The unanimous vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on the Klamath River dams is the latest major regulatory hurdle and the biggest milestone for a $500 million demolition proposal that has been championed by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years. The project will restore the lower half of California’s second-longest river to a free-flowing state for the first time in more than a century. Native tribes that rely on the Klamath River and its salmon for their livelihoods have been the driving force behind damming in a wild and remote area that straddles the California and Oregon border. Barring any unforeseen complications, Oregon, California and the entity set up to oversee the project will accept the permit transfer and could begin removing the dam as early as this summer, proponents said. “The Klamath salmon are coming home,” Yurok President Joseph James said after the vote. “Humans have won this victory, and with it we continue our sacred duty to the fish that have sustained our people since the beginning of time.” The dams produce less than 2 percent of PacifiCorp’s electricity output — enough to power about 70,000 homes — when operating at full capacity, said Bob Gravely, a spokesman for the utility. But they often operate at much lower capacity because of low water in the river and other issues, and the deal that paved the way for Thursday’s vote was ultimately a business decision, he said. PacifiCorp would have to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in fish ladders, fish screens and other conservation upgrades under environmental regulations that did not apply when the aging dams were first built. But with the deal approved Thursday, the utility’s cost is capped at $200 million, with another $250 million from a water bond approved by voters in California. “We’re closing coal plants and building wind farms and it all has to add up in the end. It’s not one-to-one,” Gravely said of the dam’s upcoming demolition. “You can make up for that power in the way you run the rest of your facilities, or by saving energy so your customers use less.” The approval of the order to surrender the permits to operate the dams is the foundation of the most ambitious salmon restoration plan in history, and the scope of the project — measured by the number of dams and the amount of river habitat that would be reopened to salmon — making it the largest of its kind in the world, said Amy Souers Kober, a spokeswoman for American Rivers, which monitors dam removals and advocates for river restoration. More than 483 kilometers (300 miles) of salmon habitat in the Klamath River and its tributaries will benefit, he said. The decision is in line with a trend to remove old and outdated dams across the U.S. as they come up for permit renewals and face the same government-mandated upgrade costs that Klamath River dams would. Across the U.S., 1,951 dams have been demolished since February, including 57 in 2021, American Rivers said. Most of these have declined over the past 25 years as facilities age and come up for relicensing. Commissioners on Thursday called the decision “significant” and “historic” and spoke of the importance of taking action during National Native American Heritage Month because of its importance to restoring salmon and revitalizing the river in heart of the culture of many tribes in the region. “Some people may ask in this era of great need for zero emissions, ‘Why are we removing the dams?’ First, we have to understand that this doesn’t happen every day… Many of these projects were licensed several years ago when there wasn’t as much focus on environmental issues,” said FERC Chairman Richard Glick. “Some of these projects have a significant impact on the environment and a significant impact on fish.” Glick added that, in the past, the commission has not considered the effects of energy projects on tribes, but said that was a “very important element” of Thursday’s decision. Members of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley tribes and other supporters lit a bonfire and watched the vote on a remote Klamath River sandbar via satellite uplink to symbolize their hopes for the river’s renewal. “I understand that some of these clans are attending this meeting today at [river] bar, and I raise a toast to you,” said FERC Commissioner Willie Phillips. The vote comes at a critical time as human-caused climate change hits the western United States with prolonged drought, said Tom Kiernan, president of American Rivers. He said allowing California’s second-largest river to flow naturally and its floodplains and wetlands to function normally would mitigate those impacts. “The best way to manage increasing floods and droughts is to allow the river system to be healthy and do its part,” he said. The Klamath watershed covers more than 37,500 square kilometers (14,500 sq mi), and the Klamath itself was once the third largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. But the dams, built between 1918 and 1962, effectively cut the river in half and prevent salmon from reaching upstream spawning grounds. Consequently, salmon runs have been declining for years. The smaller dam, Copco 2, could fall as early as this summer. The remaining dams — one in southern Oregon and two in California — will be drained very slowly starting in early 2024 with the goal of returning the river to its natural state by the end of that year. Plans to remove the dams have not been without controversy. Homeowners on Copco Lake, a large reservoir, strongly oppose the demolition plan. And ratepayers in rural counties around the dams worry about taxpayers shouldering the cost of any overflows or liability issues. Critics also believe that removing the dam will not be enough to save the salmon because of the changing ocean conditions the fish face before returning to their native river. “The whole question is, will this add to increased salmon production? It’s about what’s happening in the ocean [and] we believe this will prove to be a futile effort,” said Richard Marshall, head of the Siskiyou County Water Users Association. “No one has ever tried to deal with the problem by taking care of the status quo without just removing the dams.” US regulators raised flags about potential cost overruns and liability issues in 2020, nearly killing the proposal, but Oregon, California and PacifiCorp, which operates the hydroelectric dams and is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway , teamed up to add another $50 m in emergency funds. PacifiCorp will continue to operate the dams until demolition begins. The largest dam removal in the US to date is the removal of two dams on the Elwha River in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in 2012.
