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Frequently Asked Questions on Klamath Dam Removal
Q: How will dam removal impact Klamath water quality? Is it true that the river has always had bad water quality in the summer time?
A:While it may be true that water flowing from the Upper Klamath basin was historically murkier than the headwaters of many major rivers, it is also true that PacifiCorp's dams intensify existing water quality issues while creating entirely new ones.
PacifiCorp's dams transform a naturally flowing and turbulent Klamath into a series of warm, thermally stratified, and stagnant reservoirs.
This unnaturally warm and stagnant water breeds dangerous outbreaks of the toxic algae Microcystis aeruginosa in Copco and Iron Gate reservoirs. M. aeruginosa produces a liver toxin that has been documented by the Karuk Tribe at levels 4000 times what the World Health Organization considers a moderate risk to human health. This toxin, Microcystin, is considered a pollutant by the US EPA, who has put this section of the Klamath on its list of impaired water bodies as a result of legal action by Klamath Riverkeeper. When blooms are at their highest in late summer and fall, they are released into the mainstem Klamath River, prompting public health officials to post the entire lower river with warning signs cautioning people to avoid recreational contact with the water.
This algae also combines with the reservoirs' temperature issues to cause downriver releases of water with unnaturally high pH (acidity) and unnaturally low dissolved oxygen. These releases are also unnaturally warm in late summer and fall and unnaturally cool in the spring. Warmer water in summer and fall has a negative impact on salmon spawning success and egg survival. Cooler water in the spring causes juvenile salmon to grow at a slower rate, making them less likely to survive to maturity and spawn.
In some ways, the Klamath basin is "upside down," with marshes, wetlands, and lakes dominating the upper basin, and forested, mountain streams predominant in the lower basin. This means that historically, water coming down the Klamath canyon near the California-Oregon border was draining nutrient-rich lakes and wetlands, and may have been turbid (cloudy) with organic matter at times as a result. However, we do not have an accurate scientific picture of the Klamath's pre-agricultural and pre-dam water quality. What we do have is a lot of anecdotal information, as well as a significant motive to exaggerate historical water quality and quantity issues, because it deflects accountability off of current practices. In other words, if we can simply say Klamath water quality was always bad, we have no reason to alter current practices that contribute to extremely poor water quality today.
Q: What do California clean water permits have to do with Klamath dam removal?
A: The last regulatory hoop that PacifiCorp must jump through in order for FERC to issue a new dam license (or deny license application) is the acquisition of a Clean Water Permit from CA and OR. In California, the issuance of such a permit is handled by the CA Water Resources Control Board and must be compliant with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) – this means a public review process that could take 1-2 years.
The Water Board’s consideration of PacifiCorp’s clean water application could end with a permit requiring mitigation measures – such as a water treatment facility of some sort to deal with the massive blooms of toxic blue-green algae – or else they could deny PacifiCorp’s application if they find that no mitigation measures exist that could address the dams’ water quality impacts. The latter option would likely lead to dam removal since it would preclude FERC from issuing a new license.
The State Water Board is now taking what are called "scoping" comments on what they call the Klamath Hydroproject EIR, this is the document that will list alternatives including keeping the dams and mitigating for impacts, or denying the 401 permit and removing the dams. The public has until November 17th to tell the Water Board what should be included in the draft EIR. You can learn more about this and email the Water Board from our website. Klamath Riverkeeper is working with several other organizations to ensure that the Water Board takes into account all the issues the Federal Environmental Impact Report (issued last year) did not, including environmental justice, public health, Tribal water quality standards, and other issues.
After this round of comments, the Water Board will release a draft EIR, probably in 6-12 months. We will then have the opportunity to comment again before the final EIR is issued. At that point, Klamath Riverkeeper will take any action necessary to ensure the final EIR is compliant with the Clean Water Act, and the dams are removed.
Q: What's the story behind PacifiCorp's dams' state water quality permit applications?
A: On Friday July 11, the day before the Water Board’s CEQA process was to initiate, PacifiCorp withdrew their clean water permit application. The withdrawal letter stated that PacifiCorp was withdrawing in order to “facilitate settlement negotiations.”
However, since withdrawal, there have been no meetings between PacifiCorp and the Klamath Settlement Group and no settlement proposal has been offered to the Klamath Settlement Group for consideration. According to the Water Board, this situation -- the withdrawal of a water quality certification permit application without resubmitting another alternative application – is highly uncommon. So uncommon that it led the Water Board to send an official letter to PacifiCorp requesting that the application be resubmitted by September 30th so that mounting water quality and fisheries issues can be properly addressed.
At the end of September, PacifiCorp resubmitted an application, but it was for status quo operations of the dam. The California Water Board noted this was a legally infeasible application, and decided to complete an Environmental Impact Report on the PacifiCorp's dams that will include options for dam removal. Comment on this EIR from our website.
PacifiCorp's antics with its California water quality application is yet another in a long line of tactics the corporation has pursued to stall the FERC relicensing process. This begs the question:
Q: Why is PacifiCorp stalling the FERC relicensing process?
A: The only scenario under which PacifiCorp can actually generate a profit from the Klamath dams is status quo operations in which the dams continue to run with no fish passage, which is illegal under federal law. Whether relicensing or removal, the Klamath gravy train is over for PacifiCorp once the relicensing process comes to an end, because they will be forced to pursue expensive measures to bring their project into compliance with current federal fish passage standards, or the cheaper option of removing the dams. Thus, the longer PacifiCorp can delay, the more money they make at the expense of the Klamath fishery and Klamath water quality.
Q: What is the Klamath "settlement" or Klamath Restoration Agreement?
A: The "settlement negotiations," as they're commonly called, were triggered by the expiration of PacifiCorp's operating licenses for its Klamath dams and the subsequent calls for their removal by stakeholders throughout the Klamath basin. For the last three years, nearly 30 groups participated in a series of facilitated meetings in an attempt to reach an agreement on whether or not the dams should be relicensed. In most cases, settlement processes, rather than Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decisions, are the means by which dams are actually removed in the United States.
These stakeholder groups represented almost everyone with a stake in the health of the Klamath River, including all four Native Tribes, many government and state agencies, nonprofit conservation groups, and watershed councils. The High Country News feature Peace on the Klamath describes this process from the vantage point of the Yurok Tribe and the Klamath Water Users Association. The Klamath Riverkeeper website features a short list of news and opinion pieces about the settlement as well.
The draft Klamath Restoration Agreement (KRA) was finally released early this year, making national news and garnering some controversy among a few environmental groups outside the basin, as well as pro-dam advocates within the basin. You can read the agreement and its official press release online.
Q: Does the Klamath Restoration Agreement mean the dams are coming out?
A: Though many headlines led the public to believe that dam removal was imminent upon release of a draft KRA, in fact the crown jewel of dam removal can only proceed with PacifiCorp's cooperation. Dam removal, as well as ratification of the rest of the KRA, rests on the outcome of a separate but parallel Hydropower Agreement currently being negotiated between PacifiCorp and the federal government.
Midway through the settlement negotiations, PacifiCorp was asked to pursue a separate settlement process when stakeholders realized the KRA would ultimately settle many other issues that did not involve PacifiCorp, such as flow releases, reservation lands, and others. To date, PacifiCorp has been ambivalent about removing the dams, and has stalled all processes leading to a timely resolution of its Hydropower Agreement with the United States Government.
Q: Why is there some controversy over the Klamath Restoration Agreement?
A:The most vocal opponents of the KRA have been environmentalists such as Oregon Wild who do not like that the KRA allows ongoing farming of the Klamath Wildlife Refuges and who feel that the KRA's flow regime gives unfair advantage to irrigators, a contention echoed by the Hoopa Valley Tribe.
A scientific response addressing concerns the settlement underallocates water for fish was released this spring.
Some stakeholders point out that Oregon Wild is itself at fault for unstrategically introducing the issue of farming on the wildlife refuges into an arena where compromise in that regard was unlikely. Despite the fact that other groups may have been sympathetic to the idea of reducing agricultural impacts on wildlife refuges, they may have felt that the restoration agreement negotiations were an inappropriate place to attain this goal. When stakeholders dissolved the negotiations midway through, they were re-initiated without Oregon Wild so as to continue with negotiations minus the looming threat of total stalemate. Other stakeholders noted by way of explanation that while Tribes and farmers needed a negotiated solution to the ongoing Klamath Crisis in order to keep food on the table, Oregon Wild could continue to be grant-funded even if (or especially if) crisis continues in the Klamath Basin.
Proponents of the KRA note that it represents a series of earnest compromises for all parties involved, and therefore paves the way for formerly warring factions to work together in the future. The Klamath basin has been gridlocked by conflict over water management for many years, and every group that depends on the Klamath, including farmers, Tribes and fishermen, has suffered as a result. These groups whose livelihoods are directly affected by the Klamath generally support the settlement because it forges an end to the Klamath Crisis that has threatened their families and communities and sets forth a blueprint for sharing scarce resources.
Klamath Riverkeeper was not party to the settlement negotiations. Klamath Riverkeeper remains neutral on the KRA, and continues to advocate for the removal of PacifiCorp's dams as the cornerstone of water quality and fisheries restoration on the river.
Q: Why not just build bypass channels around the dams instead of removing them?
A: Constructing fish passage channels around the dams may seem like a logical way to satisfy the interests of numerous parties. However, fish passage is only one of several issues that have prompted so many people to advocate for the removal of the dams.
1. Right now, up to 90% of Chinook juveniles may die in the stretch immediately below Iron Gate dam. This is because the dams themselves create the conditions that the fish parasites thrive in. First, the reservoirs heat Klamath water to unnatural levels that are favorable for the proliferation of fish parasites. Second, by interrupting the natural flow and sediment cycles of the river, the dams create abnormal substrate conditions immediately below the dams. Normally, gravels and cobbles would be flushed of excess vegetation during variable flows, and gravels lost to downstream flow would be replaced by those rolling in from tributaries and upstream. The dams cut off the ability of the river bottom to "clean" itself, while removing gravel inputs from upstream and storing them in increasingly large piles behind the dams themselves. The algal growth that accumulates on the river bottom below Iron Gate, when coupled with abnormally high water temperatures, creates conditions highly lethal to baby fish, and perhaps responsible for some of the dramatic decline we've seen in spring Chinook over the years.
2. Engineering fish passage channels around the dams would be very expensive, in fact up to hundreds of millions of dollars more than removing the dams and replacing the power. This cost will go directly to PacifiCorp's ratepayers and cause increased rates for the next 30 years, even though the Klamath dams provide relatively little of PacifiCorp's energy portfolio (<2%).
3. Fish passage channels do not address the reservoirs' toxic algae problem, which is growing worse every year. The California Water Board has told the press that dam removal may be the only way to adequately address this problem. PacifiCorp's scientists are trying "band-aid" solutions to the algae problem, none of which have shown any promise of working. Algicides will dramatically affect the food web and ultimately impact salmon and humans. "Mixing" the water column with solar-powered "mixers" has proven almost impossible to carry out on a scale that would actually impact the algae, and has cost PacifiCorp quite a bit of money so far. Meanwhile, scientists are still documenting algae blooms with microcystin levels 4000 times what the World Health Organization considers a moderate risk to human health, the river is closed to recreational contact during fishing, rafting, and ceremonial seasons, and scientists have shown that eating yellow perch caught in the reservoirs could be harmful or even lethal.
4. The power the dams provide can be replaced by truly renewable sources at less or equal cost to building fish bypass channels or fish ladders.
Since the dams create reservoirs that breed toxic algae ABOVE the dams and fish-killing parasites BELOW the dams, the are not a benign or "renewable" source of electricity. Especially when you factor in the lack of fish passage. Building a side channel or fish ladders would be very expensive to engineer, and building four of them could reduce the percentage of fish who make it to Link River and Keno Dams, where they will still have to navigate two more fish ladders. Because this represents such a huge investment in infrastructure, FERC, in its Final Environmental Impact Report, suggested trucking the fish around the dams rather than building fish ladders. This is a strategy that Bonneville has employed on the Columbia and has only been responsible for more and more fish runs making it on to the Endangered Species Act, further complicating the lives of al basin residents.
Q: How will we replace the power?
A: To be clear, the four Klamath dams targeted for removal produce about 160 mW of power. This is a small fraction of PacifICorp's portfolio, and .3% of California's 50,000 mW rated capacity. This amount of power can be exchanged for truly renewable power sources at less than or equal cost to upgrading the dams for fish passage.
Dam removal on the Klamath is complex, and not easily reduced to a "river restoration" or even "environmental justice" issue, though it certainly incorporates major elements of both. At the root of the problem, however, are hard questions about our society's use of energy, and the trade-offs we are willing to make in order to keep unlimited electricity flowing to an ever expanding population.
Energy corporations would have us believe we are facing a set of very limited choices: "clean, green, and cheap" hydropower vs. fossil fuels; unregulated energy exploration and production vs. scarcity and blackouts; the status quo energy industry vs. unreliable and expensive alternatives. In reality, our choices are much broader than this, and we need to expand the dialogue beyond the narrow confines that keeps energy corporations making record profits as they plunder and destroy our nation's ecosystems and rural communities.
First, large-scale hydropower production is neither clean, green, nor cheap. On the Klamath, dams are directly responsible for creating outrageous levels of toxic algae and breeding fish parasites that may kill up to 90% of the river's juvenile Chinook. Methane emissions from decaying organic matter on the world's largest hydroprojects are also the single largest source of human-caused releases of methane - which is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, dams block migrating fish and turbines kill them. On the Klamath this means one species of salmon is on the Endangered Species List, and several more are on their way. Mitigating the impacts of lack of fish passage, rampant disease outbreaks, and loss of livelihood for Native and commercial fishing communities costs taxpayers millions, if not over a billion, on the West Coast's major salmon rivers every year.
Still have questions? Email them to malena [at] klamathriver.org.