Removing dams. I have written several blogs about the plague of dam-building throughout the world over many years, the inefficiency of their long-term contribution to energy production, and the need to remove as many of these environmental disasters as possible. This story is about such a removal project.
The Klamath River is free of four huge dams for the first time in generations. But for the Yurok tribe, the river’s restoration is only just beginning – starting with 18 billion seeds.
The Yurok Reservation sits on the final 44 miles (71km) of the Klamath River before it meets the Pacific Ocean – a remote strip of land where there is one convenience store attached to the local gas station. Historially, the Yurok territory spanned more than one million acres, and the tribe has relied on the river and the surrounding land extending back thousands of years. Suddenly, disaster struck.
A whole generation of salmon died on that one day. Low water flow from the Iron Gate Dam, one of four on the lower Klamath River, was found to be a “substantial causative factor”, a report from the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program found.
The dams have long been a point of contention for the tribe, who have been campaigning for their removal since the 1990s. The river is the lifeblood for the Yuroks, and the salmon are family. “The death of salmon means the death of our entire way of life,” an elder says. “Everyone is connected. Taking these dams down is a life-or-death situation for us.”
At the end of August 2024, after years of negotiating, and decades of activism, the last dam was removed, reopening more than 400 miles (644km) of river, the final stage in what was the largest dam removal project in US history.
The Klamath Basin covers more than 12,000 square miles (31,000 sq km) in southern Oregon and northern California, and was home to the JC Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2 and Iron Gate dams, all owned by PacifiCorp, an electric utilities company. The Klamath was also the third-largest salmon producing river on the U.S.’s West Coast before the construction of the dams blocked fish from accessing almost 400 miles (640km) of critical river habitat.
Fall chinook salmon numbers plummeted by more than 90%, and spring chinook by 98%. Steelhead trout, coho salmon and Pacific lamprey numbers also saw drastic declines, and the Klamath tribes in the upper basin have been without their salmon fishery for a century, since the completion of Copco 1 in 1922. The situation became so bad that the Yurok tribe – who are known as the salmon people – began importing Alaskan salmon for their annual salmon festival, traditionally held to celebrate the first return of fall chinook salmon to the Klamath River.
The dams also had a severe impact on water temperature and quality – growth of toxic algae behind two of the dams resulted in health warnings against water contact by humans.
“It was painful,” says Willard Carlson, a Yurok elder, who is known as a river warrior, and was part of the inter-generational campaign. “All those years seeing our river damaged like that. I remember as a kid we’d have other people from nearby tribes making fun of our river. ‘Oh, you’re Yurok, your river is dirty.'”
Removing the dams has been a rocky road, thanks to conflict between the number of tribal, local, state and federal stakeholders, and the cost of removal – estimated at $450m (£340m). In 2022, the go-ahead was finally given to remove the dams, 12 years after the original agreement to pave the way for the project was signed in 2010. Oregon and California agreed to shoulder joint liability and, in October 2023, the first dam came down.
“The removal is a victory,” says Carlson, although he isn’t fully celebrating yet. “We still have to be cautious, because our resources are still under threat.”
The water that initially rushed downriver was dirty and smelly, say the tribe, and debris that had piled up behind the dams for decades suddenly was dislodged and brought downstream. But even in the few months since the first dam was removed, they’ve noticed a difference.
“A couple years down the road, once the river has been able to repair itself, we’ll begin to see healthier fish runs,” says Oscar Gensaw, a Yurok tribal member and fisherman. “You can definitely see already the river is starting to do its own thing, and that’s the best thing for us – letting the river do what it needs to do, because it knows what it needs to do to repair itself. By 2061, it is estimated that the chinook salmon population will have recovered by an average of 81%.
However, although removing the dams is one thing, restoring the land is quite another. Between 2018 and 2021 seed collection crews – many of whom are tribal elders – were hired to harvest native seeds, by hand, in preparation for the dam removal. They collected 98 species and around 2,000lbs (900kg) of seeds. The seeds were then dispatched to specialised nurseries, which propagated them en masse, and sent the seedlings to storage facilities where they were kept until the time came for them to be planted. A total of 18 billion native seeds were propagated – more than 66,000lbs (30,000kg) worth – each species selected for a purpose: to retain sediment, to prepare the soil for other plants, for cultural uses, or to be a food source. Wheatgrass, yarrow, lupine and oak trees – an important cultural species for the Yuroks and a keystone species – to name a few.
After planting is completed, the area will be monitored and maintained for five years by Resource Environmental Solutions. There are four success criteria, set out by the restoration plan, that need to be met in order for the project to be considered successful: species richness, vegetation cover, scarcity of invasive species, and stem count.
Being involved in the restoration has also been healing for the tribe, and sends a powerful message to other areas and communities. For so long the Yurok have been forcibly kept off their land.
It is also important that this rehabilitation is indigenous-led because usually you see three, five, 10-year timelines when it comes to restoration. When it comes to indigenous mindsets, it’s a seven-generation plan. How is this plant going to affect us 100 years from now? Taking care of a plant that your great-grandmother took care of puts a lot of perspective into life. And this is the first step in reclaiming the ability to take care of the Klamath River.
An inspiring and encouraging story.
