The Klamath River was once a major habitat for salmon, but hydroelectric dams along the Oregon-California border region caused their population to plummet.
By Sam Ribakoff, Courthouse News Service
After more than a century of being blocked by a series of dams, the Klamath River is once again free-flowing after two cofferdams in northern California were breached on Wednesday, according to the office of Governor Gavin Newsom.
Letting the river flow without being constrained by dams gives native fish species, like steelhead, coho and Chinook salmon a chance to regain access to more than 400 miles of spawning and rearing habitat on the Klamath and its tributaries in California and Oregon. It allows allows Native American groups in the region like the Klamath, the Yurok and Karuk Tribes to regain access to culturally important food sources.
“This moment is decades in the making — and reflects California’s commitment to righting the wrongs of the past. Today, fish are swimming freely in the Klamath for the first time in more than a century, thanks to the incredible work of our tribal, local and federal partners,” Newsom said in a press release.
The river was once a major habitat for salmon, but construction of hydroelectric dams in California and Oregon over the last century took a toll on water quality and reduced the population of the fish, which have to migrate to the Pacific Ocean, then return upstream to reproduce. The four dams on the river made that journey much more difficult.
In 2002 a massive fish kill left over 60,000 salmon rotting along the banks of the river.
Local Native American groups have fought for years to undam the river.
In 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a final Environmental Impact Statement recommending the removal of the four dams, which has been the largest dam removal project in U.S. history second to the 2012 removal of the Elwha Dam on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
The Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit created to oversee the project, wrote in a Facebook post that crews will begin to remove more diversion infrastructure at the sites of the cofferdams, with an expected completion date sometime in the early fall.
“But restoration of the former reservoir footprints will be ongoing,” it wrote.
Now that the last two impediments to the river — two smaller “cofferdams” called Iron Gate and Copco No.1, which were used to build the larger dam infrastructure in California’s Siskiyou County —have been removed, salmon populations are expected to rise, said Peter Tira, an information officer with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“Salmon populations have struggled in California, in the West. This is one of the most significant events to happen in favor of salmon in a very, very long time,” Tira said.
The salmon can now access their historic habitats, but also colder water behind where the dams once stood, which is important, especially in the summer months as the climate continues to warm, he said.
Now the project can shift from just removing dam infrastructure to concentrating on restoring the river, “which is a much more exciting phase to be in,” he added.
