Under a cloudless blue sky and with the water of the Klamath River glistening in the sun behind them, a host of federal, state and tribal officials gathered around a fish cleaning table this morning to sign a pair of agreements to remove four dams and chart a new path forward for communities from the river’s mouth to its headwaters. They will bypass Congress and instead seek permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to remove four hydroelectric dams, which block fish migration and hurt water quality.
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They also agreed to protect farmers and ranchers from rising power and water prices as they work on a broader pact to bring peace to long-running water wars in the Klamath River basin, which straddles the Oregon-California border.
Brown Jr. today joined state, federal and Native American tribal governments, as well as Klamath Basin water users and businesses, to continue moving forward with the largest river restoration and dam removal project in the nation. Kogan alleges the government agencies are violating the original agreements by not giving the district enough time to study the new proposal and failing to disclose key elements of the pact, including an economic impact study he said OR and California utilities regulators will rely on in considering dam-removal permits. That company will oversee the dams until removal. They will discuss the proposed plans for the removal of the Klamath dams.
“These agreements are more than ink and paper, they are a roadmap to the future of the Klamath Basin and of the people who live there”, said Governor Kate Brown.
Why are water and fish in the Klamath Basin so important? .
Farmers want to negotiate a water-sharing arrangement with the Klamath Tribes in Oregon.
“The decision will rest with FERC, but we will be weighing in in a powerful way with our views as the Department of the Interior of why we will believe dam removal is the right thing to do for the Klamath River”, Jewell said.
U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell holds the amended Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement with Yurok Tribal Chairman Thomas O’Rourke, right center, with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, right, at a ceremony to sign historic agreements to tear down four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, at a ceremony in Klamath, Calif., Wednesday, April 6, 2016.
The deals move the region a big step closer to the removal of four dams on the Klamath River, which runs through Southern Oregon and Northern California. As you may imagine, tribes along the Klamath who depend on the salmon for food – and for cultural and religious reasons – were devastated.
“This is a huge exercise of humankind fixing some of the mistakes of the past”, Jerry Brown said.
Pacificorp on the other hand has always supported the removal of the dams due to the liability protection that it entails.
More work is needed “to provide long-term certainty over water supply for agriculture and to maintain health flows in the river, and restore land taken from the Klamath tribes”, Oregon’s Democratic Sens. PacifiCorp customers in California and OR and California revenue bonds will pay for the project.
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