Klamath River dam removal

Inside Calif.'s Klamath River dam removal project, the largest in US history

It's dam (removal) time

Ashley Harrell

Northern California river advocates and tribal groups have been fighting for more than two decades for the removal of four dams on the Klamath River. Their victory late last year set the stage for the removal project to become the largest of its kind in U.S. history. Now is a particularly good time to learn about it, as preparations are already underway for the first dam to be removed starting in June. Here’s why this will be one for the history books.

The history behind the Klamath River and its dams

Running out of the Cascade Mountains through southern Oregon and northern California to the Pacific Ocean, the Klamath River has been part of the ancestral territory of the Karuk, Yurok and other Native American tribes since time immemorial. For centuries, the tribes relied on the river for water, transportation and food, especially for salmon, a staple of their diet. They also recreated and held traditional ceremonies by the river.

In the mid-1800s, the U.S. government began forcibly removing the tribes from the region, relocating them to reservations and taking control of the river and its resources.  

Private companies began building dams on the Klamath in the early 1900s to generate hydroelectric power and support agriculture with irrigation, while providing flood control. By 1962, six dams segmented what was once a free-flowing river. The projects were initially celebrated by those who benefited, but over time it became clear that the dams significantly altered the river’s flow, temperature and sediment, and devastated fish habitats.

When did people start talking about removing the dams?

The relationship between the U.S. government and the Native American tribes who fished the Klamath nosedived in the 1970s with what became known as “the Fish Wars.” Essentially, jurisdictions across the West had outlawed traditional ways of harvesting salmon, and when the tribes continued their practices anyway, police, SWAT and National Guard forces cracked down.

The Supreme Court eventually reestablished treaty fishing rights in the mid-’70s, but a big problem remained: Fish numbers were abysmal, in large part because of the dams.

Fast forward to Sept. 27, 2002: More than 30,000 salmon were dead on the banks of the Lower Klamath River. The region had been in a drought, and after much infighting, the Bush administration decided irrigating farmlands was more important than protecting salmon. It was the largest fish kill in the country’s history, and Indigenous tribes were traumatized. The event drew national attention to the issue and galvanized efforts to remove the dams.

Why did it take so long to make the dam removal project a reality?

After several years of negotiations, the first official push to remove the Klamath dams came in 2005 with the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, which targeted the four largest of the river’s aging dams. The tribes were the driving force, but all stakeholders could see that the structures were relatively small hydroelectric producers and useless for irrigation — and that they lacked crucial fish ladders. The problem was that Republican leaders and local landowners were suspicious of actions supporting the environment and the tribes, and they worried it would set a precedent of removing dams. The agreement expired in 2016 after Congress failed to pass legislation that would have implemented it.

The tribes resuscitated the agreement in a less potent form that same year and kept fighting, but a 2020 ruling from the Energy Department prevented the full surrender of the dams’ license to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to remove the dams, requiring the states of California and Oregon to become co-licensees.

Tribal officials and activists then turned their attention to the owner of the dams, a company called PacifiCorp, which itself is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. The dams made up a relatively small percentage of PacifiCorp’s renewable generation capacity, and company executives recognized that renewing the operating license for the dams was going to cost more than removing them.

The public utilities commissions in Oregon and California indicated that the removal was in the best interest of customers, and PacifiCorp got on board to transfer ownership of the dams to the states of California and Oregon and KRRC. That final step happened in late 2022.

How does the removal work and how long will it take?

The complex removal operation began in March, and the four dams’ combined height of 411 feet makes the project the largest dam removal in U.S. history. It is also the most expensive, estimated to cost $450 million. 

First, water levels must be lowered behind each dam wall, then the dams themselves must be demolished before workers can truck out the remnants. The newly exposed reservoir must then be covered in mulch and seeds. 

“Crews are already in the field doing the preliminary work for dam removal,” KRRC CEO Mark Bransom said in a press release in March. “This work includes bridge upgrades, new road construction to access the dam sites more easily, worksite development, and more.”

The removal of the first dam, Copco 2, is scheduled to begin in June on the west side of Copco Lake. Those involved with the project say the event is likely to draw an enormous crowd of people who have dedicated their careers to seeing it happen, along with tribal members and leaders. 

“For so long, our ancestors have fought for this moment,” Amy Cordalis, a Yurok tribal member and the tribe’s former general counsel, said in 2022 in a video posted to Twitter. “For so long, our families on the river have sacrificed. We’ve lost fish, we’ve lost people, we’ve cried, we’ve fought, and yet here we are in this historic moment where the world is rallying behind us and acknowledging our pain and saying, ‘No more.’”

The three other dams are expected to be removed in 2024. The restoration of the 38-mile stretch of river impacted by the dams will take longer, but that process is already underway.