering dams on the Klamath was set to be completed as part of a national movement to let rivers return to their natural flow and to restore ecosystems for fish and other wildlife.

As of February, more than 2,000 dams had been removed in the U.S., the majority in the last 25 years, according to the advocacy group American Rivers.

Among them were dams on Washington state’s Elwha River, which flows out of Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Condit Dam on the White Salmon River, a tributary of the Columbia.

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